HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT
172. Firstly, the Court takes note of the assertion made by the applicant at
the Grand Chamber hearing that, in addition to the print version, the
impugned article was stored in two sets of digital archives: one, known as the
“master” archive, which was not accessible to the public, and a second set of
archives published online and accessible to the public. In examining the case
it will take into account this particular context, that is to say, the existence of
these three archived versions. The Court further observes in that regard that
the Liège Court of Appeal ordered the applicant to anonymise the archived
version of the impugned article on the website of the newspaper Le Soir and
in any other database for which he was responsible (see paragraph 21 above).
However, the Court notes that the reasoning of the Liège Court of Appeal’s
judgment referred only to the anonymisation of the article placed online on
the website of Le Soir (see, in particular, paragraphs 29 and 30 above). What
is more, the Court of Appeal also held that the anonymisation of the online
archived version sufficed for it to conclude that its judgment of 25 September
2014 had been complied with (see paragraphs 39-40 above). In any event, as
the arguments raised by the applicant in support of his complaint under
Article 10 of the Convention, before both the domestic courts and this Court,
relate solely to the anonymisation of the article placed online on the
newspaper’s website, the Court will focus its examination on this aspect of
the case, notwithstanding the applicant’s assertion at the hearing that the
version stored in the master archive had also been anonymised (see
paragraph 42 above).
173. Secondly, the Court observes that the great majority of cases it has
examined hitherto concerning a conflict between the right to freedom of
expression and the right to respect for private life related to the initial
publication of reports about private aspects of the lives of individuals or their
families (see, among many other authorities, Hachette Filipacchi Associés
(ICI PARIS) v. France, no. 12268/03, 23 July 2009; Axel Springer AG, cited
above; and Couderc and Hachette Filipacchi Associés v. France [GC],
no. 40454/07, ECHR 2015 (extracts)). Unlike those cases, the present case
concerns the online publication in 2008, and the continued availability, of the
archived version of an article originally published in 1994 in the print edition
of the newspaper Le Soir, which online version the applicant was ordered to
anonymise by replacing G.’s full name with the letter X.
174. It follows that in this instance it is solely the continued availability
of the information on the Internet, rather than its original publication per se,
that is concerned. Furthermore, the original article was published in a lawful
and non-defamatory manner. Lastly, it should be noted that this was a news
report that was published and subsequently archived on the website of a news
outlet for the purposes of journalism, a matter which goes to the heart of
freedom of expression as protected by Article 10 of the Convention.
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