ZÖCHLING v. AUSTRIA JUDGMENT 5. On 23 September 2016 the applicant asked the company to delete the comments and to disclose the users’ data. The company deleted the comments within a few hours after receipt of the request and informed the applicant of the users’ email addresses on 29 September 2016. The comments had been visible on the portal for 12 days. The users in question were blocked. The applicant subsequently failed to obtain the names and postal addresses of the users because their email providers refused to share those data with her. 6. The applicant lodged an application with the Vienna Regional Criminal Court against the company pursuant to section 6 § 1 of the Media Act (see Armellini and Others v. Austria, no. 14134/07, § 24, 16 April 2015) claiming damages for the publication of insulting statements. The court granted the applicant’s request. It noted that section 6 § 2.3a of the Media Act exempted media owners (Medieninhaber) from liability for content available on their websites provided that the media owners or one of their employees or agents had not disregarded due diligence. Section 16 of the E-Commerce Act provided that a host provider was not liable for the information stored at the request of a user on condition that the provider did not have actual knowledge of any illegal activity or [illegal] information and, as regards claims for damages, was not aware of facts or circumstances from which any illegal activity or information was apparent, or the provider, upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acted expeditiously to remove or to disable access to [such] information (see Standard Verlagsgesellschaft mbH v. Austria (no. 3), no. 39378/15, § 36, 7 December 2021). The company had deleted the comments immediately after notification by the applicant. Nevertheless, due diligence in the sense of section 6 § 2.3a of the Media Act entailed wider obligations than section 16 of the E-Commerce Act. Otherwise, the legislature would have drafted section 6 § 2.3a of the Media Act in the same way as section 16 of the E-Commerce Act. Taking into account among other things the role of the company, the content of the article (see paragraph 4 above), which intentionally stirred up antipathies against the applicant, the content of the comments, which contained incitements to violence against the applicant, and the fact that offensive comments about the applicant had repeatedly been posted under articles published on the portal since September 2015, the court concluded that the company had not fulfilled the requirements for exemption from liability set out in section 6 § 2.3a of the Media Act. 7. On 20 July 2017 the Court of Appeal quashed the decision of the Regional Criminal Court on an appeal by the company. It found that – in accordance with section 16 of the E-Commerce Act – section 6 § 2.3a of the Media Act required media owners to delete statements without delay if they became aware that such statements fulfilled the offences referred to in section 6 § 1 of the Media Act. Media owners did not have the obligation to monitor all comments posted on their website. Such an obligation would violate section 18 of the E-Commerce Act. The Court of Appeal referred to 2