On Monday 3 November, in intermediary proceedings against not-for-profit provider RAS in a Paris court, two telemarketing companies demanded the immediate take-down of the website of the radical trade union SUD PTT. The lawsuit was brought against the ISP and the trade union by the companies Ceritex and Mediatel. According to their complaint, some remarks published on the website about the management of the 2 companies are untrue and grave insults. Ceritex is accused of being reigned by little bosses, a manager of the quali-metrics division is described as being unable to distinguish between friendship and hierarchical relationships and a female president is disqualified as being perfectly aware of the situation, but not acting on it - as usual.
EDRI-member IRIS voluntarily joined the defendants in the lawsuit. Both IRIS and SUD PTT, as well as more than 100 French activist organisations and trade unions, are members of the RAS, the Réseau Associatif et Syndical. The RAS acts as an ISP for its members. IRIS and the RAS were represented by a lawyer from the French Human Rights League, another member of the RAS.
Current French legislation is very clear: an ISP cannot be held liable for content it hosts, except when the company fails to obey a judicial order to block or remove the content. Modification of this legislation is foreseen in the "Digital Economy draft law" (Loi sur la confiance dans l'économie numérique, or LEN), adopted in first reading by the French Parliament. The second reading is scheduled to happen in the first two weeks of December. In the litigation IRIS sees further proof that the law will encourage pressure on and intimidation of service providers, a development detrimental to the freedom of speech. A petition against the law, set-up by IRIS earlier, has already attracted over 3000 individual and over 100 collective signatures.
Overview of the case and copies of the charges
http://www.ras.eu.org/ras/actions/ceritex-SudPTT/index.html
IRIS press release (in French)
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/comm-proces-ras1003.html
IRIS petition against the LEN
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/len/petition.html