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. 60

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