German Court Tells Wikimedia Foundation That It's Liable For Things Users Write
from the that's-a-problem dept
I’ve spent a bit of time in Germany over the past few years, and the entrepreneurial community there is really interesting. It’s become a hot place for emerging startups and there’s a lot of excitement, especially in Berlin. Similarly, it appears that a number of internet activists have been flocking to Berlin. So it’s become a really vibrant community of folks trying to make the internet better.
But the one thing that worries me quite a bit about the German internet scene is its very dangerous view of secondary liability — in that German law and courts tend to lean towards blaming the intermediary for the actions of their users. I learned this the frightening way on stage at conference in Germany, under some very hot lights (in a decommissioned airport) where a somewhat angry questioner in the audience insisted that some comments written on Techdirt by some of our users were “illegal in Germany” and that, under German law, I was liable for them. He stood at the microphone with a laptop reading the comments and demanding I answer for them, despite never having even read those comments, let alone created them. I suddenly started mentally counting down the time until my flight home. I defended secondary liability (and basic free speech concepts) and was able to leave the country without problem (and have been back a couple times since then). However, as a few people explained to me on that trip, a real hindrance to innovation in Germany is this antiquated view of secondary liability whereby sites can almost always be declared liable for actions of their users.
It appears that this tragic view has struck again — this time against the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia. The Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart, has found that the Foundation can be held liable for content on Wikipedia. In this specific case, someone argued that some Wikipedia content was libelous. While the court says that the organization doesn’t need to proactively police its content, it does say that if anything has received any sort of complaint, suddenly the Foundation can be held liable.
Of course, this is a recipe for easy censorship. If you don’t like something in Wikipedia, just file a complaint, and to avoid liability, the Wikimedia Foundation will have strong incentive to delete the contested language. Of course, this goes against nearly everything that Wikipedia stands for in terms of how content gets edited on the site. Even if legally required to, it’s ridiculous for a German court to basically tell the Foundation that it needs to effectively delete passages of Wikipedia editors and then block that content from being put back. Rulings like this make true user-supported media operations legally difficult to maintain, and will increasingly scare top internet companies out of Germany.
If someone posted libelous information, go after them. Putting the blame on an intermediary isn’t just misguided, but it also creates a strong chilling effect on innovation.
Filed Under: germany, secondary liability, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia foundation, wikipedia
Comments on “German Court Tells Wikimedia Foundation That It's Liable For Things Users Write”
Oh hey, I got an idea...
Why not go after Sprint, AT&T and other phone services because criminals use them to make phone calls!
Surely that won’t cause a problem, right?
Re: Oh hey, I got an idea...
Don’t forget Ford, Toyota, and other car manufacturers, and truck manufacturers to. Think of all the billions of dollars worth of stolen goods their products have helped transport.
And oil and gas companies helped them to, by fueling the transportation methods of all those criminals.
We should also prosecute farmers for feeding criminals. If farmers starved criminals then there wouldn’t be any criminals left!
Re: Re: Oh hey, I got an idea...
You can sue in America for that. If they know that the goods will be used or is likley to commit a crime.
If you say to FedEx “I have a bomb and I want it delivered” that is a crime to ship that bomb.
If you try to launder money thru a bank and the bank suspects that you are doing that, they are liable for that.
The reason that Wikipedia is liable is that they are publishing it without checking the content.
He stood at the microphone with a laptop reading the comments and demanding I answer for them, despite never having even read those comments, let alone created them.
So ootb is German. Suddenly a lot of things make sense now.
Ahem. Jokes apart, you could have replied that every bit of the site operation falls under American jurisdiction since TD has no operations in Germany and then proceeded to ask him if he would like to police thousands of comments daily looking for something that someone could subjectively think it’s offensive to someone around Germany. You know, because everybody shares the same opinion.
Could this sort of behavior be due to knee jerk reactions to the Nazism?
Re: Re:
Ahem. Jokes apart, you could have replied that every bit of the site operation falls under American jurisdiction since TD has no operations in Germany and then proceeded to ask him if he would like to police thousands of comments daily looking for something that someone could subjectively think it’s offensive to someone around Germany. You know, because everybody shares the same opinion.
I did point out the US jurisdiction. And further pointed out that if he believed that someone had made an incorrect statement that the great thing was that he and others could correct that ignorance.
Could this sort of behavior be due to knee jerk reactions to the Nazism?
The comment he was referring to was about Germany’s Nazi past — and, yes, I believe that some of this is a reaction to the country’s history. They’re (for very good reason!) quite sensitive over that subject, and have gone above and beyond in trying to prevent that sort of thing from happening again. That’s a good thing, but it shouldn’t lead to blaming third parties for comments, and it shouldn’t lead to stifling free speech.
Re: Re: Re:
“That’s a good thing, but it shouldn’t lead to blaming third parties for comments, and it shouldn’t lead to stifling free speech.”
Because that’s the kind of thing Nazis would do.
I’m curious about laws regarding false accusations . If they are accused (falsely) how would it play out in the courts
Great News!
The German gov’t is know liable for your driving…since of course they obviously approve and control every bit of the ‘users’ using their roads, right?
Re: Great News!
Well, the road does not drive you over and nobody is jamming the road over you. And if you are falling on a road, that is not cleared for snow or leafs, then you can get compensating for when you fall.
Nazism
gee Germany, it’s almost as though you’re looking forward to bringing back Hitler and the Gestapo back into full glory.
Wikipedia reaction?
Does anyone know anything about the reaction from either the Wikimedia Foundation or the Wikipedia community to this? I looked at it some days ago, but did not find anything in the places I looked (mailing lists, blogs, “village pump” pages, …)
I happen to agree with the German courts on this one. What nobody realizes is that if a member on a website posts something inflammatory or they post something libel, and the owner of that website does not take adequate measures to remove that content, then the website administrator/owner SHOULD be held libel for that content.
At the same time, I think that website owners should have a certain limited period of time to identify the libel content and to remove it within an appropriate period of time.
Website owners should be held libel if they don’t take appropriate steps to ensure that its users aren’t posting such content. After all, website owners cannot immediately remove some content while denying the ability to remove other similar libel content.
Re: Re:
Posting something inflammatory is not illegal in the US.
Here’s the thing, though. Determining if something is libelous isn’t so easy. Insulting or defamatory remarks aren’t necessarily libel — in the US, truth is an absolute defense, and opinion is protected.
What you’re saying is that website owners must incur the significant expense to research and/or get legal assistance to determine if something really should be taken down or not. In effect what you’re asking for is the end of any real user comments or user-generated content except in forums run by major corporations who could afford it.
Re: Re: Re:
For liable truth or non truth has no standing at all in a British court and much less standing than that in an European court.
Re: Re:
“What nobody realizes is that if a member on a website posts something inflammatory or they post something libel, and the owner of that website does not take adequate measures to remove that content, then the website administrator/owner SHOULD be held libel for that content.”
Actually quite a lot of people realise that the website administrator/owner should not be held LIABLE for that content posted by others. It has been explained many times at great length why this is such a bad thing, including in this article.
You do realise that liable and libel are two quite different words right?
Re: Re: Re:
I actually suspect that this may be a spellchecker typo. I.e., the person types “lible”, and the spellchecker autocorrects it to “libel”, since that’s a closer match (swap two letters rather than insert a letter) than “liable”.
That’s no excuse for not catching it on review before posting, but it would help explain the prevalence of the error.
Re: Re:
I happen to agree with the German courts on this one.
Which makes you as silly as they are. this is the 21st century, there are literally thousands to millions of comments on a typical large website and it is as impractical and impossible to police their content as it is to police an individual on a sidewalk carrying on a conversation. Even if you delete a comment, or even bar a user, they can be back inside of 15 minutes under another name or repost their comment elsewhere on the site or in the article comments. Not to mention the fact that making a fuss inevitably ends up with the offending comments being driven to the top of the rankings and likely being reposted elsewhere on line.
Re: Re: Re:
Your logistics have no standing in a court of law.
Re: Response to: kenichi tanaka on Dec 2nd, 2013 @ 10:33am
1) that’s all well and good, but you give no reason for your insistence that secondary liability is necessary.
2) please learn the difference between “libel” and “liable”. They are two different words that mean very different things.
3) bonus: learn how word endings can turn nouns into adjectives.
P.S. kudos for not using an apostrophe for possessive “its”.
Re: Re: Response to: kenichi tanaka on Dec 2nd, 2013 @ 10:33am
Please, Jeffrey, learn something about capitalizing the first word in a sentence.
So was the questioner arrested for doing something that was “illegal in Germany”? Or is there some reason that his sharing of the comments was legal while Techdirt’s was not?
Free speech, not strong in Europe
I thought that the Wikimedia Foundation was based in the United States.
There are two or possibly more problems for Germany’s ability to assert jurisdition.
(1) A US service provider is immune under ? 230 of the CDA.
(2) The German law of libel is almost certainly violative of the First Amendment.
(3) The Speech Act bars enforcement of foreign libel judgments which are inconsistent with the First Amendment.
Just to give foreign libel laws the finger, we should set up US based libel zzones where foreign nationals can vent every libelous thought without fearing from their own country’s laws.
In Germany, there is an idiotic cause of action allowing a family member to sue for defamation of a dead person, and even public institutions, the flag and the national anthem is protected from disparagement.
In other words, you can go to jail for saying bad things about the republic, president, flag and national anthem.
Similar fascist laws exist in almost other European countries.
Europe has no free speech tradition, and the First Amendment, ? 230 in conjunction with Tor and IP obfuscation makes it easy to run free speech hosting from the US.
The only area where some European nations might be better is in regard to some hardcore pornography.
But political, racial, antireligious or offensive speech is more protected in the US by law than is the case in Europe.
Re: Free speech, not strong in Europe
Consider:
Beijing Threatens “Severe” Retaliation Against Canada If Huawei CFO Is Not Released
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-08/beijing-threatens-severe-retaliation-against-canada-if-huawei-cfo-not-released
If you are a member of Wikipedia you risk arrest on an Euro Union Arrest Warrant if you are imprudent enough leave the US.
It’s a simple matter to create a mirror of Wikipedia just for Germans, and let the Germans edit that!
Re: Re:
It exists: https://de.wikipedia.org/, and this court decision is in fact about it, from what I could find so far.
Re: Re: Re:
AFIAK the problem is that there is a site wikipedia.de, which simply forwards you to de.wikipedia.org. Thats enough reason for the german courts to declare the de..org site a german site so, and if they would simply drop the .de site they could do all that crazy stuff like for example using puplic domain images the other wikipedias use or not nanny every usercomment etc.
Re: Re: Re: wikipedia.de
Incorrect, the final destination of where the content is hosted is what designates a site locality. Even then, the headquarters location of the company owning the site is the local laws governing it and not the location of the server.
Re: Re: Re:2 wikipedia.de
In Sweden we have that a diffrent view. It does not matter where the content is hosted what matters is the targeted audience. If it is written in swedish and the targeted audience is Swedish then the act falls under swedish law.
Think of all the hacking cases: If a foreinger hack a computer in you country, do want that person to be liable according to your laws or the country shes in?
Re: Re: Re:2 wikipedia.de
You have a lot to learn about international law.
Lets just hope for your sake that it is not in some dark place where the sun does not shine.
Re: Re:
Same problem still exists. Only the source changes.
Personal responsibility
This really is a puzzling attitude in light of Europeans’ attitudes toward personal responsibility. To wit: visiting a medium-sized city on the Swiss/German border, my expat friend took us to a popular mountaintop viewing area, looking down on the town. Only problem… no guardrails, fences, or ropes surrounding the crumbling slope. In the euro-view, my host explained, if something happens, it’s generally your own damn fault. Whatever it was… it’s no one else’s responsibility, not government’s, just your own. Why would this be different? The content creator bears responsibilty, and not an intermediary.
Re: Personal responsibility
That’s not entirely the same thing, but I like your way of thinking. Perhaps the government should not be involved in libel at all? People can simply defend themselves by posting their own arguments elsewhere on the Internet, and readers must decide for themselves.
One reason why governments might want to get involved, however, is that it is easier for you to set up a campaign of libel against someone if you are rich and powerful. You can pay people and companies to spread the word, make advertisements. So that might be where a government might want to level the playing field, as it were.
Re: Personal responsibility
I do not get it.
We have people here who are from almost every country.
All country base their laws on the moral and ethics of their respective society.
All countries believe that their laws are just and fair and that the internet fall within THEIR law.
The basic reasons for countries is that people in one reagon do not agree with people in another region on such things as language, moral ethics, and especially law.
If you have a situation, such as the internet, where every country claims control of, where the action being taken in one country fall under the law of ALL countries you have to expect that the simplest of expressions posted in one country fall fail of the law in some other country you basically have chaos.
Give you a good example. Twenty something good looking girl wares bikini. Picture is posted to internet. There is at least one quarter of the world will declare that the picture is pornographic and that her and the poster should go to jail. If the poster is in this quarter most likely it is off to jail. If the poster is not in that quarter it would not be a wise thing to go into the banning quarter as they would risk going off to jail. The beliefs of Europe and the US are not comparable with the banning quarter.
What I do not get is why people on this list assume that the laws in there country are the only concept of law and make all these stupid computer level, binary type – one or zero, level proclamations that they are right and everyone else is wrong.
Re: Re: "All countries believe that their laws are just"
Refuted in the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, …in order to form a more perfect union…
This is to say our constitutional framers were aware of quite the opposite, that the foundation laws of the US were not perfect at all (and in fact, were the product of compromise between differing ideologies).
Here in the US, those of us who are not fanatical jingoist patriots are aware that our system of laws is (and has always been) a hot mess, only slightly less of a hot mess than the constitutional monarchy from which we came. And nowadays that even that might be challenged.
To the contrary, we have numerous changes we could make by which the Constitution of the United States could be made indisputably better, if only we had the capacity to change it from within the system. (We don’t have that capacity, even though there is allegedly a process.)
Our laws aren’t just, and our law enforcement doesn’t even bother to do its job of enforcing them.
So, this nation is at least one counterexample.
What you guys are forgetting is that Europe is not in the United States. Since Wikipedia has created a German portal, they are responsible for the content posted on their site.
Wikipedia has a responsibility to follow the laws of other countries and if a court finds that a website can be held liable then the owner of that website either needs to block Germany from accessing Wikipedia or start monitoring what its users are posted.
For those who say that Wikipedia doesn’t do this, your argument is non-existent. Because Wikipedia already logs every change made to its website and they have thousands of assigned moderators and editors who actively monitor their website.
Re: Re:
I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise. I think the argument is that the German position is not in the best interest of all concerned.
Re: Re:
“Wikipedia has a responsibility to follow the laws of other countries and if a court finds that a website can be held liable then the owner of that website either needs to block Germany from accessing Wikipedia…”
Excellent suggestion. Wikipedia should not be forced to operate under legal threat from one country with outdated laws on secondary liability. Perhaps if Wikipeia was blocked in Germany for a while, a couple of million grumpy German Wikipedia fans might be able to show the government the error of their ways.
Re: Re:
Yeah buddy the topic of discussion is whether this law makes any SENSE. Given that the courts can go after the person who is doing the libeling, why kill the socially beneficial messenger?
Well, if they keep that up, access to wikipedia from Germany will re-route to a notice explaining that they are not able to comply with current German law regarding secondary liability at this time. Plus the details of this and similar cases.
That should be interesting ^^
Wikipedia NEVER DELETES ANYTHING EVER.
The current iteration of an article can be changed, but all previous versions, including vandalized ones are archived as historical documents.
It’s going to present some interesting problems if courts hold Wikimedia accountable for what’s in their archives.
Frankly, I think blocking Wikipedia from German access for a month would probably solve the problem right quick.
As of this posting I have not received a US National Security Letter or any classified gag order from an agent of the United States
Encrypted with Morbius-Cochrane Perfect Steganographic Codec 1.2.001
Monday, December 02, 2013 11:30:06 AM
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Re: Wikipedia NEVER DELETES ANYTHING EVER.
If you believe “Wikipedia never deletes anything”, I take it you never heard of the oversight system.
Normal Wikipedia admins can delete not only whole pages, but also previous versions of it, selectively. In the past, this was done by deleting the whole page and undeleting all the revisions except the ones you wanted to hide; I believe there is a simpler method now. Other Wikipedia admins can see the deleted content, and undo the deletion if it was made in error.
Oversight goes deeper than that. Not even Wikipedia admins can see content that was oversighted. Only a select few have access to the oversight system.
Re: Wikipedia NEVER DELETES ANYTHING EVER.
I was going to make a similar suggestion: anybody who gets threatened by the German gov’t’s attempts at censorship through intimidation — or indeed, anybody’s — start blocking access to that country’s IP addresses. Enough of that and they might start to feel isolated.
Re: Wikipedia NEVER DELETES ANYTHING EVER.
IIRC there has already been a German court decision a few years back (I think something about links to porn sites) where the court ruled that contents of archived versions aren’t a problem because the content is hidden away from the average user and you have to actively search through archived versions to find such content.
Re:
That’s a good thing, but it shouldn’t lead to blaming third parties for comments, and it shouldn’t lead to stifling free speech.?
The problem is that all Germany’s laws regulating free speech fall short of American standards.
This goes back even further than 1945.
Defamation is not only civilly actionable but a crime for which you may go to jail.
Germany has the strange notion of collective defamation — statements impugning the reputation of a group without the statement being of and concerning an identifiable person.
So sayin that lawyers are criminals, or that Poles are monkeys is likely legally actionable.
Under the First Amendment only an identifiable indivvidual may recover for defamation, and if the said is on a matter of public concern the plaintiff must prove the implied fact is false.
But Germany is not alone. The UK, France, and virtually every other nation in Europe censors speech to
an extend unthinkable in the US.
When a website owner is not doing anything to curb the behavior of inappropriate content, then the owner of the site SHOULD be held liable. After all, website owners all around the world are being held liable for the content posted by their members.
This all started with bit torrent and filesharing sites. Did anyone honestly believe that courts would keep that contained to just filesharing sites?
Re: Re:
When a website owner is not doing anything to curb the behavior of inappropriate content, then the owner of the site SHOULD be held liable. After all, website owners all around the world are being held liable for the content posted by their members.
Not in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act
You realize (well maybe you don’t, based on your previous comments) that you wouldn’t have been able to post your comment here without Section 230 in place, right? Web 2.0 wouldn’t exist at all because of the liability concerns.
Re: Re:
“When a website owner is not doing anything to curb the behavior of inappropriate content”
How does inappropriate content behave?
“then the owner of the site SHOULD be held liable”
Why? You state that it’s happening, but you don’t give any reason why this is acceptable.
“Did anyone honestly believe that courts would keep that contained to just filesharing sites?”
No, which is one of the many reasons why I opposed the actions then, even in the face of lies about my motives for doing so. Sadly, my opinions and votes have no sway over German court decisions.
German justice system
@Mike One thing to consider is that it’s not so bad to be liable in Germany as compared to America. Any potential punishment or fine will be a lot more reasonable.
What is more, I would not expect a German court to ever actually punish you if there is content on your website that is libelous, unless you ignore the verdict. And the verdict will always be “now that the other party has provided real proof that this is libelous, you must remove the content within x days or pay a daily fine”. So for you, as a website, it is always safe to not act on complaints unless the a judge tells you to. So there is a significant barrier for complainants.
Further, it is easier and less expensive to defend yourself in a German court: courts are more active than in the common-law system, so you probably won’t have to do anything if the complainant has no real proof accepted by the court as such: then the judge will acquit you. I imagine in some other countries you may be convicted if you do nothing, even if the complainant can’t really prove anything.
when are you Mike, and everyone else going to realise that stifling innovation and removing fair use are the main aims of all the branches of the entertainment industries. they are lobbying extra hard now via negotiations like TPP to attain just that. how else can the old farts in charge of these industries maintain their strangle holds and prevent progress? every time there is a new item of technique released, the entertainment industries are on it, stopping it, like flies on shit! they dont even attempt to start their own version of anything similar to what they have just stopped or go into some sort of partnership with the original people, showing 100% convincingly that the whole aim is to stop progress and keep what they have controlled for the last however many decades, pre-internet and digital technology, exactly how it has, in their eyes, always been and always meant to be. funny how they always manage to ignore that they are at the point they are because of the innovation and technology available at that time, isn’t it!
Re:German justice system
The German substantive law of libel is very different from what is protected speech under the First Amendment.
Under the German Criminal Code, insults to honor and defamation of the dead is punishable, whereas in the United States only false statements of facts may be punishable.
So in the US, you can legally state that someone who is dead was a nazi war criminal, but in Germany you may be sued or even imprisoned for defaming a dead person.
Also refer to ? 90 of the German Criminal Code.
Selective Enforcement?
“He stood at the microphone with a laptop reading the comments…”
So, did the German authorities then rush up and arrest the owner of the microphone? Or does such liability just apply to Americans?
Based on their decision, it stands to reason that if I stand in a German government building and yell a bunch of “inappropriate” stuff then the German government is liable for my comments.
Re:
I happen to agree with the German courts on this one. What nobody realizes is that if a member on a website posts something inflammatory or they post something
libel, and the owner of that website does not take adequate measures to remove that content, then the website administrator/owner SHOULD be held libel
for that content.
Fortunately, it is not the law in the US.
Read ? 230 of the CDA and the caselaw interpreting it.
An online service has absolute, and it’s absolute, immunity from civil liability for content written by others.
And this is good, because even if someone makes a complaint, the online service can’t know if a statement is libelous.
Under the First Amendment, tarnishing another’s reputation or good name is not actionable, unless the statement implies a matter of fact capable of being proven true or false.
If the person is a public figure, or the matter is of public concern, the plaintiff must always prove the allegation is false.
if I run a forum, and a user posts a message claiming that John Doe is a pedophile, drug addict or tax cheater, I have no opportunity to ascertain truth or falsit, and there is no easy way by which truth or falsity can be deduced from the message.
Nor should it be my problem.
Of course, if the law of defamation is different — putting the burden on the defendant to prove truth or good faith — I could see the point in requiring the owner to take adequate action.
Re: Re:
“then the website administrator/owner SHOULD be held libel”
Several people in this thread have stated so, but I’ve never heard a compelling argument as to why this should be. You then contract yourself here:
“Nor should it be my problem.”
So, which is it? Should it be your problem (in which case, why?) or not? If you’re just saying it’s right in Germany but not right in the US, why do you support this difference?
Re: Re: Re:
I’m pretty sure that was a case of poor quoting. The first (badly split) paragraph, which included the first line you quoted, was quoted from another comment further up the page; the rest, including the second line you quoted, seems to have been this new AC’s response to that paragraph.
Liable...
Der F?hrer would approve…
Why does Wikipedia not try to remove (hide/disable) ALL its German language content AND disable access from Germany for a while? It would seem pretty obvious that the public outrage from that will quickly change any court ruling, OR have politicians rush a new law through.
Re: Re:
Blocking Wikipedia to Germans would indeed cause some uproar, but it sure as hell wouldn’t change the ruling nor would it cause the Bundestag to change the laws (not without hundreds of thousands of people on the streets protesting). And the German Wikipedia community would get pissed at Wikimedia and just fork the project, continuing without them.
Fuck Germany amd the horse they rode in on…
So if I go to Germany and get hit by a car, can I sue the government for providing the road that the car was driving on?
It is as unreasonable as it is illogical to hold one person responsible for another’s behavior. What they’re trying to do is create a class of “approved speech” to limit what we can or can’t say. While I understand Europeans’ desire to keep speech clean and decent, there’s a very thin line between “unpopular” and “unacceptable.”
And stifling unpopular speech won’t make it go away, it simply drives it underground.
Authoritarianism is a real threat to freedom and democracy. Let’s not let their mealy-mouthed excuses convince us otherwise.
What I find surprising is there is a lot of “Block Germany, Block Germany!” encouragement yet that would involve the very reason this article topic is despised: censorship.
I disagree, wikipedia shouldn’t block Germany but simply ignore the government.
German Court Tells Wikimedia Foundation That It’s Liable For Things Users Write
This decision sure has created a furor. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk?.
As some already mentioned: just block access to Wikipedia from Germany for some time and see what happens.
Then go think again what makes sense in this time and age and what doesn’t.
LOL.
Food for thought
The author does not look at the issue in full. Reputation damage is one of the most unpredictable risks and usually also affects many related parties of the target subject, thus it is a very complex area commercially and socially.
To summarise the content of the article, a website is facilitating an anonymous attack of a third party by an unspecified user, and the author of the article wants to see this practice protected, particularly in the jurisdiction of the alleged victim and giving the victim appropriate rights to defend itself.
How is the threatened subject going to defend itself against a cowardly attacker who is hosted or protected by somebody else? The USA under G.W. Bush and Barack Obama knew the answer and it wasn’t by advice from Germany.
Clearly, service or product providers have to be held accountable for the information they are facilitating or helping of spreading, or alternatively they can go after or disclose the source of the threatening information.
In this sense, the author could have simply said ‘I am only the service provider of information, and the unaffiliated voice behind those allegedly illegal comments is the *identified user* named …’ This is exactly how the Swiss banks are resolving the pressure by the US government in the banks’ facilitation of tax evasion under US law. And neither the US nor the Swiss are acting by advice from Germany.