







Facebook has received a serious hit from the EU's highest court, which has ruled that national courts in Europe can force online platforms to remove defamatory content from around the world.



Following scrutiny, the European Court has ruled that the EU 'will not prevent courts from ordering' the removal of information or blocking access to the network worldwide ', the statement said.



EU COURT OF JUSTICE RULES AGAINST FACEBOOK





The decision is seen as a victory for EU regulators, who have an ambition to make US tech giants meet the tougher European standards for hate speech and offensive content. Following scrutiny, the European Court has ruled that the EU 'will not prevent courts from ordering' the removal of information or blocking access to the network worldwide ', the statement said.The decision is seen as a victory for EU regulators, who have an ambition to make US tech giants meet the tougher European standards for hate speech and offensive content.





The decision came after a former Austrian politician Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek sought to have Facebook remove disparaging comments about her that had been posted on an individual’s personal page, as well as “equivalent” messages posted by others.





She argued that Facebook must delete the material in the country and limit worldwide access.









Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (‘Directive on electronic commerce’), in particular Article 15(1), must be interpreted as meaning that it does not preclude a court of a Member State from:





– ordering a host provider to remove information which it stores, the content of which is identical to the content of information which was previously declared to be unlawful, or to block access to that information, irrespective of who requested the storage of that information;





– ordering a host provider to remove information which it stores, the content of which is equivalent to the content of information which was previously declared to be unlawful, or to block access to that information, provided that the monitoring of and search for the information concerned by such an injunction are limited to information conveying a message the content of which remains essentially unchanged compared with the content which gave rise to the finding of illegality and containing the elements specified in the injunction, and provided that the differences in the wording of that equivalent content, compared with the wording characterising the information which was previously declared to be illegal, are not such as to require the host provider to carry out an independent assessment of that content, and





– ordering a host provider to remove information covered by the injunction or to block access to that information worldwide within the framework of the relevant international law.





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