BULGAKOV v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT
in the Convention in its interpretation by the Court (see Lashmankin and Others v.
Russia, nos. 57818/09 and 14 others, § 217, 7 February 2017). Nor did they
consider whether the same result could be achieved with less intrusive means or
carry out an impact assessment of the blocking measure to ensure that it strictly
targets the illegal content and has no arbitrary or excessive effects, including those
resulting from the method chosen to implement it. As regards the transparency
requirement, the Information Act makes no provision for communicating the
decision taken under section 10(6) to the owner of the targeted website. In the
present case, the applicant had been unaware of the blocking order until he
discovered that access to his website had been blocked (see paragraph 4 above).
38. The second aspect of the interference which the applicant complained of
was the refusal to lift the blocking order after the unlawful content had been
removed. The fact that the content had been removed was established in the
decision of the Savelovskiy District Court, which also held that the removal of
objectionable content was sufficient grounds for restoring access to the applicant’s
website (see paragraph 6 above). The higher courts, however, disagreed with the
District Court’s assessment and maintained that the original decision blocking
access to the website’s IP address should stand. The Court has found above that
there was no legal basis for blocking access to the applicant’s entire website when
it contained one page of extremist material (see paragraph 34 above). This finding
of unlawfulness applies a fortiori to the continued blocking of the website after
that material had been removed.
39. Having regard to the above analysis, the Court concludes that the
interference resulting from the application of the procedure under section 10(6) of
the Information Act had excessive and arbitrary effects and that the Russian
legislation did not afford the applicant the degree of protection from abuse to
which he was entitled by the rule of law in a democratic society. Accordingly, the
interference was not “prescribed by law” and it is not necessary to examine
whether the other requirements of paragraph 2 of Article 10 have been met.
40. There has accordingly been a violation of Article 10 of the Convention.
II. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 13 OF THE CONVENTION TAKEN
IN CONJUNCTION WITH ARTICLE 10
41. The applicant complained under Article 13 of the Convention, taken in
conjunction with Article 10, that the Russian courts had not considered the
substance of his grievance relating to the blocking of access to his website. Article
13 reads:
“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [the] Convention are violated shall have
an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been
committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”
A. Admissibility
42. The Court considers that this complaint is neither manifestly ill-founded
nor inadmissible on any other grounds listed in Article 35 of the Convention. It
must therefore be declared admissible.
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