Our member Philippe Wadle was one of the first in his country to work on cases of public libel on social network and news websites.
Philippe Wadlé works for a small firm in Luxembourg. They do work mostly in civil law and penal law.
As a young lawyer, Philippe offers a lot of legal aid to young, petty offenders with a difficult situation. 'A lot of them come from outside Luxembourg', he says, 'and thus they are quickly put in remand for a long time even for small offences like shoplifting, so we intervene to provide them with a better solution'. Although he also provides a lot of advice for building law and real estate law, Philippe has also done a lot of pioneering work in criminal law in the field of the Internet.
Philippe was first confronted with cases of libel and insults via social networks. There is a very strict law against this in Luxembourg, but there were practically no precedents when he started working in this area. 'The cases I worked on created some clear precedents', he explains, 'including a case that allowed us to define the principles of publication on social networks. First of all, it is certain that the Internet is not a lawless zone!'
According to Philippe, people too often think that a Facebook wall is a private space where they can say anything. 'If you post on the wall of a friend, it is already a public zone'.
Philippe had a simple approach: the Internet is not virtual, it is real-life, and thus analogies can be made with real-life events. 'For each Internet-based case, I managed to find a real-life case involving a similar problem, and you can use the judge's decision on that case. For example, two people talking bad about a third person is not a public libel, but if you do it in group there is already a case... So I looked into past judgments which defined the limits between a private conversation and a public libel, and I applied that to the Internet.'
Philippe also worked on cases involving websites of Luxembourgish media who offer the possibility to comment on their articles. In this case, the challenge is not to determine the public aspect of the libel but whether or not its content is offensive. 'People think they can say anything within a comment, but the Luxembourgish state is very strict and looks into every case of racist commentary, asking for the poster's IP address and requesting his or her identity from the Internet Service Provider. Some people who posted hateful comments were sentenced to six months of probation for a first offense! Remember that the Internet is not anarchy, there are laws, they are strict, and you are not invinsible. You are responsible for everything you do online.'
