HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT could not determine unilaterally vis-à-vis the media what information could be disseminated about them in the course of public communication processes, neither were they entitled to do so vis-à-vis search engine operators. 126. The Federal Constitutional Court held that the balancing exercise should not merely involve appraising the news report in its original context, but must also be informed by the easy access to and continuing availability of the information through the search engine. In particular, the significance of the time elapsing between initial publication and a search result obtained through a search engine had to be taken into account, as set out in current law under Article 17 GDPR in the sense of a “right to be forgotten”. 3. Judgment of the German Federal Court of Justice of 26 January 2021 (VI ZR 437/19) 127. This case concerned the lawfulness of the publication in March 2017 of two press articles relating to the applicant’s activities within his parish and their retention in the online press archives. The applicant had requested their deletion. 128. In the view of the German Federal Court of Justice, in so far as the case did not concern the initial publication or republication of an article, but rather the retention of an article that was accessible to the public, in particular in the press archives, its lawfulness had to be assessed on the basis of a fresh balancing of the competing interests protected by the fundamental rights existing at the time of the relevant request for deletion. However, in that context the initial lawfulness of an article was a crucial factor justifying a high degree of legitimate interest on the part of the news outlets in continuing to make the article available to the public without having to review or alter it. In the case at hand the news outlet had complied with the relevant conditions at the time of initial publication and was therefore entitled in principle not to have to revisit the articles and their subject matter. 129. The interests of the data subject had to be weighed against the interests of the press and the public at large in the continued accessibility of an initially lawful article, in view of the changed circumstances. In that connection the courts had to take into consideration, in particular, the following factors: the seriousness of the breach of personality rights resulting from the continued availability of the information despite the passage of time; the length of time since the article had been archived; the conduct of the data subject in the meantime, including any updates; the actual continuing or diminishing impact of publication of the article on a large scale; the ranking of the information in the list of results following a name-based Internet search; the public interest in the continued availability of information whose initial publication had been lawful; and the interests of the content providers, based on fundamental rights, in having their content archived and made available in essentially unaltered form. Measures placing restrictions on the free availability in the online archives, in unaltered form, of initially lawful 47