A new bill is put into circulation at the National Assembly, which provides that henceforth the mass media will bear responsibility for publishing offensive, defamatory statuses and comments to the Facebook and other social network anonymous users. The matter is about the bill on Amendments in the RA Civil Code. The mass media must try to distinguish between real and fake users, and thus bear responsibility when publishing their offensive records. The bill defines that “the author of the information is considered unknown if the interested person, exercising reasonable efforts, can not identify the author.” Aravot.am asked Arpine Hovhannisyan, the co-author of the bill and RPA MP, what exerting reasonable effort means, what the media should do: to write asking for a date, to meet with him and ask whether he is a real user?
As said by Arpine Hovhannisyan, “The bill tried to detail the existing legal regulations. Today, we can file a lawsuit against the media, if the information source is unknown. Unknown can be interpreted as, for example, if you do not know him, he is unknown. For this reason, the bill sought to clarify that the matter implies to the cases where the person who was insulted or slandered is trying to find the doer, and fails. Reasonable efforts are able to comment and are not problematic in Armenia and in ECHR judicial practice. Not the media but the person who was insulted or slandered bears the burden. In other words, he is trying to understand whether it is a real person or not, who he is, whether it is possible to find and identify him to apply to sue against him rather than against the media. Just in case he is unable, he sues against the mass media, however, everything does not end up here. Moreover, the bill has gone one step further from existing legal regulations and made it possible to release the mass media from responsibilities when submitting identification data.
The bill also provides that the media shall bear the responsibility for insulting or slandering comments found in the website, if the comments containing insult or slander, after submitting a claim on removing them, immediately, but no later than within 12 hours, are not removed, or refused to remove. We were interested to know whether there is no timidity that within 12 hours the offensive statements would be sufficiently widespread and popular, usually the news is leaving the source within 12 hours, then it makes no sense whether the mass media will remove it or not. Aprine Hovhannisyan responded, “The European Court on Human Rights does not even give the mentioned time to media to remove the comment. If the insulting or slandering comment is available, the mass media is considered to be responsible. The purpose of the regulation of the bill is that to avoid laying additional burden on the media, in other word, a commitment to make preliminary moderation.
In terms of comment, there is no unknown or known separation, just the matter is about the fact that a person has the right to appeal and claim for removal. It is up to the right of the media to remove it or not. If, for example, the media is convinced that it is a regular criticism rather than an insult or slander, it may not remove it. As to the twelve-hour, the bill says promptly, but no later than within twelve hours, in other words, the media should be the chance to remove it if it can do it, let’s say, half an hour later, but failed to do it, it will be considered violation and these are circumstances to undergo proof by the court. If, let’s say, at night, someone has written to the media to remove this comment, but the media has seen it in the morning and removed it, naturally there is no violation here.”
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