A preliminary ruling can affect legal processes, both from social media posts and media coverage.
Supreme court (KKO) overruled the citizen activist with its preliminary decision on Wednesday Anter Yaşan judgment for defamation. The Court of Appeal had convicted him of being called a toy smuggler Rami Adham defamation.
Yaşa was now fully acquitted. The acquittal related to Yaşa's Facebook post, for which the right to prosecute had expired according to the Supreme Court.
The preliminary decision of the Supreme Court came about with a vote of 3–2. Those who remained in the minority would have kept the verdict valid.
“I consider this a significant legal case,” says the professor of criminal and procedural law at the University of Eastern Finland Matti Tolvanen.
According to him, the Supreme Court's policy can have a broader significance than individual cases in possible defamation cases on the internet and social media. It can also affect the legal processes concerning the media's reporting.
On trial it was about whether the date of publication of Anter Yaşa's Facebook article was considered the time of the defamation, or whether the defamation was considered to have continued as long as the article was visible to others.
The matter is important in terms of the statute of limitations for a possible crime.
Defamation expires in two years, and aggravated Defamation expires in five years from the date of commission. In that time, you have to file a charge and give it to the person suspected of the crime, or else the right to charge expires.
Yaşa published a Facebook post and related comments about Rami Adham on October 15, 2016. The prosecutor and the Court of Appeal considered that the time of the crime continued years after that, because the posts were still publicly readable.
However, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. According to it, the suspected Defamation in this case concerned only the date of publication.
Anter Yaşa has not republished his writings later, nor has he taken any other active steps to gain new readers for them. The writings have also not been constantly visible to Facebook users, but they have had to be searched for individually in order to make them readable.
“In these circumstances, it cannot be considered that Yaşa continued to make statements defaming Adham, based solely on the fact that he has not removed the writings from his Facebook site, in such a way that this passive attitude would meet the hallmarks of defamation,” the Supreme Court states.
Yaşa only learned of the indictment more than three years after the writings were published. According to KKO, the right to prosecute had thus expired.
Defamation however, in all cases, the time of creation does not invariably end at the moment of publication of the writing.
According to Tolvanen, the period of committing the crime can continue if the author or publisher actively tries to get new readers later or to maintain interest in the writing.
According to Tolvanen, the effects of the advance ruling may also extend to legal processes concerning media coverage. From the point of view of the media, it would be a matter of whether the suspected defamation is considered to have occurred only at the time of publication of the story or to have continued as long as the story is available online.
The Supreme Court's decision concerns defamation, but according to Tolvanen, it can guide legal practice also with regard to the dissemination of information that violates private life.
According to Tolvanen, the Supreme Court's interpretation may increase the risk that suspected defamation offenses become statute-barred as crimes more often than at present.
“The police will be busy with examinations. Two years is quite a short time. A possible defamation can come to the knowledge of the offended party too late,” he says.
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