Thanks go to Mile Hancock for writing on Wednesday in Techdirt about an absurd ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last fall. In upholding a ruling by an Estonian court regarding comments made on a website, the ECHR has decided that any website that allows comments can be liable for those comments even when the website takes down the comments automatically following complaints. In other words they should have predicted that the content would result in defamatory comments before they were ever written!

As Hancock contends, and we concur, this is an insane interpretation of the facts of the case. In defying logic the Court sets a dangerous precedent against free speech. When coupled with the recent decision by the European Court of Justice regarding taking down of past content from Google, it makes for an especially dangerous climate and assault on common sense.