Virtues and Perils of Anonymity: Should Intermediaries Bear the Burden?

On October 10, 2013, the Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) handed down a judgment (Delfi v. Estonia) condoning Estonia for a law which, as interpreted, held a news portal liable for the defamatory comments of its users. Amongst the considerations that led the Court to find no violation of freedom of expression in this particular case were, above all, the inadequacy of the automatic screening system adopted by the website and the users’ option to post their comments anonymously (i.e. without need for prior registration via email), which in the Court’s view rendered the protection conferred to the injured party via direct legal action against the authors of the comments ineffective. Drawing on the implications of this (not yet final) ruling, this paper discusses a few questions that the tension between the risk of wrongful use of information and the right to anonymity generates for the development of Internet communication, and examines the role that intermediary liability legislation can play to manage this tension.

Die Erziehung zu einer aktiven Bürgerschaft

Trying to give a definition of Citizenship Education is a challenging operation: it is characterized by a variety of meanings flowing from Civic Education (related to knowledge and practice about the system of laws, rules, conventions referring to a particular civil community) to Socio-political education (related to the awareness of being part of the system of cultural elements, values, traditions historically produced by the community itself). It would be not be correct identifying Citizenship Education only with elements of Civic Education, as it would restrict its range to formal level of rules and laws, rights and duties. Otherwise, limiting its understanding only on elements of Sociopolitical Education, would offer the risk of investing in cultural similarities, common roots, values homogeneity, that are strong in giving hold on identity, membership, participation, but so exposed to acts of fanaticism, exclusion of diversity, hostility towards minorities. Therefore, it is necessary to assume that Citizenship Education has to be established on problematic integration of the two presented perspectives, thus founding knowledge and practice about the rules of civil society on the system of values and cultural aspects that every single micro-community (and every single individual) recognizes to be source of the rules: a complex system of various elements made of homogeneity and inhomogeneity, similarities and differences in constant modification an dynamic intercommunication.

Community Research as a Factor Building Inclusive Community in Lithuania

Social and political change in Europe, increasing labour mobility, development of the new European social policy and increasingly global nature of the social problems had a profound effect on the socio-cultural and socio-educational work in community and on its objectives. In order to keep these new communitarian standards of social policy, the first steps have to be made in fostering local community with the perspective it will reach the western European communitarian level. That is the reason why university in these changes started to turn more and more to the society and first of all has put a great emphasis on the community research. This initiative was induced by non-existence of civic tradition during the communist period, the gap in the development of civil society and its culture, the weakness and the poorness of the third sector. This paper is based on the analysis of the community and civil society research conducted during recent years by the researchers of Kaunas University of Technology, Faculty of Social Sciences. The paper involves a review of the research methodology, interpretation of the received data and summary of the results. It discusses both theoretical and empirical possibilities of building and developing inclusive community.