MAGYAR JETI ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT
1
In the case of Magyar Jeti Zrt v. Hungary,
The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting as a
Chamber composed of:
Ganna Yudkivska, President,
Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque,
Faris Vehabović,
Egidijus Kūris,
Carlo Ranzoni,
Marko Bošnjak,
Péter Paczolay, judges,
and Andrea Tamietti, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having deliberated in private on 4 September 2018,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
PROCEDURE
1. The case originated in an application (no. 11257/16) against Hungary
lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection
of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a
private limited company registered under Hungarian law, Magyar Jeti Zrt
(“the applicant company”), on 23 February 2016.
2. The applicant company was represented by Ms V. Vermeer, a lawyer
practising in London. The Hungarian Government (“the Government”) were
represented by Mr Z. Tallódi, Agent, Ministry of Justice.
3. The applicant company complained under Article 10 of the
Convention that, by finding it liable for the posting of a hyperlink leading to
defamatory content on its website, the domestic courts had unduly restricted
its freedom of expression.
4. On 26 May 2016 the Government were given notice of the
application.
5. On 1 July 2016, under Article 36 § 2 of the Convention and Rule 44
§ 3 of the Rules of Court, the Vice-President of the Section granted the
European Publishers’ Council, the Media Law Resource Center Inc., the
Newspaper Association of America, BuzzFeed, Electronic Frontier
Foundation, Index on Censorship, Professor Lorna Woods, Dr Richard
Danbury and Dr Nicole Stremlau, jointly; European Information Society
Institute; Article 19; the European Roma Rights Centre; the Mozilla
Foundation and Mozilla Corporation; and Access Now, the Collaboration
on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa and European
Digital Rights, jointly, leave to intervene as third parties in the proceedings.