Jurisdiction and personality rights – in which Member State should harmful online content be assessed?
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Author | Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X221076392 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Jurisdiction and personality
rights –in which Member State
should harmful online content
be assessed?
Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo
Keywords
Jurisdiction, personality rights, Brussels Ia Regulation, online infringements, place of harm, national
identity
1. Introduction
1
Legal responses to online infringements are complex for many reasons. Law is put into action in
courts, most of which are national. The territorial boundaries of their jurisdiction are ill-suited to
deal with the borderless nature of the internet. This article concentrates on the difficulties of decid-
ing jurisdiction when harm happens online. Specifically, it deals with infringements of personality
rights. When an alleged infringement occurs on a webpage, in an online newspaper or on a social
media platform, the question arises as to which Member State has jurisdiction.
2
In this article, I will discuss the case law from the CJEU on jurisdiction concerning the protection
of personality rights, such as privacy or personal reputation. The crucial provision is Article 7(2) of
are generally resolved with reference to the principle of predictability. This article asks, in essence,
what it means –and what it should mean –in an online environment.
Corresponding author:
Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo, Professor of Public Law, University of Helsinki.
Email: susanna.lindroos@helsinki.fi
1. The author wishes to thank Risto Koulu and Teemu Juutilainen for very helpful comments on an early draft of this paper.
She also wants express her gratitude to the external reviewer(s), whose insightful remarks improved the article in con-
siderable ways. The article was written in the research project POP –Is this Public or Private? funded by the Academy
of Finland.
2. Another issue is the choice of applicable law. This is regulated by the Rome II regulation: Regulation (EC) No 864/2007
of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 July 2007 on the law applicable to non-contractual obligations
(Rome II). I will not consider this in the present article.
Article
Maastricht Journal of European and
Comparative Law
2022, Vol. 29(2) 201–214
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1023263X221076392
maastrichtjournal.sagepub.com
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