IP: EU data directive bans church teacher, dog owner Swedish web sites

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>
>Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 12:10:09 +0200
>From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
>Subject: Interpretation of the EU data directive
>
>Here is a report on how the EU data directive (which all EU
>countries must implement) has been interpreted in Sweden.
>For more information, see
>http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/society/eu-data-directive-freedom.html
>
>How the Swedish Data Inspection Board has chosen to
>interpret the law based on the EU directive is shown by
>some test cases.
>
>In the first case, a person who felt that a large Swedish
>bank had wronged him, published a web page with the title
>"Swedish Anti-Bank Activity". On this page, he named a
>number of bank directors, who, in his opinion, had acted in
>ethically unacceptable ways. He was prosecuted, and
>sentenced to fines. This decision was upheld, on appeal, by
>the first appelate instance. The second appelate instance,
>the Swedish Highest Court, has not yet decided on this
>case. One issue which the Swedish Highest court will look
>like is if you can really regard a web page in the Swedish
>language to be exported outside Europe, just because the
>page is formally available to any Internet user, also
>outside Europe. The lower courts, however, said "yes" on
>this issue.
>
>In the second case, an animal-rights organisation published
>a list of fur producers in Sweden. This case has not yet
>been decided on by the Swedish courts.
>
>I a third case, a confirmation teacher wrote a web page,
>describing the vicar, the chairman of the church board and
>some other people. She did mention, for one of them, that
>he had broken a leg and for another person, that she was a
>member of the socialdemocratic party. Such information is
>especially sensitive according to the act. She was
>prosecuted for this, the court decision is not yet ready.
>
>In a fourth case, some dog lovers on a web page criticized
>the democracy of a certain dog owners society, including
>mention of certain criticized people, which according to
>the web page owner should be substituted in the board of
>the society.
>
>Looking at the way the law is used, one can see that
>unpopular or controversial opinions are suppressed. In at
>least the first case, it might be possible that the laws on
>slander could be used instead, but these laws are more
>restrictive than the personal data act. It also seems that
>it is not permitted to criticize a named individual on the
>Internet in Sweden.
>
>In the case of the animal-rights organisation, one might
>guess (though this is not written anywhere) that this
>organisation published names of fur manufacturers in order
>to give information to people performing illegal acts of
>sabotage against fur farms. And one might guess, that this
>is the real reason why the personal data act is used, even
>if this is not officially said. This case has not yet been
>decided by the courts, but the Data Inspection Board has
>asked a prosecutor to prosecute it.
>
>In a fifth case, the Swedish telephone directory is not
>available on the Internet for anyone. The reason for this
>is that in that case, people in countries without adequate
>security protection might access to phone directory.
>However, people living in Sweden can get a personal account
>and password, and can then access the telephone directory
>from the Internet. Also, the yellow pages are available to
>anyone, it is only the white pages which are unavailable
>outside Sweden.
>
>One should note, however, that these are exceptional cases.
>In almost all other cases, the Data Inspection Board has
>chosen not to act. Note that in all the three cases above,
>the page did not only contain information about a single
>individual, it contained lists of names of people. So maybe
>the act is unofficially not applied to mention of single
>individuals, although the act itself makes no such
>distinction. Also, the Data Inspection Board mostly acts
>when someone complains to them. So a probable reason why we
>have relatively large freedom of speech on the Internet may
>simply be that no one bothers to complain to the
>Inspectorate of web pages they do not like.
>--
>Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
>for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/