Google tried to overturn a landmark Munich ruling on AI search liability by appealing, then quietly settled. The strategy isn't working. The Aachen Regional Court just applied the exact same reasoning in a new case where Google's AI falsely attributed criminal offenses to a doctor that actually involved someone else. A consistent legal view is forming across German courts, and it treats Google's AI answers as the company's own content.
German society has weaker “Free Speech” but stronger “Right to Dignity” than USA. In fact, USA doesn’t have “right to dignity”.
This means that, for example, its illegal to insult someone in public. Because that’s an attack on their dignity. This causes issues for negative reviews (which is more easily removed in Germany than USA). But Germans are closer to sanity when it comes to limits of free speech for sure.
There’s no right to free speech in Germany either. At least not in the sense that USA has.
PS: parent has edited comment and we are align with that
What? It’s written in Germany’s constitution (The “Grundgesetz”, literally “Basic law”) in article 5 that “Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures”.
Case law makes a big difference here. Germany allows a number of significant exceptions and limitations to freedom of expression, while the right is closer to absolute in the USA.
So no, Germany does not have a right to free speech in the sense that the USA does. One significant structural difference is that the US constitution expresses it as a negative right: it starts with “Congress shall make no law” and lists several topics the government may not regulate. The German Grundgesetz establishes positive rights to both freedom of expression and dignity, implying that the government must actively protect both and resolve conflicts between them.
Yeah, but the US sense of “free speech” is that everyone can say “Heil Hitler” on the Internet, but the media isn’t allowed to say anything bad about the President under threat of being banned from the White House. It’s a very particular sense of “Free Speech” that protects neo-nazis but bans late-night comedians.
If it’s still unclear, don’t worry, J.D.Vance will be on another of his lecture tours of Europe to explain it all again soon enough.
The right to free speech in USA is quite strong and superseds most restrictions. Even opinions are treated as protected speech and libel/slander requires proving intent as well as prior knowledge that the information is false.
Compared to that, most countries with a right to speech come with responsibility and have restrictions (specially against religious/incendiary/hate speech or a mix of them as well as falsehoods such as Holocaust denial) on what you can do with your speech.
In USA, one (specially the ‘right’ ones) can basically go “I’m not touching you” and get into someone’s face in name of speech while that is a clear incursion into ones private space in other countries
The freedom of speech in the USA is very individualistic, just like everything else. Little to no things are thought of in the sense of a community, it’s all about what’s in it for the individual. Traffic is even more car-centric than in Europe. Pure capitalism without a real safety net, because the individual may benefit from it by becoming a millionaire.
In Europe, the sense for community is much stronger, which is also reflected in how freedom of speech is protected in law; Express your thoughts freely, but do not impair the rights of other citizens.
Next you’re going to say “but nothing like the cradle of free speech, the glorious UK”, right? 🤣
UK is in shambles and then you call it out😂