PIHL v. SWEDEN DECISION
8
33. The Court also notes that, as concerns the alleged possibility of still
being able to find the comment via search engines, the applicant is entitled
to request that the search engines remove any such traces of the comment
(see the Court of Justice of the European Union judgment of 13 May 2014,
Google Spain and Google, no. C-131/12, EU:C:2014:317).
34. Turning to the liability of the originator of the comment, the Court
observes that the applicant obtained the IP-address of the computer used to
submit the comment. However, he has not stated that he took any further
measures to try to obtain the identity of the author of the comment.
35. Furthermore, since the applicant’s claim was rejected by the
domestic courts, the domestic proceedings had no consequences for the
association in the present case. However, the Court has previously found
that liability for third-party comments may have negative consequences on
the comment-related environment of an internet portal and thus a chilling
effect on freedom of expression via internet. This effect could be
particularly detrimental for a non-commercial website (see Magyar
Tartalomszolgáltatók Egyesülete and Index.hu Zrt, cited above, § 86).
36. Lastly the Court notes that the applicant’s case was considered on its
merits by two judicial instances at the domestic level before the Supreme
Court refused leave to appeal. Moreover, the Chancellor of Justice
examined that applicant’s complaint under Article 8 of the Convention,
referring to the Court’s case-law and the need to balance the interests under
Article 8 and Article 10 before finding that the case did not disclose a
violation of the applicant’s rights under Article 8. The Court further
observes that the scope of responsibility of those running blogs is regulated
by domestic law and that, had the comment been of a different and more
severe nature, the association could have been found responsible for not
removing it sooner (see paragraphs 18-20 above).
37. In view of the above, and especially the fact that the comment,
although offensive, did not amount to hate speech or incitement to violence
and was posted on a small blog run by a non-profit association which took it
down the day after the applicant’s request and nine days after it had been
posted, the Court finds that the domestic courts acted within their margin of
appreciation and struck a fair balance between the applicant’s rights under
Article 8 and the association’s opposing right to freedom of expression
under Article 10.
38. It follows that the application is manifestly ill-founded and must be
rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.