Keeping Forums Clean

German Internet forum operators will be required to delete libelous material from their Web sites as soon as they are made aware of them, the German Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday.

"The case undoubtedly has a large practical importance," said Gerda Müller, the Karlsruhe court's vice president. She added that the verdict also applies to sites that allow parties to reply directly to the accusations against them.

The case in question was initiated when the head of an association to fight child pornography was labeled a pedophile twice in an Internet forum dealing with sexual abuse. Though the authors in both cases left the message with pseudonyms, the association's head was able to obtain the name of the author for one entry.

The association's head sued for the removal of the two entries from the forum. The high court's decision to hold both the author and forum's operators responsible for entries overturned a lower court's decision that forced operators to remove forum entries only when they were written anonymously.

Careful screening required

The main point of debate in the case was whether individuals can hold site operators accountable for content posted by third parties, with the defendant's lawyers arguing the sites simply provide a forum for public discussion and cannot control what is said. Lawyers for the plaintiff said that forum operators should be held accountable for messages their forums spread.

The decision will force Internet forum operators to undertake more efforts validate users' identities before allowing them to post comments, Ralf Möbius, an Internet lawyer in Hanover said.

"They will definitely have to check their sites more regularly," he told Die Zeit newspaper. "For a long time the perception was that one could not pursue legal action against the place where wrongdoing occurs. Naturally the operator has to do something about entries in his forum."