DELFI AS v. ESTONIA JUDGMENT 21 it inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible. B. Merits 1. The parties’ submissions (a) The applicant 52. The applicant company argued that the domestic courts had interfered with its freedom of expression (right to impart information). It submitted that it had been forced to alter its business model completely and compelled to monitor every comment posted on its news portal – up to 10,000 comments a day. Although certain technical and manual procedures had already been applied prior to the Supreme Court’s judgment, the scope of that activity and its legal implications had substantially changed as a result of the judgment concerned. 53. The applicant company argued that the interference with its freedom of expression had not been “prescribed by law”. It argued that the civil law provisions relied on by the Supreme Court embodied a negative obligation not to publish defamatory information. In the applicant company’s view there was no obligation in the domestic law for it to pre-monitor all the content posted by third persons. The domestic courts’ interpretation of the pertinent legislation had not met the requirement of foreseeability. The applicant company further argued that the liability of service providers for the disclosure of third party content was limited under the EU Directive on Electronic Commerce transposed into the Estonian legal order as the Information Society Services Act. 54. The applicant company accepted that the reputation and rights of L. had been engaged in the present case. However, it considered that the authors of the comments were liable for the possible infringement of L.’s rights. Holding the applicant company liable pursued no legitimate aim. 55. The applicant company argued that the restriction imposed on its freedom of expression was not necessary in a democratic society. It noted that the article published by it had been a balanced one, and thus the comments created and published by the commentators had not been provoked or triggered by the deeds of the applicant company. It argued that it was sufficient that the personal rights of individuals were protected by a two-limb system – firstly by the notice-and-take-down system operated by the service provider, and secondly by the possibility of bringing a claim against the authors of the comments. 56. Referring to the cases of Google France and Google and L’Oréal and Others of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the applicant