MAGYAR TARTALOMSZOLGÁLTATÓK EGYESÜLETE AND INDEX.HU ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT 15 assume duties and responsibilities. Because of the particular nature of the Internet, those duties and responsibilities may differ to some degree from those of a traditional publisher, notably as regards third-party contents (see Delfi AS, cited above, § 113). 63. In particular, the Court has examined in the case of Delfi AS the duties and responsibilities under Article 10 § 2 of large Internet news portals where they provide, for economic purposes, a platform for usergenerated comments and where the users of such platforms engage in clearly unlawful expressions, amounting to hate speech and incitement to violence. 64. However, the present case is different. Although offensive and vulgar (see paragraphs 12 and 14 above), the incriminated comments did not constitute clearly unlawful speech; and they certainly did not amount to hate speech or incitement to violence. Furthermore, while the second applicant is the owner of a large media outlet which must be regarded as having economic interests, the first applicant is a non-profit self-regulatory association of Internet service providers, with no known such interests. 65. The domestic courts found that the impugned statements violated the personality rights and reputation of the plaintiff company, a moral person. At this juncture the Court notes that the domestic authorities accepted without any further analysis or justification that the impugned statements were unlawful as being injurious to the reputation of the plaintiff company. 66. As the Court has previously held, legal persons could not claim to be a victim of a violation of personality rights, whose holders could only be natural persons (see Sdružení Jihočeské Matky v. Czech Republic (dec.), no. 19101/03, 10 July 2006). There is a difference between the commercial reputational interests of a company and the reputation of an individual concerning his or her social status. Whereas the latter might have repercussions on one’s dignity, for the Court, interests of commercial reputation are devoid of that moral dimension (see Uj v. Hungary, no. 23954/10, § 22, 19 July 2011). Moreover, the Court reiterates that there is an interest in protecting the commercial success and viability of companies, for the benefit of shareholders and employees, but also for the wider economic good. The State therefore enjoys a margin of appreciation as to the means it provides under domestic law to enable a company to challenge the truth, and limit the damage, of allegations which risk harming its reputation (see Steel and Morris v. the United Kingdom, no. 68416/01, § 94, ECHR 2005-II; Kuliś and Różycki v. Poland, no. 27209/03, § 35, ECHR 2009). 67. However, in the present case it is not necessary to decide whether the plaintiff company could justifiably rely on its right to reputation, seen from the perspective of Article 8 of the Convention. It suffices to observe that the domestic courts found that the comments in question constituted an infringement of its personality rights. Indeed, it cannot be excluded that the

Sélectionner le paragraphe cible3