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by rmu09 2617 days ago
This was triggered by a defamation lawsuit where a former female MP was being harrassed via facebook, made the harassement public via twitter, and subsequently sued by the owner of the facebook account. She lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay damages. The court found that the owner of the facebook account is not necessarily the harasser, so making the harassement public is libel.

Of course this case was only a welcome trigger to implement some law to cause FUD. Austrian government is completely illiterate in all things regarding internet, but in this case (and the case of the copyright directive), I would go as far and presume malicious intent (not just stupidity).
4 comments
abrowne 2617 days ago
Maybe they were inspired by her case, but the former MP does not support it:

> Criticism also came from the former Green Party politician Sigi Maurer, whose fight against sexist posts was cited by the government as proof that the law was needed. "The government abused my case to propose this censorship law," Maurer wrote in a tweet last week. "Not in my name."

https://derstandard.at/2000101677286/Government-Seeks-to-Eli...

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pjc50 2617 days ago
That seems like an absolutely nonsensical outcome from the court. Does anyone have the court transcript? (yes I'm aware of the risks of reading machine translated legal German, but it would be interesting to know)

(I see that Facebook's ineffective harassment policy is at the root of this again)

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yorwba 2617 days ago
The decision was apparently invalidated by a higher court and the trial has to be repeated: https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2019-03/sigri...
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peletiah 2617 days ago
The first court decision has been overruled by the higher instance. However I don't agree with rmu09 that this was the trigger for this law.
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namlem 2617 days ago
Are civil cases not based on preponderance of evidence in Austria? It seem like a fuck up of the court than a problem of internet anonymity.
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peletiah 2617 days ago
The case was never about anonymous hate-postings as the harasser's comments where posted under his real name, he just claimed that other people had access to his facebook-account. The case has been overruled by the higher instance a few weeks ago. I don't agree that this was the trigger for this law, the current gov consists of two right-populist parties/movements and made other irrational decisions in the past.
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pergadad 2617 days ago
This would be surprising. If I remember correctly the MP was from the Green party (= centre left & environmental) while the current government is pretty much the opposite (centre right party & we're-not-nazis-but-pretty-close party).

This is just the far right interior minister enforcing his ideology of control.

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