Brochure "On the responsibility of Internet users"

Today the International Press Center hosted a presentation of the publication "The ethical and legal responsibility in connection with the information disseminated on the Internet." The brochure was published with the financial support of the State Support for Media Development Fund under the President of Azerbaijan in the framework of the eponymous project on enlightening "irresponsible" journalists.

According to the lawyer of the project Alaskar Mammadov, in 2013, in Article 147 "Slander" and 148 "Insult"  in the Azerbaijani Criminal Code amended to provide for criminal responsibility for the  defamatory and insulting information. "The rapid development and expansion of the global Web raises new problems associated with the need to follow ethical standards. In this context, the media has an important responsibility,"  he said, noting the importance of "self-censorship" when covering events and processes that represent a state secret and related privacy human.

"In the traditional media work professionals who know the scope of responsibility. It is more difficult when it comes to online media and social media. There are often problems of a legal nature,"  said the lawyer. According to him, the authors brochures tried to answer the question of who is responsible for the publication on the Internet - the author of the information, or submitted by users that underneath their comments, including social networks. "Among the comments can often be found insults and slander. And this raises the question of who is liable in such cases? Is it only those who left comments, and maybe the authors of information provoked a backlash?" he said.

    In his opinion,  theoretically  for the publication on social media can be brought to responsibility  the author, host profile and platform on which are created and existing social networks, for example, Twitter, Facebook, etc. "It is impossible to prosecute many social networking platform, overseas, because it is not the territory of Azerbaijan, but it is possible to file a lawsuit against the owners of profiles and commenter who wrote something in the profile. If we determine that n the publications have been printed on  Internet from territory of  our country, by identifying the computer's IP, the offender  of accepted norms can be brought to justice, " he said.

Mammadli stressed the importance of Internet users to communicate and open social network profiles under their real names, that "will help avoid a lot of confusion." --17B—