BULGAKOV v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT Ahmet Yıldırım, cited above, §§ 51 and 55, and Cengiz and Others v. Turkey, nos. 48226/10 and 14027/11, § 56, ECHR 2015 (extracts)). 30. As regards the scope of the interference, the applicant did not dispute that the e-book which had been available on his website constituted prohibited material. He took issue, however, with the domestic courts’ decisions to block access to his entire website because of one piece of prohibited material and to continue blocking access even after that material had been removed. The Court will examine the two aspects in turn. It reiterates that interference will constitute a breach of Article 10 unless it is “prescribed by law”, pursues one or more of the legitimate aims referred to in Article 10 § 2 and is “necessary in a democratic society” to achieve those aims. 31. The Court reiterates that the expression “prescribed by law” not only refers to a statutory basis in domestic law, but also requires that the law be both adequately accessible and foreseeable, that is, formulated with sufficient precision to enable the individual to foresee the consequences which a given action may entail. In matters affecting fundamental rights it would be contrary to the rule of law, one of the basic principles of a democratic society enshrined in the Convention, for a legal discretion granted to the executive to be expressed in terms of an unfettered power. Consequently, the law must afford a measure of legal protection against arbitrary interferences by public authorities with the rights safeguarded by the Convention, and indicate with sufficient clarity the scope of any discretion conferred on the competent authorities and the manner of its exercise (see Hasan and Chaush v. Bulgaria [GC], no. 30985/96, § 84, ECHR 2000-XI; and Ahmet Yıldırım, cited above, §§ 57 and 59). 32. The District Court’s decision of 3 April 2012 which gave rise to the interference in the present case had a legal basis in section 10(6) of the Information Act. That provision allowed the authorities to block any content, dissemination of which was punishable under administrative or criminal law. The e-book fell within the scope of that provision. It had been previously categorised as extremist material. Such material may not be distributed or transmitted over public communication networks (see Mariya Alekhina and Others v. Russia, no. 38004/12, §§ 93-94, 17 July 2018) and its mass dissemination constitutes an offence under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offences. It follows that, in so far as the District Court’s decision targeted the e-book, the interference can be said to have been “prescribed by law”. 33. However, the scope of the District Court’s order was not limited to identifying the offending content which was to be blocked. The District Court also determined the method of implementation of the blocking measure. To that end, it borrowed the formula from the application lodged by the prosecutor, who had requested that access to the extremist content be blocked by means of “adding filter rules for the website’s IP address to the area border router”. In layman’s terms, that formula requires the ISP to apply filtering technology capable of preventing users from connecting to the website located at the specified numerical network address (IP address). In other words, the District Court ordered the blocking of access to the offending content by means of blocking access to the entire website, because only websites, but not their individual pages or sections, have IP addresses. The applicant speculated that behind the use of that formula had been a lack of technical expertise on the part of the judges, which had prevented them from 9

Select target paragraph3