Greek courts hear libel suit over comments posted on a US server

[mandy]

The old adage that "all politics are local" remains true even in the Internet Age, and it's well illustrated by a €1 million lawsuit currently being prosecuted in southern Greece. At issue are some critical web postings about local political shenanigans on a small Greek island, but what makes the case interesting is that the server in question is based in Florida, and some of the material in question was posted by people from New York...

So what we have is a €1 million lawsuit currently moving through the Greek courts over comments posted on a US server, many of which were not even authored by the target of the suit. This raises obvious questions of jurisdiction: regardless of what Greek law says, the comments appear to be protected under American free speech laws. Did posting them to an American server mean that US law should cover them, or does the fact that some were posted from Karpathos give the Greek legal system jurisdiction over them? And if Felix did not even write the majority of the comments in question, can he be held responsible for hosting them?...

full article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070302-8961.html

[BellisimaJ.]

I would be interested to know the outcome of this case.