4 MAGYAR TARTALOMSZOLGÁLTATÓK EGYESÜLETE AND INDEX.HU ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT questionable conduct of the real estate websites and did not exceed the acceptable level of criticism. 18. Both parties appealed. In their appeal the applicants argued that the plaintiff had not requested them to remove the offensive comments. Nonetheless, they had done so as soon as soon as they had been informed of the plaintiff’s action. They also argued that users’ comments were to be distinguished from readers’ letters, since these latter were only published on the basis of editorial decisions, whereas comments did not constitute edited content. They argued that, in respect of comments, they had only acted as service providers of information storage. 19. On 27 October 2011 the Budapest Court of Appeal upheld in essence the first-instance decision but amended its reasoning. It ordered each applicant to pay 5,000 Hungarian forints (HUF) as first-instance and HUF 36,000 as second-instance procedural fee. 20. The Court of Appeal held that – as opposed to readers’ letters whose publication was dependent on editorial decisions – the comments, unedited, reflected the opinions of the sole commenters. Notwithstanding that, the owner of the website concerned was liable for them. According to the court’s reasoning, Act no. CVIII of 2001, transposing Directive 2000/31/EC on Electronic Commerce into Hungarian law, did not apply to the applicants’ case since it only related to electronic services of commercial nature, in particular to purchases through the Internet. Under section 2(3) of the Act, electronic commercial services were information society-related services whose purpose was the sale, purchase or exchange of a tangible and moveable property, which was not the situation in the applicants’ case. In any event, pursuant to its section 1(4), the scope of the Act did not extend to expressions made by persons acting outside the sphere of economic or professional activities or public duties, even if uttered in connection with a purchase through the Internet. For the Court of Appeal, the comments were private utterances which did not fall under Act no. CVIII of 2001 on Electronic Commercial Services. Thus, there was no reason to assess the meaning of the terms of ‘hosting service providers’ and ‘intermediaries’ under that Act. Nonetheless, the comments attracted the applicability of the Civil Code rules on personality rights, notably Article 78. Since the comments were injurious for the plaintiff, the applicants bore objective liability for their publication, irrespectively of the subsequent removal, which was only relevant for the assessment of any compensation. 21. The applicants lodged a petition for review with the Kúria. They argued that, in their interpretation of the relevant law, they were under no obligation to monitor or edit the comments uploaded by readers on their websites. 22. On 13 June 2012 the Kúria upheld the previous judgments. It stressed that the applicants, by enabling readers to make comments on their websites, had assumed objective liability for any injurious or unlawful