HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT value and that a very minor alteration to the electronic archives was acceptable if the paper archives remained intact. 161. With particular reference to the requirement to opt for measures less restrictive of freedom of expression, the third-party intervener stated that in the proceedings before the Court of First Instance he had actually proposed the use of a noindex tag as an alternative to anonymisation and that it was the applicant who had rejected that solution. By contrast, the only alternative proposed by the applicant had been the publication of a rectifying statement, which was not a valid solution in the present case. As to the possibility of requesting delisting, the intervener argued that his preference for anonymisation was justified by the fact that several search engines existed on the market and that the state of the technology at the time of his action suggested that separate noindex tags would be needed for each search engine, a situation which cast doubt on their effectiveness. Lastly, he submitted that a very minor alteration to online archived content should be viewed differently where, as in the present case, the matter concerned the online version of an article that had originally been published only in print form; in such cases, the article in the online archive was not aimed at informing the public but rather at generating traffic on the publisher’s website and thus attracting advertising revenue. 2. Joint position of sixteen third-party interveners represented by the organisation ARTICLE 19 162. The following sixteen interveners, all represented by the organisation ARTICLE 19, submitted joint observations: ARTICLE 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression, the Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law, Prof. David Kaye, Digital Security Lab Ukraine, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the European Centre for Press & Media Freedom, Guardian News Media Limited, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, the International Press Institute, Times Newspapers Ltd, the Mass Media Defence Centre, Media Defence, Nyugat, and the Open Net Association. 163. The interveners took the view that while there was a balance to be struck between the rights at stake, the permanent removal of information from a digital media archive was not a proportionate restriction on freedom of expression and would have a deleterious impact on the integrity of that archive, which was an essential component of newsgathering and reporting. Interfering with the availability and the integrity of information online ran contrary to the values protected by Article 10 of the Convention, as it (a) prevented journalists and other actors performing the function of “public watchdogs” from knowing about information, thereby impeding them in investigating and uncovering information of public interest, and (b) created a risk of cancelling or altering historical memory and creating an inaccurate 57