12 KALDA v. ESTONIA JUDGMENT 2. The Court’s assessment 41. The Court has consistently recognised that the public has a right to receive information of general interest. Within this field, it has developed case-law in relation to press freedom, the purpose of which is to impart information and ideas on such matters. The Court has also found that the function of creating forums for public debate is not limited to the press. That function may also be exercised by non-governmental organisations, the activities of which are an essential element of informed public debate (see, for example, Österreichische Vereinigung zur Erhaltung, Stärkung und Schaffung v. Austria, no. 39534/07, §§ 33-34, 28 November 2013, with further references). 42. Furthermore, the Court has held that the right to receive information basically prohibits a Government from preventing a person from receiving information that others wished or were willing to impart (see Leander v. Sweden, 26 March 1987, § 74, Series A no. 116). It has also held that the right to receive information cannot be construed as imposing on a State positive obligations to collect and disseminate information of its own motion (see Guerra and Others v. Italy, 19 February 1998, § 53, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998-I). 43. In the present case, however, the question in issue is not the authorities’ refusal to release the requested information; the applicant’s request concerned information that was freely available in the public domain. Rather, the applicant’s complaint concerns a particular means of accessing the information in question: namely, that he, as a prisoner, wished to be granted access – specifically, via the Internet – to information published on certain websites. 44. In this connection, the Court reiterates that in the light of its accessibility and its capacity to store and communicate vast amounts of information, the Internet plays an important role in enhancing the public’s access to news and facilitating the dissemination of information in general (see Delfi AS v. Estonia [GC], no. 64569/09, § 133, ECHR 2015; Ahmet Yıldırım v. Turkey, no. 3111/10, § 48, ECHR 2012; and Times Newspapers Ltd v. the United Kingdom (nos. 1 and 2), nos. 3002/03 and 23676/03, § 27, ECHR 2009). 45. Nevertheless, the Court notes that imprisonment inevitably involves a number of restrictions on prisoners’ communications with the outside world, including on their ability to receive information. It considers that Article 10 cannot be interpreted as imposing a general obligation to provide access to the Internet, or to specific Internet sites, for prisoners. However, it finds that in the circumstances of the case, since access to certain sites containing legal information is granted under Estonian law, the restriction of access to other sites that also contain legal information constitutes an interference with the right to receive information.