Published 7 September 2024 at 16.34
Domestic. Flashback's founder Jan Axelsson is charged with violating the law on liability for electronic bulletin boards because he did not detect a number of posts that the prosecutor believes constitute incitement against a group of people. But objections from Axelsson's lawyer show that the prosecutor may find it difficult to get the Flashback founder convicted of the crime.
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The prosecution is a consequence of an investigation that carried out by the Stockholm police's feared democracy group.
Jan Axelsson is accused of not having had sufficient supervision over the site Flashback and therefore not having discovered twelve posts that “obviously constitute incitement against a ethnic group”.
According to According to the BBS Act, whoever provides a web forum has a “duty of care” and must delete criminal messages.
Axelsson's lawyer Nils Hillert states, however, in a submission that the criminal posts have not been reported to Axelsson via the site's complaint wall, and that he, as the provider of the forum, has therefore not discovered them. According to the lawyer, this is a reasonable and legal procedure because the following is stated in the preparatory work of the law:
“For example, it cannot be required that the provider constantly actively checks every single message sent to the service”.
And:
“One way to fulfill the supervisory duty if the amount of messages makes it difficult to read all messages in the service with a reasonable effort or at reasonable costs can therefore be to use a 'complaint wall' give users the opportunity to reach the provider in order to report the possible occurrence of punishable messages”.
According to the lawyer, there are therefore no conditions for prosecution.
If the democracy prosecutor were to succeed with the prosecution after all, then Axelsson risks a fine or imprisonment for a maximum of six months.