2 MAGYAR TARTALOMSZOLGÁLTATÓK EGYESÜLETE AND INDEX.HU ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT professional code of Internet content providing and a code of ethics, as well as operating an arbitration commission whose decision are binding on its eleven members. The second applicant, Index.hu Zrt (“Index”) is a company limited by shares, seated in Budapest. It is the owner of one of the major Internet news portals in Hungary. 6. At the material time both applicants allowed users to comment on the publications appearing on their portals. Comments could be uploaded following registration and were not previously edited or moderated by the applicants. 7. The applicants advised their readers, in the form of disclaimers, that the comments did not reflect the portals’ own opinion and that the authors of comments were responsible for their contents. 8. Both applicants put in place a system of notice-and-take-down, namely, any reader could notify the service provider of any comment of concern and request its deletion. In addition, in the case of Index, comments were partially moderated, and removed, if necessary. 9. Both portals stated that comments infringing the personality rights of others could not be uploaded on the websites. 10. Index’s “Principles of moderation” contained the following: “I. Deletion of comments 1.1. Especially forbidden are: 1. comments that, at the time of their posting, infringe the laws of Hungary, indicate or incite to crime or any other unlawful act... 3. vulgar, aggressive, threatening comments. What is vulgar, aggressive or threatening has to be decided by the moderators, in the light of the given topic...” 11. On 5 February 2010 MTE published an opinion under the title “Another unethical commercial conduct on the net” about two real estate management websites, owned by the same company. According to the opinion, the two websites provided thirty-day long advertising service for their users free of charge. Following the expiry of the thirty-day free period, the service became subject to a fee; and this without prior notification of the users. This was possible because, by registering on the website, the users accepted the terms and conditions stipulating that they could be changed unilaterally by the service provider. The opinion also noted that the service provider removed any obsolete advertisements and personal data from the websites only if any overdue charges were paid. The opinion concluded that the conduct of the service provider was unethical and misleading. 12. The opinion attracted some comments of users, acting under pseudonyms, amongst which there were the following: “They have talked about these two rubbish real estate websites (“két szemét ingatlanos oldalról”) a thousand times already.”