[ddj] ECHR ruling on data publication and its impact on datajournalism

Nicolas Kayser-Bril n.kayserbril at gmail.com
Tue Jul 28 12:11:07 UTC 2015


Thanks Michael.

In this case, the Finnish state had decided that taxation data was in the
public interest (they made it available to the public). The Finnish state
argued that the company on trial made the data too easy to access. For the
Finnish state, only journalists working in a newsroom and doing manual work
on the data could have reused and republished the (already public) data.

It is exactly the same rationale than the one behind the ruling
against zNasichDani in 2011
<http://www.epsiplatform.eu/content/slovak-privacy-commissioner-not-impressed-open-data>.
A person claimed that a website making procurement data in Slovakia was a
violation of her privacy (she owned a large company). A court of first
instance ordered the data removed. At the time, open data wonks were up in
arms against the Slovak court.

The ruling against zNasichDani was later quashed, but this jurisprudence by
the ECHR would make it very hard for any court to do the same now.

What's more, dissenting judge Tsotsoria uses extremely hard words against
the majority ruling. From what I read, she's not an extremist when it comes
to her interpretation of Article 10 of the ECHR (the one about freedom of
speech). I'm afraid she's the only one who saw the implication of the
ruling.

On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Bauer Michael <michael.bauer at derstandard.at
> wrote:

>  Nicolas,
>
>
>
> I’m a bit more relaxed about this. I do think the ECHR is correct in
> stressing the right to privacy. However, in most journalism cases you _
> *do*_ want to publish stories and data (with journalistic context) that
> is of public interest. This to me seems quite different to the case.
>
>
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> *From:* data-driven-journalism [mailto:
> data-driven-journalism-bounces at lists.okfn.org] *On Behalf Of *Nicolas
> Kayser-Bril
> *Sent:* Monday, July 27, 2015 3:27 PM
> *To:* List about Data Driven Journalism and Open Data in Journalism. <
> data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org>
> *Subject:* [ddj] ECHR ruling on data publication and its impact on
> datajournalism
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I just stumbled upon a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights from
> last week that seems to say that non-journalists cannot publish public data
> on individuals in bulk.
>
>
>
> Here's the ruling: http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-156272
>
>
>
> Here's my layman analysis: http://blog.nkb.fr/satamedia/
>
>
>
> It seems to me that it could have tremendous impact on European
> datajournos e.g by preventing us to publish databases of the indictments of
> German politicians or a list of the properties owned by the richest Greeks.
>
>
>
> Anyone has a lawyer available to see what the impact could be?
>
>
>
> Best
>
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