Indymedia Switzerland Faces Lawsuit

Phuq Hedd writes "

Apparently the Swiss indymedia has had a lawsuit filed against it because of its Open Publishing policy of allowing all postings on the newswire, some of which are anti-Semitic.

This is reported on uk.indymedia in English, but the original German post is here and can be translated to something along the lines of:

[Note, that the site is available in French, German, Italian]
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Sir/Madam, Indymedia Indymedia-Switzerland


Repeated complaints have arrived at our organization concerning anti-Semitic publications on http://switzerland.indymedia.org. We have also made these complaints


We are requesting that you delete and do not merely move these comments into the "censorsed trash" area.

This letter is copied to the appropriate police authority as a charge against Indymedia Switzerland.

Yours sincerely

Action of children of the Holocaust, AKdH

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The Swiss Indymedia people have introduced a publically viewable "censored trash" area of the site in order to distance themselves from the content and yet not censor it, but this does not seem to have satisfied the plaintiff "Children of the Holocaust Action AKdH".
Looking at their sponsors, they include SOS Racism, a lot of academics and Gush Shalom (the anti-West Bank occupation organization).

The problem seems to be encapsulated in the statement (taken from their webpage) that "The protection of humans is a higher right that 'freespeech' ". How will this affect any of the Open Publishing models?

Some posters to the site have pointed out that this will be interesting because the Swiss Indymedia servers are actually located in the USA. Is this true? What does the geographical distribution of servers under different legal jurisdictions imply for the Freedom of independent media?

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