Google tried to overturn a landmark Munich ruling on AI search liability by appealing, then quietly settled. The strategy isn't working. The Aachen Regional Court just applied the exact same reasoning in a new case where Google's AI falsely attributed criminal offenses to a doctor that actually involved someone else. A consistent legal view is forming across German courts, and it treats Google's AI answers as the company's own content.
  • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    Case law makes a big difference here. Germany allows a number of significant exceptions and limitations to freedom of expression, while the right is closer to absolute in the USA.

    • In the USA, photographing people in public places and publishing those photographs without permission is legal, and cannot be made illegal without changing the constitution. It is mostly illegal to publish photographs of people without permission in Germany, even if they were taken in public.
    • Making true statements about a person, even if they’re about something intimate or intended to diminish the person’s social standing is legal in the USA unless there’s a specific obligation of confidentiality, such as between a doctor and patient. Germany punishes releasing intimate information and presenting information in a way that encourages discrimination.
    • Insults that do not amount to false statements of fact are protected speech in the USA. Insults are a crime in Germany.
    • Hate speech is protected in the USA and criminal in Germany.
    • Making false statements about history is protected in the USA. Holocaust denial and the like is criminal in Germany.

    So no, Germany does not have a right to free speech in the sense that the USA does. One significant structural difference is that the US constitution expresses it as a negative right: it starts with “Congress shall make no law” and lists several topics the government may not regulate. The German Grundgesetz establishes positive rights to both freedom of expression and dignity, implying that the government must actively protect both and resolve conflicts between them.

    • BlindPenguin@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Insults are a crime in Germany.

      Keep in mind that someone actually has to go sue for that, it’s usually not automatic, unless you do it right in front of a police officer trying to insult some public figure. In front of court it’s weighed against freedom of expression. So there are plenty of examples were the “insult” becomes a “matter of fact”. Like for example the matter of fact that AfD politician Bernd Höcke is a Nazi.

      • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        A significant chance of having to defend one’s self in court is enough to keep most people from doing a thing. That’s a major inconvenience, expense, and risk of serious consequences. It surely has a chilling effect on speech, or a civilizing effect on public discourse, depending on your perspective.

        In the USA, I can write online that Trump advisor Stephen Miller is a Nazi, an asshole, and a xenophobe, and that I want him to kill himself, with no legal risk whatsoever. Nazi is the only one of those that even comes close to having an objective test for truth, which is actually what makes the statement protected under US law. If I called him a rapist or an embezzler, he might be able to sue for defamation.