HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT “1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. ... 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.” A. The Chamber judgment 134. The Chamber held, by six votes to one, that there had been no violation of Article 10 of the Convention. It found that the civil judgment against the applicant amounted to interference with his rights under Article 10. The interference in question had been prescribed by law and had pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the reputation or rights of others, in this case G.’s right to respect for his private life. 135. As to the necessity of the interference, the Chamber began by emphasising that the task of the national courts had been to balance, on the one hand, the freedom of expression of the applicant as a publisher, and in particular his right to impart information to the public, and, on the other hand, G.’s right to protection of his private life. While it reiterated the general principles with regard to the balancing of the rights at stake which it intended to apply in the present case (see Axel Springer AG v. Germany [GC], no. 39954/08, §§ 78-84, 7 February 2012), the Chamber nevertheless stressed the specific nature of the online publication of digital archives, inferring from this that the domestic courts had to be particularly vigilant whenever they granted a request for anonymisation or alteration of the electronic version of an archived article on the grounds of respect for private life. The Chamber further held that the criteria to be taken into account regarding the online publication or continued availability of archived material were, in principle, the same as those applied by the Court in the context of initial publication, although certain criteria might have more or less relevance in view of the particular circumstances of the case and the passage of time. 136. The Chamber concluded that the domestic courts had weighed up the rights at stake in accordance with the criteria established in the Court’s case-law, attaching particular weight to the damage sustained by G. and to the fact that the anonymisation of the article on the website of Le Soir had left the archives themselves intact and had constituted the most effective measure amongst those that could have been taken in the present case, without interfering disproportionately with the applicant’s freedom of expression. In the Chamber’s view, the reasons given by the domestic courts had been relevant and sufficient, and it thus saw no strong reason to substitute its view 49