HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS that the continued availability of the article online was a source of such harm to his reputation. They merely found that the electronic archiving of the article created a “virtual criminal record” for a person who had been rehabilitated. The majority of the Grand Chamber endorsed that assessment without any further reasons to justify it, an approach that is at odds with the requirements set out in paragraphs 231-233 of the judgment. In my view, the published information was not, in itself, capable of justifying a measure as damaging to freedom of expression as the anonymisation of a newspaper article. 18. Secondly, with reference to the situation of the person claiming entitlement to be forgotten, it should be observed in particular that G. was not a vulnerable individual who could claim special protection such as the alteration of a press archive. 19. Thirdly, as regards the accessibility of the information in the digital archives, it is worth noting that in the present case the archives were available without restrictions and free of charge. However, that fact in itself can likewise not justify a measure entailing the alteration of a newspaper article in the online archives. Moreover, at the time of G.’s request to the applicant for anonymisation of the article the latter had already been available on the Internet for over two years, making the absence of any actual evidence of serious harm all the more striking. 20. All of the foregoing leads me to conclude that in the circumstances of the present case there was no “pressing social need” justifying the alteration of the text which had been published originally in a lawful manner. That in itself would suffice, in my view, to find a breach of the requirements of Article 10 of the Convention. Nevertheless, even examining separately the proportionality of the measure imposed I arrive at the same conclusion, as I will demonstrate below. (C) Proportionality of the measure 21. In order to assess the seriousness of the measure imposed on the applicant and its impact on freedom of the press, and more specifically on the “right to remember”, it must be ascertained whether the national courts examined the proportionality of the measure chosen and considered whether other measures less restrictive of freedom of expression were possible. 22. G. did not seek to defend his interests through an action against the operators of the search engines, but instead lodged an action against the applicant. He sought primarily the anonymisation of the article and, in the alternative, its de-indexing in the newspaper’s internal search engine. 23. However, the absence of a prior delisting request should not prevent the national courts, in the context of an action against the publisher of a media website, from taking the alternative measures into account in examining the case. Not – as already stated (see paragraph 14 above) – with a view to imposing them, and thereby potentially breaching the disposition principle, 100