WĘGRZYNOWSKI AND SMOLCZEWSKI v. POLAND JUDGMENT 3 published in the past. The article had been published and could by no means be erased from history or, for that matter, from copies of “Rzeczpospolita” kept in numerous libraries and archives throughout the country. The applicants’ request to have it expunged was therefore ill-founded, not only because it lacked a legal basis but also because it was absurd. The defendants further submitted that the applicants had referred to the publication of the article on the newspaper’s website in the first set of proceedings. They had therefore already been well aware that the article had been disseminated in that way. As they had failed to submit any specific claims in respect of the Internet publication in the first set of proceedings, it had to be inferred that they had not sought to have any measures taken in respect of the online version of the article and that they had been fully satisfied by their situation having been remedied in the manner ordered by the judgments given in the first set of proceedings. 11. The Warsaw Regional Court, by a judgment of 28 September 2005, dismissed the applicants’ claim. It first referred to the judgments of 8 May 2002 and 24 April 2003. It noted the applicants’ submission that they had discovered, a year after the latter judgment had been given, that the article was still available on the newspaper’s website. It observed that the facts of the case were not in dispute betweeen the parties. The applicants’ submissions had addressed facts – namely the article’s continued presence on the newspaper’s website five years after the publication of the article in the newspaper – which had occurred after the judgment in the first case had been given. The gist of the legal issue to be determined by the court was whether the discovery of a new source of publication – including on the Internet – provided a factual basis for a new claim for the protection of personal rights within the meaning of the Civil Code. In the court’s view, the response to such a question should be in the positive. The court was of the opinion that the discovery of a new source of publication, namely the newspaper’s website, of the defamatory article had given rise to a new claim on the applicants’ part. The issues involved in the case were therefore not res judicata. However, in the circumstances of the case the court was of the view that the defendants’ arguments had to be given an equal weight. The court referred to the constitutional guarantees of free speech and noted that preventive censorship was incompatible with the Constitution. It was the journalists’ right and obligation to inform the general public of matters of public interest. 12. Adressing the three claims made by the applicants, the court stressed that removing the article from the website would have been devoid of any practical purpose and would amount to censorship and to rewriting history. Moreover, it would run counter to the principles of archiving. The court pointed out that the applicants have already received a public apology. Allowing the applicants’ claim to have a new apology published