gallois wrote:
If you add to that statement “with good reason” you would be correct in France.
Sure. I don’t need a reason to talk about you here – I can talk about you for any reason I want, providing I do not defame you. If it is true, it is not defamation.
I don’t want to live somewhere where I need a ‘good reason’ – as judged by a court – to say truthful things.
gallois wrote:
It’s why some of the gutter media here spend more time gossiping and rumour mongering about the UK Royal family than they do about prominent people in France.
Not quite the same. Defamation and privacy are quite different things.
Graham wrote:
What the court has basically done is found against someone for saying something, even though it’s true, because in their view it wasn’t the appropriate place to say it and/or they didn’t have an appropriate justification for saying it.
Even though it might have been true. But yes, that’s exactly what the law says. (See my post above.)
although the courts did tend to put the burden of proving truth, if truth were claimed, on the respondent
So you mean that is not “a chilling effect on free speech” given that the person claiming libel can have very deep pockets!? (Particularly when it comes to journalists investigating businessmen and politicians.)
In fact I much prefer the Swedish system compared to the English one.
PS. Just to counter the recurring claim that people won’t criticise their own country. I’ll add that the Swedish constitution gives very strong protection to media, also in regard to libel cases. That is good, however the bar for being considered a “media” is far too low so it also protects lots of websites which are not “media” in any accepted sense of the word but rather businesses that make available sensitive information on individuals which would otherwise be protected by e.g. GDPR. Also, to mention a few things outside of this discussion, IMO Swedish laws and policies on public subsidies of private schools and on immigration issues are truly atrocious.
Enshrined in the French constitution are several freedoms. One being freedom of speech. However, enshrined with those freedoms is a duty to do no harm.
In the media they must make clear whether that is an opinion or it is a matter of fact.
Social media does not need to do that as the debate on whether eg euroga is a publisher or not is still one being debated by governments.
There are several cases on this forum where opinions are expressed as fact. The fact that euroga AFAIK is not considered a publisher might well save it from a defamation suit.
If however the government were to pass a bill that forums were in fact publishers then all the opinions stated as fact could well be challenged in courts. A poster might well have to prove every detail of what he had written was true down to the last word and will have to have the sources ready to back up those statements. Any minor error will be jumped on.
This is a similar process to “Perder” (might well be wrong spelling) which is what a business goes through when seeking a stock exchange for a listing.
Peter wrote:
And you can be 100% sure that any CAA or NATS guy who joints up will trawl the forum and then look up various names on his pilot database.
Which is likely an offence under the GDPR! (In my last job I had to do GDPR training annually, and this was one of the things that always came up about data use. You can’t just trawl through it on a whim).
Airborne_Again wrote:
So you mean that is not “a chilling effect on free speech” given that the person claiming libel can have very deep pockets!? (Particularly when it comes to journalists investigating businessmen and politicians.)
It is no longer the case that the person claiming truth as a defence has to prove it is true. However, if the truth is not plain and obvious, you are pretty dumb to have stated it as fact if you think there’s a risk the subject of the statement might sue for libel. Better just to state an opinion, which is also a very robust defence.
I’d be far more worried about libel claims from some businessman or politician with deep pockets if truth was no defence at all!
How about my Q above about reporting of court proceedings? The answer would be hugely revealing.
There are several cases on this forum where opinions are expressed as fact.
No, that never happens on the internet 
The fact that euroga AFAIK is not considered a publisher might well save it from a defamation suit.
That is incorrect but the answer is complicated, obviously UK-specific in this case, and I am not getting into it here. This old friend of yours got it right
Which is likely an offence under the GDPR!
I can guarantee that a) you are right and b) that it goes on, but I can’t possibly tell you how I know.
What I can tell you is that certain people outside the CAA have access to the pilot database, which I consider pretty bad because they are active on forums.
As they say in the airline pilot business, there are 3 things that matter: seniority, seniority, and seniority 
Just to counter the recurring claim that people won’t criticise their own country
Sadly it is very true, and is obvious when you read posts from a particular poster both here and in his domestic site(s). But it is to be expected.
Anyway, this discussion shows just how different laws are within Europe.
alioth wrote:
Which is likely an offence under the GDPR! (In my last job I had to do GDPR training annually, and this was one of the things that always came up about data use. You can’t just trawl through it on a whim).
Certainly in the UK, GDPR is paid lip service and all sorts of organisations are in breach of it for all sorts of reasons every day. Nothing happens though, not unless it becomes high profile.
Where I work, someone with a GDPR hat on got the idea that we needed to go through the entire customer / contact / prospect database in our CRM system and seek permission from every listed individual to retain their details, then if they said no or we received no response we would delete that record. To be fully compliant with GDPR, they were probably absolutely right. It was brought to commercial leadership and after a quick chat we decided that deleting 80-90% of our contact database wasn’t going to be good for business.
Airborne_Again wrote:
In fact I much prefer the Swedish system compared to the English one.
I’m still trying to get my head round the notion that someone’s right to make truthful statements might be curtailed by having to have a ‘good reason’ to make them.
I once had a long-term relationship break up and lost what I had considered a lifelong friend over a relatively complex matter, the proximal cause of which (without going into detail) was that a third party told another third party something about me which was true, but frankly none of their business and not something they had any reason to share other than vindictiveness.
Under Swedish law I might have had a claim for defamation? Here in the UK I took it on the chin and reminded myself that if I didn’t want people to talk about it then perhaps I shouldn’t have done it!
Graham wrote:
Under Swedish law I might have had a claim for defamation?
In principle, yes. And your example actually gives an example of why that is not a bad idea.
I have a Q re Sweden. Can the newspapers report that [name] has been
All the above affect the person’s reputation, obviously, but all can be easily proven as true.
