PIHL v. SWEDEN DECISION 2 responsible for their own statements. Commentators were therefore requested to “display good manners and obey the law”. 4. The day after publication of the post, an anonymous person using the name “björnpeder” posted a comment stating that “that guy pihl is also a real hash-junkie according to several people I have spoken to” (“han där pihl är ju dessutom en rejäler hasch pundare enligt flera jag snackat me”). 5. On 8 October 2011 the applicant posted a comment on the blog in reply to the above comment and blog post about him, stating that the information there was wrong and should immediately be removed. 6. The following day the blog post and the comment were removed and a new post was added on the blog by the association – stating that the earlier post had been wrong and based on inaccurate information – and it apologised for the mistake. However, according to the applicant, it was still possible to find the old post and the comment on the Internet via search engines. 7. On 11 October 2011, the applicant sued the association and claimed symbolic damages of 1 Swedish krona (SEK), approximately 0.10 euro (EUR). He submitted that the post and the comment constituted defamation and that the association was responsible for both – for the latter because the association had failed to remove it immediately. 8. On 11 November 2011 Linköping District Court (tingsrätt) rejected his claims but, on 10 July 2012, Göta Court of Appeal (hovrätt) found that a procedural error had been committed. It quashed the lower court’s judgment and referred the case back to it. 9. The Linköping District Court subsequently dismissed the claim relating to the publication of the blog post on the grounds that it was covered by a regulation in the Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression (Yttrandefrihetsgrundlagen (1991:1469)) and that the court competent to examine that part of the claim was therefore Stockholm District Court. However, it found that it was competent to examine the applicant’s claim in so far as it related to the comment posted on the blog. 10. The applicant argued before the District Court that the comment on the blog was untrue and constituted defamation. The association had received an email when the comment was posted and, on the basis of an analogous interpretation of Section 5 of the Act on Responsibility for Electronic Bulletin Boards (lag [1998:112] om ansvar för elektroniska anslagstavlor; see paragraph 18 below), was obliged to remove the comment immediately since it was defamatory. It was unacceptable that the comment had been allowed to remain on the blog for nine days, as it had been spread and was searchable. Moreover, the applicant submitted that since it had been impossible to find the person who had written the comment – the last trace being a French IP-address – the association could be held responsible for failing to remove the defamatory comment immediately.