- AU - Dow Jones v. Gutnick - a jurisdictional tangle +/-
(Economist) A ruling by Australia’s high court has further complicated the question of which laws and whose courts have jurisdiction over the Internet. In a libel case, the court has confirmed a lower-court ruling that Dow Jones can be sued in the Australian state of Victoria over an article that appeared on its website. The court rejected the American company’s claims that any libel action should be heard in New Jersey, where its web servers reside. A range of media groups and Internet firms - including CNN, Yahoo!, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Britain’s Guardian, Reuters and Amazon - had joined the case on Dow Jones’s side, fearing that a ruling against the firm would set an important precedent which could make all Internet publishers open to lawsuits in any of the 190 countries where the Internet can be accessed and so curb free speech everywhere. Dow Jones v. Gutnick (High Court of Australia) see also Australian court to hear Net case (Reuters) and US website 'can be sued in Australia' (BBC).
- CH - Schweizer Richter verlangt Website-Sperrung von Providern +/-
(Heise) Eine Anordnung eines Schweizer Untersuchungsrichters löste heute große Verunsicherung und mitunter auch Empörung bei den IP-Providern im Alpenstaat aus: Die Netz-Betreiber sollen demnach binnen fünf Tagen den Zugang zu einer inkriminierten Website blockieren. Ansonsten drohe ihnen nach Schweizer Recht Geldstrafe und Freiheitsentzug. Empfänger der Anordnung waren viele große Schweizer Access-Provider, wie zum Beispiel Bluewin und Swisscom.
- DE - NRW-Gericht ordnet sofortige Sperrung rechtsextremer Website an +/-
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(Heise) Nach einem Erfolg nun die erste Schlappe für die Provider, die sich gegen die umstrittene Website-Sperrungsverfügung des Düsseldorfer Regierungspräsidenten Jürgen Büssow wehren: Erstmals hat ein deutsches Gericht die sofortige Sperrung rechtsextremer Internet-Angebote durch einen Zugangsanbieter angeordnet. Das Verwaltungsgericht in Arnsberg (Nordrhein-Westfalen) sei damit der Rechtsauffassung der nordrhein-westfälischen Aufsichtsbehörde gefolgt.
- Europe's ISPs Overrun with Website Take-Down Orders +/-
(Reuters) Europe's Internet service providers (ISPs) say they are overwhelmed by a barrage of requests to take from their networks Web sites that violate copyright or contain defamatory statements. The ISPs want legal protections in case they remove a site that turns out to be law-abiding. ISPA's UK body has begun collecting data from its UK members about take-down requests. To date, the group found that 54 percent of take-down notices pertain to copyright infringement claims, while 27 percent were related to defamation complaints.
- US - Should linking be immune from lawsuits? +/-
(FindLaw) by Julie Hilden. In this column, I'll discuss the current legal risks of linking. I'll also argue in favor of Congress's granting a broad statutory immunity for linking, as it has done for web hosting.