14
KALDA v. ESTONIA JUDGMENT
aware of which particular information is available in the first place. The
Court also notes that the domestic authorities have referred to alternative
means of making available to the applicant the information stored on the
websites in question (for example, by mail – see paragraph 17 above), but
did not compare the costs of these alternative means with the additional
costs that extended Internet access would allegedly incur.
51. The Court further notes that in the Rules of the Committee of
Ministers for the supervision of the execution of judgments and of the terms
of friendly settlements, publication of the Court’s judgments in the language
of the respondent State is mentioned as an example of the general measures
to be taken in order to execute judgments (see paragraph 22 above). The
Court notes, in this connection, that when the applicant lodged his
complaint with the domestic courts, the Estonian translations and
summaries of the Court’s judgments were only available on the website of
the Council of Europe Information Office and it was only later that this
information was published elsewhere – in the online version of Riigi
Teataja (see paragraph 40 above).
52. The Court cannot overlook the fact that in a number of Council of
Europe and other international instruments the public-service value of the
Internet and its importance for the enjoyment of a range of human rights has
been recognised. Internet access has increasingly been understood as a right,
and calls have been made to develop effective policies to attain universal
access to the Internet and to overcome the “digital divide” (see paragraphs
23 to 25 above). The Court considers that these developments reflect the
important role the Internet plays in people’s everyday lives. Indeed, an
increasing amount of services and information is only available on the
Internet, as evidenced by the fact that in Estonia the official publication of
legal acts effectively takes place via the online version of Riigi Teataja and
no longer through its paper version (see paragraph 7 above). The Court
reiterates that the online version of Riigi Teataja also currently carries
Estonian summaries and Estonian translations of the Court’s judgments (see
paragraph 40 above).
53. Lastly, the Court reiterates that under the Imprisonment Act the
prisoners have been granted limited access to the Internet via computers
specially adapted for that purpose and under the supervision of the prison
authorities. Thus, the Court observes that arrangements necessary for the
use of the Internet by prisoners have in any event been made and the related
costs have been borne by the authorities. While the security and economic
considerations cited by the domestic authorities may be considered as
relevant, the Court notes that the domestic courts undertook no detailed
analysis as to the security risks allegedly emerging from the access to the
three additional websites in question, also having regard to the fact that
these were websites of State authorities and of an international organisation.
The Supreme Court limited its analysis on this point to a rather general
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