Archive

Verbatim – what is a photocopier? By Brett Weiner.

Dramatization of a transcript of an actual legal deposition about the use of photocopiers.

The case of Tierbefreier E.V. v. Germany before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) concerned the dissemination of a film of 20 minutes with the title ‘’Poisoning for Profit’’, showing monkeys used for research in a laboratory. The film was based on footage made by an undercover journalist who had used a hidden camera to document how the monkeys were treated by staff and what their living conditions were like. Before the applicant association Tierbefreier E.V. made the film public parts of the footage had been showed on TV by various broadcasting companies. The content of the film consisted to a large extent of accusations that the company using the monkeys did not live up to existing legal standards for using research animals. The German courts issued an injunction against Tierbefreier [Read more…] about ECHR in Tierbefreier v. Germany – Monkey Business, undercover reporting by an animal rights group

In the case of Print Zeitungsverlag GmbH v. Austria, Bezirksblatt, a regional newspaper distributed free of charge in in Tyrol in Austria, reported on an anonymous dissemination of a letter (printed in 300 copies) concerning two brothers who were both local politicians. The letter posed a number of questions about the brothers such as: “Would you buy a car from this man?”, “Is this man honest with his family?” and “Does this man have the necessary personal/professional qualifications?’’. The article in the regional newspaper was called “Anonymous campaign against M&M”. In the article the letter was published in its full length together with [Read more…] about European Court applies Von Hannover II criteria in defamation case

In 2012 a woman from Amsterdam called D. was convicted in summary proceedings for Cyberstalking, Identity Theft, Harassment, Threats and Defamation. She had been stalking the American film maker Christopher Johnson IV and the actress Mariana Tosca, mainly through the internet (we wrote about this case here, in Dutch). As far as we are aware, this was the first ruling in the Netherlands about cross-border stalking through the Internet. A special aspect of the case was that it was heard according to American law and that the Dutch court awarded punitive damages.

D. brought an appeal against the judgment. In its ruling, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal [Read more…] about Conviction of cyberstalker upheld on appeal

Guest post by Dirk Voorhoof, Ghent University.*

In its judgment of 25 June 2013 in the case of Youth Initiative for Human Rights v. Serbia the European Court of Human Rights has recognised more explicitly than ever before the right of access to documents held by public authorities, based on Article 10 of the Convention (right to freedom of expression and information). The judgment also recognises the importance of NGOs acting in the public interest. The judgment contains a particularly important [Read more…] about Article 10 of the Convention includes the right of access to data held by an intelligence agency