<nettime> Radikal-case in court after 5 years

["Eveline Lubbers" <evel@xs4all.nl>]

German authorities sure have long breath..
evel

PS: latest news: XS4ALL lost the case and had
to block the site. More later.

Hello all,

Please find a rough translation of a press release from XS4ALL below.
Tomorrow morning at 9.30 AM we will stand in front of an Amsterdam judge
because of a homepage containing articles from the german magazine
Radikal, a case dating from the previous century...

Best wishes,
Sjoera Nas, public affairs XS4ALL

XS4ALL press release
14 April 2002

Last Thursday, Deutsche Bahn has initiated summary proceedings against
Dutch Internetprovider XS4ALL. The judge of The Amsterdam court
will deal with the case on the early morning of Monday 15 April. The
German railroad company demands that XS4ALL immediately blocks the
homepage of one of its users because of 2 articles from the German
radical-left magazine Radikal, dating from 1996 and 1997. The articles
have been online since their (paper) publication and contain instructions
about the delaying of Castor-transports of nuclear waste. These transports
have always been accompanied by massive protests from the German public.

XS4ALL was summoned on Monday 8 April by lawyers of the Deutsche Bahn to
remove the material. XS4ALL has a standard procedure to deal with
complaints about illegal or infringing material. Following that procedure,
XS4ALL asked DB to substantiate how this material is illegal under Dutch
law.

Instead, Deutsche Bahn responded last thursday by serving XS4ALL with
a lawsuit. XS4ALL is very upset about the extremely short preparation
time, especially in view of the fact that the materials have been online
for 4 and 5 years respectively.

In 1996 and 1997 the Radikal-case caused a lot of public upheaval, when
German providers were summoned to make this specific homepage unavailable
to their subscribers. The blocking was lifted twice, when it became clear
how ineffective it was. Neither the Dutch nor German authorities have ever
ordered XS4ALL to remove the material. On top of that, the paper
publication was never forbidden in the Netherlands.

In the European Directive for E-Commerce of 8 June 2000 the liability of
internet service providers is defined in a very precise way. This
directive should have been implemented in Dutch law by 17 January 2002.
Now that the implementation-term has passed, the judge needs to explain
current Dutch law according to the Directive. XS4ALL believes that its
procedure to deal with complaints about illegal content is completely in
agreement with the intentions of the Directive. Lacking any substantiation
of the unmistakable illegality of the material, it is up to the Dutch
court to judge. If the judge, after all this time, decides that the
material is illegal, XS4ALL will not hesitate to remove it.

Disputed homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/radikal/
XS4ALL procedure:
http://www.xs4all.nl/overxs4all/auteursrecht/illegalcontent.html





#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net