The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has decided that a wholesale censorship of Google Sites in Turkey violates the European Convention of Human Rights, and orders Turkey to cease the censorship and pay damages. The court concludes that any wholesale web censorship is an interference with fundamental human rights, and therefore must be prescribed by law. This has direct consequences for other, similar wholesale censorship – such as that of The Pirate Bay.

The court and the verdict didn’t mention The Pirate Bay, but it’s the immediate high-profile consequence that springs to mind when reading the verdict. Let’s look at the background first, and then see how it applies directly.

The case concerned a court decision to block access to Google Sites, which hosted an Internet site whose owner was facing criminal proceedings for “insulting the memory of Atatürk”. As a result of the decision, access to all other sites hosted by the service was blocked.

From the verdict:

The Court reiterated that a restriction on access to a source of information was only compatible with the Convention if a strict legal framework was in place regulating the scope of a ban and affording the guarantee of judicial review to prevent possible abuses. […] The Court further observed that there was no indication that the Criminal Court had made any attempt to weigh up the various interests at stake, in particular by assessing whether it had been necessary to block all access to Google Sites. […] The courts should have had regard to the fact that such a measure would render large amounts of information inaccessible, thus directly affecting the rights of Internet users and having a significant collateral effect. […] The effects of the measure in question had therefore been arbitrary and the judicial review of the blocking of access had been insufficient to prevent abuses. There had therefore been a violation of Article 10 of the Convention. The court held that Turkey was to pay the applicant 7,500 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 1,000 in respect of costs and expenses.

The European Court of Human Rights is placed under the Council of Europe, which encompasses all of continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Russia, Turkey, and a few more hangarounds, with the notable exception of Belarus. Every country in that area – all of the EU and about as many countries more – is bound by the court’s decisions.

We observe here that the Court of Human Rights is zooming in on Article 10, the right to share and seek culture and knowledge, just as in the other copyright monopoly case last month:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” (ECHR 10)

What the court says, is that unless the specific method of wholesale website censorship by the courts is prescribed and allowed in national law, then no court may order that measure. This is because of article 10, from which there may be exceptions, but only – only – if those exceptions are thus clearly prescribed in law (and a few other conditions). “Wholesale” is key here – it’s the carpet censorship that the court targets.

This verdict has immediate consequences for countries like the UK, Denmark, Finland, and Belgium, where courts have taken it upon themselves to order The Pirate Bay censored off the net wholesale. While the cases there were civil cases, the censorship was still determined by a branch of the government, namely the courts – and unless that measure and method is specifically allowed and prescribed in law, that wholesale censorship is illegal, according to this verdict.

Activists in the UK, Denmark, and anywhere else where The Pirate Bay has been ordered censored wholesale, without an explicit censorship-of-websites law, can and should sue their governments now for violations of human rights, referring to this verdict. You should have some thousands of euros to collect, it would seem. Some thousands of euros each.

Other articles on the verdict: Article 19, European Digital Rights Initiative, Techdirt.

Unfortunately, this verdict has no weight on the current threat directed at the Swedish Pirate Party from the copyright industry lobby.

(Hat tip to Brokep for the newstip.)