HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT information relating to a specific person derived from the general right of personality in its manifestation as a right limiting freedom of expression, rather than its manifestation as a right to informational self-determination. The latter right allowed individuals the possibility of influencing, in a differentiated way, the context and manner in which their personal data were accessible to and could be used by others. Thus, it guaranteed individuals a substantial say in deciding what information was attributed to their person. In the view of the Federal Constitutional Court, the right to informational selfdetermination was a separate manifestation of the general right of personality that had its own content distinguishing it from other manifestations of that right. 115. With regard to the general right of personality, the Federal Constitutional Court held that, given the realities of communication in the Internet era, the time factor was particularly important in assessing whether an individual had a claim to protection. The legal order had to protect individuals against the risk of being indefinitely confronted in public with their past opinions, statements or actions. Only when it was possible for matters to stay in the past could individuals be free to make a fresh start. The possibility for matters to be forgotten was part of the temporal dimension of individual freedom. 116. In the Federal Constitutional Court’s view, it was not possible to derive from the general right of personality a right to request that all personal information disseminated through online communication processes be deleted from the Internet. In particular, individuals did not have a right to filter publicly accessible information according to their free discretion and personal views, allowing them to restrict such information to aspects that they themselves might regard as relevant and appropriate to their self-perceived image. 117. From the perspective of the news outlet, account had to be taken of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, which encompassed the fact of making archives available to the public online. 118. In the view of the Federal Constitutional Court, the scope of protection against the dissemination of press reports in a specific case was to be determined by weighing up the competing fundamental rights while taking full account of the particular circumstances of the case. In the case at hand, the proceedings concerned the question whether a news report that had been published lawfully in the first instance could be disseminated lawfully even many years later, after the circumstances had changed. In the balancing exercise, a number of procedural requirements applied (determining in which cases a change of circumstances had to be taken into account). There were also substantive criteria for assessing the significance of the passage of time between the initial publication of information and its further dissemination (such as the impact and subject matter of the report, the wider context of the events, including the conduct of the individual concerned, and the extent to 44