29/09/2023, 12:35 SANCHEZ v. FRANCE - 45581/15 (Judgment : No Article 10 - Freedom of expression-{general} : Grand Chamber) [2023] ECHR 418 (1… crim., no. 144), while developing case-law on the concept of “publicity”, which is established when the addressees are not linked to each other by a community of interest and the offending remarks are disseminated via a website accessible to the public (Court of Cassation, Criminal Division, 26 February 2008, appeal no. 07‑87.846, and 26 March 2008, appeal no. 07-83.672). It thus held that insults published on the Facebook “wall” of a defendant in criminal proceedings, which were accessible only to individuals approved by the defendant, constituted private and not public insults (Court of Cassation, Criminal Division, 10 April 2013, appeal no. 11-19.530). 43. The regime of “cascading liability”, which is to be applied when the publication director or author of remarks cannot be identified, does not exclude the autonomy of the proceedings, which allows proceedings to be brought against all those who are liable, when they are identified, or just one of those actors. Accordingly, the “cascading liability” regime and the principle of the autonomy of the proceedings apply without prejudice to each other. The Court of Cassation has thus taken the view, with regard to the principle of the autonomy of the proceedings, that no provision of the Freedom of the Press Act requires the prior prosecution of the author of the impugned remarks before proceedings can be brought against the publication director as principal or, under any status whatsoever, against other persons who may be criminally liable pursuant to that Act. In a judgment of 16 July 1992, the Criminal Division of the Court of Cassation thus expressly applied this principle in dismissing an appeal against the conviction by a Court of Appeal of the publication director of a periodical, as principal, together with the author of the article in question, as accomplice, for the offence of inciting discrimination, hatred or racial violence, as provided for in section 24 of the Law of 29 July 1881 (appeal no. 91-86.156, Bull. crim., no. 273). Moreover, in a judgment of 20 January 1987, the Court of Cassation similarly quashed the judgment of a Court of Appeal because it had annulled the summons by which civil parties had initiated the relevant proceedings on the grounds, inter alia, that they had not sought to prosecute the author of the article in question and had not specified on what basis the publication director was being prosecuted for the offence of inciting discrimination, hatred or violence against a group on account of their origin or of their belonging to a given ethnicity, nation, race or religion (appeal no. 8494.444, Bull. crim., no. 30). 44. As regards the offence of incitement to hatred or violence, the Court of Cassation has consistently held that the comments in question must be such as to arouse immediate reactions from the reader, against the persons targeted, of rejection or even hatred and violence (Court of Cassation, Criminal Division, 21 May 1996, Bull. crim., no. 210), or that https://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2023/418.html 21/100