Blogger loses lawsuit - Spanish Inquisition over other people's comments

By Dave Murray @ Tuesday, July 08, 2008 8:11 AM

Section - Business/Legal

A Spanish blogger has been fined €9,000 plus legal costs over comments that other people made in response to one of his posts.

Julio Alonso, the founder of the leading blog network Weblogs SL, was sued by the by the SGAE, (the General Society of Authors and Publishers), which is the Spanish equivalent of the RIAA.

Apparently, a post he made in 2004, which was titled SGAE=Thieves, hit the top of the Spanish version of Google for the term “ladrones” (thieves). So if you tapped ladrones into Google you would get the SGAE.

A judge decided that such comments insulted the SGAE's honour. Not only would the comments have to come down, but Alonso would have to pay up for allowing them to be posted.

Alonso still has the right of appeal and is apparently planning one. If the case succeeds it will make it jolly difficult for anyone to allow open comment boxes on blogging sites. X

Check out

Inquisitr