Personality rights, defamation and the internet - Considerations of private international law

This thesis discusses areas related to problems of private international law that can arise from an online cross-border violation of personality rights. The thesis can be divided into two parts. One part deals with jurisdictional issues and specifically a discussion regarding Art. 7(2) of the Brussels I bis Regulation and the CJEU’s case law on the topic. The second part deals with choice of law issues and certain legal cultures’ balancing act between personality rights, on one hand, and freedom of expression on the other hand. Personality rights can be defined as rights inherent to persons. The most relevant example of a right relating to personality frequently mentioned in this thesis is the right to privacy – the right to a private life, free from interference from other persons and/or states. However, if a person becomes a victim of defamation (slander or libel) online and that defamation has foreign elements (say that the publisher is in another country), where can this person seek legal redress for the damages? According to the above mentioned Article a plaintiff can sue in another Member State at the place ‘where the harmful event occurred’. This jurisdictional ground developed because of the CJEU’s case law to the extent that a plaintiff can sue at the place where he/she has his/her ‘Centre of Interest’. No subsequent case law is currently available and it is uncertain how such a centre is established, what factors affect the assessment and if the jurisdictional ground is applicable in other contexts than online violation of personality rights. Case law and doctrine gives reason to assume that there exist limited possibilities for the applicability of COI in cases with distribution in other media, e.g. short-wave radio and satellite TV. The other part of the thesis concerns certain major legal cultures’ perspective on personality rights fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and how these two rights can be balanced. It is clear that it even in the relatively homogenous legal culture that is Union law exist divergent perspectives regarding this. This, in turn, has led to a Sisyphean labor trying to create a common legal framework regarding, specifically, choice of law in disputes with cross-border implications