On June 20, a Dutch court ruled that Indymedia.NL has to remove links to mirror-sites of German magazine Radikal, in a lawsuit initiated by German railway company Deutsche Bahn. Deutsche Bahn demanded that Indymedia deletes an archive page with links to sites that link through to two notorious articles on blocking nuclear transports, originally published in German magazine Radikal.

The links Indymedia.NL has to remove are part of reactions to an article on a previous lawsuit by Deutsche Bahn against Dutch internet provider XS4ALL, which hosted the Radikal page. Interestingly, only the two articles are illegal in the Netherlands, not Radikal as such. But since XS4ALL was not able to remove the articles only, it was initially forced to take down the whole site. Indymedia.NL is the first victim of the new Deutsche Bahn campaign that targets hyperlinks to the many mirror sites that sprung up after the XS4ALL case. Google and Altavista have received letters to the same effect.

The ruling of the court states that linking directly and indirectly to the illegal articles is not allowed, a worrying novelty in internet litigation. Prohibiting indirect links like this attacks one of the basic principles of the internet and severely limits the freedom of speech.

More info and updates on IMC Netherlands.