Higher Court in Ljubljana, VSL sodba in sklep I Cp 252/2014

(1) The Court confirmed the decision of the court of first instance which held that a blogger (a well know musician) and the blog portal operator (which was acting as a host provider) were not liable for the defamatory statements which were infringing on the plaintiffs personal rights since the plaintiff itself contributed to the damage by introducing the disputed facts from his personal life to the public (injured party`s consent).

(2) However, the court emphasized that hosting providers are obliged to expeditiously remove or block access to illegal information as soon as they are aware of its potentially unlawful nature and not only after they acquire knowledge of the illegality by injunction or judgement. The Court`s reasoning also suggests that defaulting the obligation to remove allegedly infringing content leads to the automatic establishment of joint and several liability with the primary infringer in case the disputed content is later determined to be illegal. In addition, the Court held that the assessment of the possibility for a blog portal operator to perform editorial control over the hosted content was irrelevant for the decision.