The European Court of Justice has ruled that individual member countries can order Facebook and other platforms to remove illegal content, and copies of such illegal content, and limit access to it worldwide. How did the court case originate? The European Court of Justice came to its decision after Austrian politician Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek requested Facebook to remove defamatory comments about her — comments that an Austrian court had already found to be illegal — and limit access to them globally. She also requested that comments that were identical or equivalent to the original one be removed. The request was filed with Facebook Ireland, which is Facebook's EU headquarters, in 2016. Facebook refused to do so, and a court battle ensued. What does the EU law say? Under the EU's Electronic Commerce Directive, platforms such as Facebook are not liable until they have knowledge that the information is illegal, or as long as they remove or disable access to the information as soon as they become aware of it. The directive also does not require platforms like Facebook to proactively monitor their platforms for illegal content. What did the Court rule? The ECJ has now ruled that platforms can be ordered to: Remove illegal content and limit access to it worldwide "within the framework of the relevant international law" Remove or block access content that is identical to or equivalent of content that was originally found to be illegal. Equivalent content means content that remains "essentially unchanged" and thus "diverges very…
