Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2011, around then-current cases: the Expansión article, the Julio Alonso ruling, the Eva Hache threats and the La Noria advertiser boycott. Later outcomes and changes in Spanish law are not reflected.
Freedom of expression is something most social media users demand, though we often forget that your freedom ends where someone else’s begins. Not everything goes on the internet, and most users have no idea what a simple comment can lead to. The newspaper Expansión today published an article titled “Before you tweet, think about the legal risks“, because a simple comment on social media is all it takes to face a lawsuit of up to €600,000 and 2 years in prison.
Having a blog is a risk to your finances, because you not only have to watch what you write, but also your readers’ comments, since you are directly responsible for allowing or blocking any defamatory comment. We have a case close to home: the author of merodeando.com. Julio Alonso wrote a post on his blog in which he called the SGAE (Spain’s music copyright collecting society) thieves. Third-party comments piled onto that post, and in the end he was ordered to pay €6,000. I still don’t understand where the defamation lies in his case, since SGAE members have been charged with theft, so I don’t know what else you would call what they did.
A few months ago I heard about a blogger whose blog probably didn’t get more than 1,000 visits a day. This young man published a post about a company that provides services to businesses. He gave his personal opinion, and as bad luck would have it the article ranked quite well in search engines, to the point that when anyone searched online for the company’s name, the first result was this blogger’s post.
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The company sued him for several million euros in damages, claiming it had been harmed both by his post and by the comments on the blog.
That’s what happens to those of us who have a blog, but social media users aren’t free of risk either. You have freedom of expression, but like any freedom, it can’t be used to defame or insult.
The risks are enormous, because you should know that any defamatory comment or insult is grounds for legal action. Of course, not every company or person will go to the trouble of suing you, but you should be clear that they can.
Few people realise how often they have crossed a dangerous line. For example, hundreds of celebrities on social media receive insults from users. If one of those celebrities wanted to sue you, you would have a problem. You might go on to win the case or you might lose it, but to begin with, you have to pay for your legal defence. Take the recent case of a Twitter user arrested in Marbella for threatening the TV presenter Eva Hache.
Just this morning, while I was talking to a lawyer, the subject of Telecinco came up, with its programme La Noria and the controversial interview that cost the show its advertisers. According to this lawyer, Telecinco could take legal action against the blogger who called for the boycott, because although the interview may have been unethical, it isn’t illegal in Spain to interview the mother of an accused person. So this blogger could face a real legal nightmare, as the show’s lost revenue is considerable.
What I mean by all this is that freedom of expression exists, but freedom of expression doesn’t mean you can say whatever you like. That’s why you should weigh your words, and if you “lash out” at a person or a company, make sure you could prove your accusation should that company ever exercise its right to sue.
Featured image: Juan Sáez from Cartagena, España, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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