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Deutsch: Italien: Online-Herausgeber unterliegen nicht den gleichen Haftungsbes...

The Italian Court of Cassation ruled in a decision taken on16 July 2010 and published on 1 October 2010 that online editors are not directly liable for the content published on their websites. In this case, it was considered that art.57 of the Italian Criminal Code which requires control of newspaper editors over the published content covers exclusively the hard copy written works.

The ruling overturned a previous decision of the Appeal Court of Milan having convicted the editor of Merate Online portal for not having checked the content of a letter that proved defamatory for Justice Minister Roberto Castelli.

The Court of Cassation stated that Article 57 "refers specifically to information disseminated through the 'press'. The letter of the law is unequivocal and that conclusion also bears a historical interpretation of the rule."

Law 47 from 1948 defines the 'press' as "any typographical or other reproductions obtained by mechanical or physical-chemical way of publication". In the court's opinion, a web publication does not fall into the definition of the 1948 law and hence is not covered by art.57 of the Criminal Law.

The ruling also relied on decree 70/2003 which explicitly rules out the online service's responsibility for the content of their users in case they are unaware of the illegal character of the respective content.

The director of a web newspaper is not liable for failing control (only in Italian, 1.10.2010)
http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2010/10/01/news/cassazione_per_le_tes...

Cassation: The Online Editor is not "responsible" (only in Italian, 2.10.2010)
http://www.mcreporter.info/stampa/cass35511.htm

Cassation Court - Decision no. 35511 (only in Italian, 16.07.2010)
http://www.mcreporter.info/giurisprudenza/cass10_35511.htm