MAGYAR TARTALOMSZOLGÁLTATÓK EGYESÜLETE AND INDEX.HU ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT 17 dictated by the applicants’ respective positions (see Delfi AS, cited above, §§ 142-43). 71. Consequently, it has to be ascertained if the domestic authorities struck an appropriate balance between the applicants’ right under Article 10, as protagonists in providing Internet platform for, or inviting expressions from, third-parties on the one hand, and the rights of the plaintiff company not to sustain allegations infringing its rights under Article 8, on the other. In particular, in the light of the Kúria’s reasoning, the Court must examine whether the domestic courts’ imposition of liability on the applicants for third-party comments was based on relevant and sufficient reasons in the particular circumstances of the case. The Court itself will proceed to assess the relevant criteria as laid down in its case-law to the extent that the domestic authorities failed to do so. (ii) Context and content of the impugned comments 72. As regards the context of the comments, the Court notes that the underlying article concerned the business practice of two large real estate websites, which was deemed misleading and injurious to their clients, thus there was a public interest in ensuring an informed public debate over a matter concerning many consumers and Internet users. The conduct in question had already generated numerous complaints to the consumer protection organs and prompted various procedures against the company concerned (see paragraph 16 above). The Court is therefore satisfied that the comments triggered by the article can be regarded as going to a matter of public interest. Moreover, against this background, the article cannot be considered to be devoid of a factual basis or provoking gratuitously offensive comments. 73. The Court attaches importance to the fact that the second applicant is the owner of a large news portal, run on a commercial basis and obviously attracting a large number of comments. On the contrary, there is no appearance that the situation of the first applicant, the self-regulatory association of Internet content providers, was in any manner similar; indeed, the latter’s publication of contents of predominantly professional nature was unlikely to provoke heated discussions on the Internet. At any rate, the domestic courts appear to have paid no attention to the role, if any, which the applicants respectively played in generating the comments. 74. As regards the contents of the comments, the domestic courts found that they had overstepped the acceptable limits of freedom of opinion and infringed the right to reputation of the plaintiff company, in that they were unreasonably offensive, injurious and degrading. 75. For the Court, the issue in the instant case is not defamatory statements of fact but value judgments or opinions, as was admitted by the domestic courts. They were denouncements of a commercial conduct and were partly influenced by the commentators’ personal frustration of having