MAGYAR TARTALOMSZOLGÁLTATÓK EGYESÜLETE AND INDEX.HU ZRT
v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT
15
assume duties and responsibilities. Because of the particular nature of the
Internet, those duties and responsibilities may differ to some degree from
those of a traditional publisher, notably as regards third-party contents (see
Delfi AS, cited above, § 113).
63. In particular, the Court has examined in the case of Delfi AS the
duties and responsibilities under Article 10 § 2 of large Internet news
portals where they provide, for economic purposes, a platform for usergenerated comments and where the users of such platforms engage in
clearly unlawful expressions, amounting to hate speech and incitement to
violence.
64. However, the present case is different. Although offensive and
vulgar (see paragraphs 12 and 14 above), the incriminated comments did not
constitute clearly unlawful speech; and they certainly did not amount to hate
speech or incitement to violence. Furthermore, while the second applicant is
the owner of a large media outlet which must be regarded as having
economic interests, the first applicant is a non-profit self-regulatory
association of Internet service providers, with no known such interests.
65. The domestic courts found that the impugned statements violated the
personality rights and reputation of the plaintiff company, a moral person.
At this juncture the Court notes that the domestic authorities accepted
without any further analysis or justification that the impugned statements
were unlawful as being injurious to the reputation of the plaintiff company.
66. As the Court has previously held, legal persons could not claim to be
a victim of a violation of personality rights, whose holders could only be
natural persons (see Sdružení Jihočeské Matky v. Czech Republic (dec.),
no. 19101/03, 10 July 2006). There is a difference between the commercial
reputational interests of a company and the reputation of an individual
concerning his or her social status. Whereas the latter might have
repercussions on one’s dignity, for the Court, interests of commercial
reputation are devoid of that moral dimension (see Uj v. Hungary,
no. 23954/10, § 22, 19 July 2011). Moreover, the Court reiterates that there
is an interest in protecting the commercial success and viability of
companies, for the benefit of shareholders and employees, but also for the
wider economic good. The State therefore enjoys a margin of appreciation
as to the means it provides under domestic law to enable a company to
challenge the truth, and limit the damage, of allegations which risk harming
its reputation (see Steel and Morris v. the United Kingdom, no. 68416/01,
§ 94, ECHR 2005-II; Kuliś and Różycki v. Poland, no. 27209/03, § 35,
ECHR 2009).
67. However, in the present case it is not necessary to decide whether
the plaintiff company could justifiably rely on its right to reputation, seen
from the perspective of Article 8 of the Convention. It suffices to observe
that the domestic courts found that the comments in question constituted an
infringement of its personality rights. Indeed, it cannot be excluded that the