In June 2017, the “nanny arson incident” in Hangzhou resulted in the death of a mother and three children, attracting widespread attention. After the incident, there were voices saying that "Lin Shengbin, the husband of the hostess who died, is suspected of committing the crime." Lin Shengbin told the media at the time that he flew from Guangzhou to Hangzhou in the early morning of the incident and was not at the crime scene.
director and writer Liu Xinda has been following the case for a long time and is skeptical of Lin Shengbin's above remarks. In September 2021, Liu Xinda inquired about Lin Shengbin’s travel records from multiple airlines and said that no flight records were found for him in June 2017. Afterwards, he posted the recording of the call inquiring about Lin Shengbin’s flight records on Weibo.
In May 2022, Lin Shengbin took Liu Xinda and the operating company of the Weibo platform to court. In January this year, the court ruled that Liu Xinda had violated Lin Shengbin’s privacy rights. Liu Xinda was dissatisfied with the verdict and believed that his inquiry and publication of Lin Shengbin's travel records was legitimate public opinion supervision, so he appealed.
Recently, Liu Xinda received a summons from the Beijing No. 4 Intermediate People’s Court, and the court notified him to conduct a talk on May 6 regarding related online infringement liability disputes.
After checking Lin Shengbin’s aviation and travel records
Liu Xinda posted a recording of the call with the airline on Weibo
On the morning of November 19, 2021, Liu Xinda posted a message on his Weibo account with more than millions of fans: "Liu Xinda called all airlines. Through phone calls, including China Eastern Airlines, Air China, China Southern Airlines, etc., no record of Lin Shengbin’s flight was found on June 22, 2017 or a few days ago. In other words, during the arson incident, Lin Shengbin said that he was on a business trip in Guangzhou. That's a lie."
That night, Liu Xinda posted on Weibo again, saying, "China Eastern Airlines has not found Lin Shengbin's flight record in June 2017," and attached an 11-minute recording of a call between him and a China Eastern Airlines staff member. 52 seconds. The call recording shows that Liu Xinda said to the China Eastern Airlines staff, "I want to check Lin Shengbin's flight records in June 2017." After the airline staff replied "There are no records in June 2017," Liu Xinda continued to check Lin Shengbin's flight records from 2015 to 2021. flight records, and the other party replied with the itinerary information for the above time period.
Soon, netizens discovered that the Weibo post with the recording was no longer visible. The next morning, Liu Xinda posted on Weibo that he had not deleted the China Eastern Airlines recording, but had temporarily set the recording to be visible only to himself. Judicial materials obtained by
reporters stated that an earlier recording of a call between Liu Xinda and a China Eastern Airlines staff member showed that Liu Xinda said "there are a few more friends who want to check together", claiming that it was to check the status of flight mileage points, and reported Lin Shengbin's name, ID number and reported multiple addresses for identity verification.
Liu Xinda told reporters that Lin Shengbin’s identity information was provided by netizens. He publicly posted the recording of the call with China Eastern Airlines on the Internet to “expose Lin Shengbin’s lies.” At the same time, he also reported the relevant situation to the judicial authorities with his real name.
In August 2021, the Hangzhou Joint Investigation Team issued a notice stating that after investigation in accordance with the law, no fact was found that Lin Shengbin participated in the planning and implementation of the "Blue Qianjiang Fire Case".
Lin Shengbin sued:
Liu Xinda and the Weibo platform operating company are co-defendants
In May 2022, Lin Shengbin transferred China Eastern Airlines Co., Ltd. and the Weibo platform operating company Beijing Weimeng Chuangke Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Weimeng" Company") went to court. During the trial, Lin Shengbin applied to add Liu Xinda as a co-defendant and withdrew the lawsuit against China Eastern Airlines Co., Ltd.
Lin Shengbin claimed that Liu Xinda published an audio file illegally obtained by him on the Weibo platform and contained the plaintiff’s important itinerary information, which was suspected of seriously infringing on the plaintiff’s privacy rights. He requested a court to order the defendant to publicly apologize and compensate the plaintiff for mental damage of 200,000 yuan. Yuan.
Lin Shengbin also claimed that Weimeng Company should establish an effective content management system based on the characteristics of the platform itself to avoid the spread of illegal information on the platform. However, in this case, it failed to fulfill its obligations as a super Internet platform operator. The plaintiff should be jointly and severally liable for the expansion of the plaintiff's losses.
Liu Xinda argued that the "Hangzhou nanny arson case" once attracted widespread attention. As a writer holding a membership card of the Chinese Writers Association, he has the right to interview and the right to know about public events; the copywriting on his Weibo account about the interview with China Eastern Airlines The recording will be set to "visible only to you" 30 minutes after it is released, and there will be no influence, traffic, etc.
The court held that the alleged infringing speech was from past flight records. Although compared with the upcoming flight itinerary information, the possibility of detecting and intruding on others' private activities is lower, according to the existing evidence, the above-mentioned itinerary information belongs to the plaintiff. Private life activities that you do not want others to know can reflect the plaintiff's personal life trajectory and are private information. The plaintiff has the right to privacy of the above information, and the relevant rights are protected by national laws.
The court held that although the defendant argued that it was exercising the writer's right to interview, when communicating with China Eastern Airlines, it did not identify itself as a writer or produce relevant documents. Instead, it used the plaintiff's identity information obtained without authorization to impersonate the plaintiff's friend. Identity, fictitious way to check travel points, learned from China Eastern Airlines. This method of obtaining information is not a legitimate source such as normal interviews. It can be seen that when the defendant publicly released the information involved in the case, he knew that the source of the information was not a normal legal channel.
The court ruled that although the defendant argued that it was exercising its rights to interview, know and supervise public events, it published the plaintiff's information on the public Internet knowing that the information involved was not from a legal source and far exceeded the scope of public events. Private information constitutes an infringement of the plaintiff’s privacy rights; based on various factors, the infringement information involved in the case has not yet reached a level that Micro Dream Company knows or should know. Therefore, the plaintiff’s claim that Micro Dream Company bears joint and several liability for the infringement involved in the case is not supported. .
In January this year, the Beijing Internet Court ruled that Liu Xinda used the account that published the infringing content on the corresponding network platform to apologize to Lin Shengbin and pin it on the top for no less than 72 hours to eliminate the impact; and compensate Lin Shengbin for 8,000 yuan in solatium for mental damage and rights protection fees. 30,000 yuan.
Liu Xinda appealed:
applied to the court to summon Lin Shengbin to appear in court
After the first instance verdict was pronounced, Liu Xinda refused to accept the judgment and filed an appeal. He believed that his inquiry and publication of Lin Shengbin's travel records was legitimate public opinion supervision and did not constitute an infringement of privacy rights.
Liu Xinda stated in the appeal that personal privacy refers to secrets in a citizen’s personal life that he or she does not want others to disclose or know, and these secrets have nothing to do with the interests of others and the public interests of society. Revealing the secret will cause harm to the parties concerned, so the law will protect personal privacy. "But when personal privacy conflicts with public interests, public interests should be resolved first. Once personal privacy harms social interests, personal privacy should not be affected." Legal protection." Liu Xinda said that Lin Shengbin's travel records at that time were related to major criminal cases and were not personal privacy.
In response to the first-instance judgment that "the method of obtaining information does not constitute a normal interview," Liu Xinda said in the appeal, "If interviews without real identities violate other people's privacy rights, then media reporters have to conceal the truth in order to get the truth. Is it an invasion of personal privacy if I use my real identity to go to the airline to find out the situation?”
Recently, Liu Xinda told reporters that he had applied to the court to summon the respondent Lin Shengbin to appear in court during the second instance. . "This case was caused by Lin Shengbin's belief that the appellant violated his right to privacy. It has a strong personal attachment. Therefore, both parties must appear in court to accept the court's questioning in order to better ascertain the facts of this case, and cannot rely entirely on the attorney's Statement.”
html On April 25, the reporter tried to contact Lin Shengbin to learn about the relevant situation of this civil case, but the call could not be connected. On the same day, reporters contacted Lin Shengbin’s attorney, who did not respond to whether Lin Shengbin would appear in court during the second trial. The lawyer also said that the case is still in the second instance and it is inconvenient to disclose specific information.Source: Red Star News
