WĘGRZYNOWSKI AND SMOLCZEWSKI v. POLAND JUDGMENT 11 found by the courts to be in violation of the applicant’s rights falling within the ambit of this provision. 50. The Government submitted that although the article published on 2 December 2000 had infringed the applicant’s rights, the damage caused by that violation had effectively been redressed by the judgments of 8 May 2002 and 24 April 2003 allowing their claim and awarding compensation. These judgments prevented the applicant from claiming another violation of his rights originating in the same factual circumstances which had already existed prior to these judgments and which had been known or could have easily been known to the applicant, namely the existence of the article on the newspaper’s website in December 2000. 51. The fact that the article had remained on the newspaper’s website after the first set of the proceedings had come to end had not amounted to a separate violation, given that it had been published simultaneously with the print edition of the newspaper. There had therefore been no “new publication” giving rise to a new breach of his rights. The applicant could have sought the rectification of the article or the publication of a footnote or an apology covering the Internet version of the article during the first set of proceedings. The applicant had been negligent in formulating his first claim. 52. The Government were of the view that accepting the approach proposed by the second applicant could lead to the newspaper being subject to ongoing liability. Anyone could bring an action against a publisher of material on the Internet whenever he or she found out about it, regardless of the date on which the contested material had been published on the relevant website. Such uncertainty would be disproportionate and could have a chilling effect on journalists and publishers. The Government referred to the case of Times Newspapers Ltd (cited above). The Court had held that while an aggrieved applicant must be afforded a real opportunity to assert his right to protect his reputation, libel proceedings brought against a newspaper after a significant lapse of time may well, in the absence of exceptional circumstances, give rise to a disproportionate interference with press freedom under Article 10. In the Government’s opinion, such “exceptional circumstances” had not existed in the present case. 2. The Court’s assessment 53. The essential object of Article 8 of the Convention is to protect the individual against arbitrary interference by public authorities. Any interference under the first paragraph of Article 8 must be justified in terms of the second paragraph as being “in accordance with the law” and “necessary in a democratic society” for one or more of the legitimate aims listed therein. According to the Court’s settled case-law, the notion of necessity implies that the interference corresponds to a pressing social need and, in particular, that it is proportionate to one of the legitimate aims