The court says that the user can manage the comments on his profile and must act with diligence
MADRID, 14 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court (TS) has condemned the owner of a Facebook account for violating the right to honor for certain comments published by third parties and that were included in one of the entries on his wall. The court understands that he should have acted diligently in the face of those reactions.
In the sentence, a presentation by Judge Antonio García Martínez and collected by Europa Press, the responsibility of that user is examined and partially endorses a resolution of the Provincial Court of A Coruña that did appreciate crimes against the right to honor and freedom of expression .
The High Court considers that the account holder’s comment, which the court of second instance considered offensive, does not have sufficient offensive gravity and intensity to constitute an illegitimate interference with the right to honour.
However, it does confirm the assessment of third-party comments and considers that the powers of administration and control that the owner has over his Facebook profile are extensive, since he can block other users so that they cannot see or comment their publications, react to comments, reply to them, hide them, report them, or, for example, mark them as spam and block profiles.
The plaintiffs, neighbors of the defendant, decided to go to court after they saw how they were insulted on Facebook. The attacks on the Mark Zuckerberg network began as a result of neighborhood problems when undertaking certain works on the defendant’s land that adjoins the plaintiffs’ house.
Among the comments included in the Supreme Court ruling and that were made by third parties, it is explained that they were described as homophobic, shameless, uneducated, ignorant, ticks, garbage, sheep or uncivilized.
But the reactions of third parties were not just insults, and some even recommended that the owner of the account hire “a thug” because “with people like that, so much formalism is useless.” “Some ostias well given and then to know who it was,” reads one of the messages, to which is added another that says that in the face of neighbors “so disgusting (…) I would choose to liquidate them to end the problem before.
“That is living condemned, I shot the father, the mother and the son and that is how they condemn me but for something,” they added.
The magistrates of the Supreme Court understand that the owner of the Facebook account “cannot simply disregard what is published on his profile by other users” for the sole and simple reason that it is not his responsibility, but others, who is responsible for the published.
They add in their sentence that the owner cannot claim that these third parties are “the only ones responsible for what has been stated and the only ones who must bear its consequences.”
The Chamber also emphasizes that the defendant has not questioned that the expressions of these third parties suppose a serious attack on the dignity of the plaintiffs. And he adds that in this case, in which there is an obvious illegitimate interference in the right to honor, “the responsibility of the account holder for not removing them from his public profile, once known, cannot be excused for lack of of legitimacy, danger of censorship or difficulties of weighting”.
In the court’s opinion, “there is a duty of reactive diligence and care that obliges it, exercising its power of control, to immediately erase it.” He understands that if he does not act and disregards, he fails to comply with that duty, becoming responsible for the damages caused as a result of fault for omission derived from said lack of diligence and care.
And it adds that in the specific case, that excuse, which in practice would translate “into a purely passive or abstentionist attitude”, does not correspond to the defendant’s own acts either because he did suppress comments from a third party who had asked for good sense and moderation in the language.
