MAGYAR TARTALOMSZOLGÁLTATÓK EGYESÜLETE AND INDEX.HU ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT 21 such as the first applicant (compare and contrast Delfi AS, cited above, § 161). 87. The Constitutional Court held that the operation of Internet portals allowing comments without prior moderation was a forum of the exercise of freedom of expression (see paragraph 25 above). Indeed, the Court stressed on many occasions the essential role which the press plays in a democratic society (see De Haes and Gijsels v. Belgium, cited above, § 37) – a concept which in modern society undoubtedly encompasses the electronic media including the Internet. 88. However, the Court cannot but observe that the Hungarian courts paid no heed to what was at stake for the applicants as protagonists of the free electronic media. They did not embark on any assessment of how the application of civil-law liability to a news portal operator will affect freedom of expression on the Internet. Indeed, when allocating liability in the case, those courts did not perform any balancing at all between this interest and that of the plaintiff. This fact alone calls into question the adequacy of the protection of the applicants’ freedom-of-expression rights on the domestic level. (vii) Conclusion 89. The Court considers that the rigid stance of the Hungarian courts reflects a notion of liability which effectively precludes the balancing between the competing rights according to the criteria laid down in the Court’s case law (see Von Hannover (no. 2), cited above, § 107). 90. At this juncture, the Court reiterates that it is not for it to express a view on the appropriateness of methods chosen by the legislature of a respondent State to regulate a given field. Its task is confined to determining whether the methods adopted and the effects they entail are in conformity with the Convention (see Gorzelik and Others v. Poland, cited above, § 67). 91. However, in the case of Delfi AS, the Court found that if accompanied by effective procedures allowing for rapid response, the notice-and-take-down-system could function in many cases as an appropriate tool for balancing the rights and interests of all those involved. The Court sees no reason to hold that such a system could not have provided a viable avenue to protect the commercial reputation of the plaintiff. It is true that, in cases where third-party user comments take the form of hate speech and direct threats to the physical integrity of individuals, the rights and interests of others and of the society as a whole might entitle Contracting States to impose liability on Internet news portals if they failed to take measures to remove clearly unlawful comments without delay, even without notice from the alleged victim or from third parties (see Delfi AS, cited above, § 159). However, the present case did not involve such utterances.