14 MAGYAR JETI ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT demonstrated that it availed itself of the remedy alluded to by the Government. 37. The Court accordingly concludes that the applicant company has complied with the obligation to exhaust domestic remedies and that the Government’s objection must be dismissed. It also notes that the application is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention. It further notes that it is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible. B. Merits 1. The parties’ submissions (a) The applicant company 38. The applicant company argued that the interference with its freedom of expression had not been prescribed by law. It submitted that although Article 78 § 2 of the Civil Code had established liability for dissemination of injurious falsehoods, there had been no legislation or case-law stating that hyperlinking was to be considered dissemination of information. 39. In its view, the Hungarian courts’ decisions had failed to account for the specific features of hyperlinks and had applied to its case the standards of more traditional forms of sharing actual content, which had not been reasonably foreseeable. It explained that hyperlinking in itself did not convey or communicate any information but merely pointed to its existence. Furthermore, the standard applied by the domestic courts would have entailed its liability even if the owner of the hyperlinked website had modified the web page to include defamatory material that had originally not been present. 40. The applicant company disputed that the protection of the reputation of a political party could serve as a legitimate aim for the interference. Relying on the Court’s case-law, it maintained that the limits of acceptable public scrutiny were wider in relation to politicians, who had to have a greater degree of tolerance to criticism. 41. In the applicant company’s submission, the interference had not been necessary in a democratic society. It argued that the objective liability standard as applied by the domestic courts had excluded any balancing between the two protected values. Amongst other actions, by the application of the objective liability rule, the domestic courts had not been able to consider whether the applicant company had acted in good or bad faith or what the purpose of the dissemination had been. In any event, the objective liability standard was incompatible with the Court’s case-law. 42. The applicant company argued that had the domestic courts undertaken a proper balancing exercise, they would have concluded that its right to freedom of expression should have prevailed over Jobbik’s right to reputation. 43. Firstly, the hyperlink had appeared in a balanced news report on a matter of public interest. In its view, including the hyperlink in the article in