Blogs, Chat Rooms and Forums: Views of a new legal reality By Elena Alk. Spiropoulou, Attorney at law The Internet has given wings to communities! Whichever is your hobby, whichever is your individual characteristic, whichever your taste or your opinion on something, through the Internet you will find people of the same ideas and preferences. Not only you will find people from all over the world that share your interests, but you will be able to communicate with them, to be part of their team, so that you can talk with them in real time. How can this happen? In the website of the community you are interested in you will find the indication “forum”. Through this, you will be transferred to a sub-site of the main website of the community, in which there are guidelines and terms of use, which you have to accept, in order to be able to subscribe and make use of the community’s forum. What does this mean? This means that as a forum member, you have the right to publish your opinions and questions, at the public (online) space of this community. Every person interested will be able to follow these discussions and participate in them through the same procedure. Forum is a technologically advanced means of connecting and communication, as with its use anyone can express his opinion directly in public, addressing the audience of specialized interest of each particular community. He can also ask questions and get answers in any kind of matter or field (e.g. technical issues) of the specialized interest of the group. Usually, there is an administrator in the forum, who undertakes the task of censoring forum content, so that basic rules are kept during discussion. Similar is the function, although more direct, of chat rooms, “rooms” of private and public discussions with a more free content. In these there is no censorship regarding content, as discussion is held at real time and without the intervention of someone in the administration of the discussion. If you are not the talkative person, and you are a person of monologue, you can create your blog at no cost, and whatever you want to say will be instantly uploaded to the world web, available to everyone. Forums, chats, and blogs made their appearance around the beginning of the 1990’s. Forums and chats are online services, which a community can offer at its public, or to any person interested, through its website. In the e-address of these services, each user can send an email, which is published in a specific and known location of the website and can accept comments from other users and even answers from the same user. In other words, it is a debate held around a topic, or a completely free one. Blogs is the last known form of disclosure of private views in the Internet. They are websites in which their creator publishes in chronological order, the thoughts and opinions about a particular issue, or generally in the form of "public diary". Although blogs are of special interest when they are from people with some kind of prestige or their commentators refer to issues of the current policy or others, in Greece the dominant form of blogs, is the diary-like blog, in which ordinary people express their thoughts and concerns having as a starting point their daily lives. New forms of public expression and justice; Blogs, forums and chats are new formations in the eyes of justice which do not fall under any of the known forms of social conduct covered by the issued laws. It is of course a means of expression and as such they are under the increased protection provided by the Greek Constitution. It is a right of all persons (article 5 of the Greek Constitution) to develop freely their personality and to participate in the social, economic and political life of the country, insofar as they do not infringe the rights of others or violate the Constitution and the good usages. Freedom of speech is under the protection of Article 14 of the Greek Constitution: “Every person may express and propagate his thoughts orally, in writing and through the press in compliance with the laws of the State.” Apparently in the Constitution there is no mention on the specific ways one can express his views and opinions but from the general provision of the article deduces that it applies even in new means of expression, which derive from the evolution of technology, like forums, chats and blogs. There is still a question to be answered concerning the legal nature of these forms of expression and communication, as these new means appear to have basic differences regarding their operation and nature from the known forms of public expression like press and television. Crimes against honor and new means of expression. Crimes that can take place in a blog, forum, or within a chat room are similar to the ones that can happen via any other means of communication: Cases of slander and libel, even harm of the reputation of a company or an enterprise, i.e. public insults or otherwise harm of the honor or reputation of an individual through the Internet are already addressed by Greek justice. These crimes did not appear simultaneously with the internet but were before its appearance. Libel or defamation can be committed through the press or television, even encouragement or facilitation of the public in illegal or unethical acts. Can we deal with crimes committed through blogs / forums / chats in the same way that we treat the corresponding ones through newspapers or television? In which ways is the internet different than the press and television? The answer is quite simple: First of all in the anonymity of the user and the lack of responsibility of the owner of the means. In a case of defamation through the press, e.g. a daily newspaper, in which the journalist that signs the article, knows that he disseminates false news about X, X has the inalienable right to sue the journalist and ask for the restoration of the caused damage. Liable is not only the journalist who signed the article but also the publisher, as the law establishes strict liability of the publisher for what is published in the printed matter eponymously or anonymously (N.1178/1981). So, even if a newspaper publishes an unsigned letter which disparages someone, this individual can turn against the publisher, without having to go after the anonymous author of the letter. Similar to this is the legislation (with amendments by Law 2328/1995) on television and radio shows, regarding crimes against honor that happen during their broadcast. In other words in press, television or radio, publications are always eponymous, because in any case eponymous is the means which publishes them. Since the publisher/producer is strictly liable for crimes against honor, the aggrieved party, if it cannot find the real author of the news, is entitled to seek liability from the publisher/producer. Thus, there is always someone that the aggrieved party may address to and seek compensation from for the harm suffered and possibly even damages. This is not the case when we come to blogs/forums/chats. Here we face a double problem, as both the author of the offensive expression and the owner of the site where it’s published may well be anonymous. 1. Anonymous author. As it is well known, members of forums and chats do not register using their real name and surname but with a nickname. This nickname may in another part of the website that hosts the forum/chat match the real name of the user or not. Even if in another part of the website is a correspondence of the nickname with the real user data, there is no guarantee that these data are true. So, if Maria Papadopoulou registers in the website of fans of team A as Katerina Papadakou, using the nickname “dalia”, and as “dalia” insults X in the forum or chat room of this team, the true identity of “dalia” cannot be found. 2. Anonymous website. It is also possible that someone can have a blog in anonymous website, hosted in a country outside of Greece, without publishing any information on his true identity, and where he defames a company for its quality of services. In the above cases finding the culprit of slander, libel or any other insult of personality, requires going down a harsh road, if not one of no passage; the data that have to be disclosed in order to find the identity of the perpetrator, are communicational and personal data, that for these crimes, remain private! Liability of the creator/owner of a website. Let’s take the case of a known website, that in its forum or chat, someone is either being insulted or denigrated. Can we seek liability from the owner of the website, if it is a known person, in the same way that we seek liability from a publisher for any kind of publication that insults us in his newspaper? Our answer has to be, no. Strict liability of the owner of a website for anything posted there would exceed the nature and operation of the internet. Starting from that since anonymity is the rule online the owner of a website would not be able to turn deductively against the real culprit, since he would not be able to track him. In this case he bears the weight of compensating the aggrieved party himself, and the perpetrator remains unpunished. But also operating a chat is a demanding task, since it happens, without mediation of a technician or an administrator, live, so that any intervention is impossible. On the other hand, forum posts, although filtered by the topic’s administrator, cannot be censored in a way that holds up free expression. An administrator may prevent, an extreme insult, but cannot stop a member from expressing negatively on the provision of services of a company, but that may constitute defamation! Finally, strict liability of a forum/chat owner for what is published there, inevitably leads to setting rules, in order to participate, so austere and meticulous, that annul the operation of these means, since they are based on free communication which the least amount of control pos…