ZÖCHLING v. AUSTRIA JUDGMENT 14. Turning to the possibilities for the applicant to pursue claims against the anonymous authors of the comments, it remained undisputed that she was refused access to the author’s data by their email providers (see paragraph 5 above). 15. The Court does not overlook the fact that section 16 (1) of the E-Commerce Act exempts host providers from responsibility for information stored on behalf of third parties and that section 18 (1) of the E-Commerce Act excludes an obligation to generally monitor stored information. However, section 6 § 2.3a of the Media Act does – when referring to a media owner’s due diligence – require a certain balancing between the interests of an applicant claiming damages under section 6 § 1 of the Media Act and thus relying on Article 8, and those of a media owner in protecting his or her rights under Article 10 of the Convention. The Government conceded that such a balancing exercise was necessary (see paragraph 11 above). The Court of Appel explicitly referred to the case of Delfi AS (see paragraph 7 above) but subsequently did not apply the relevant criteria. 16. The Court finds that in the absence of any balancing of the competing interests at issue the Court of Appeal did not satisfy its procedural obligations to safeguard the applicant’s rights to respect for her private life and reputation. 17. There has accordingly been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention. APPLICATION OF ARTICLE 41 OF THE CONVENTION 18. The applicant claimed 7,782.70 euros (EUR) in respect of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage. She claimed EUR 3,871.95 in respect of costs and expenses incurred before the domestic courts and EUR 2,707.68 for those incurred before the Court. 19. The Government argued that those claims were excessive. 20. The Court reiterates that it cannot speculate as to what the outcome of proceedings would have been if they had been in conformity with the requirements of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see Osinger v. Austria, no. 54645/00, § 57, 24 March 2005). The same applies in the present case, in which a procedural violation of Article 8 has been found (see paragraph 16 above). Accordingly, it does not discern any causal link between the violation found and the pecuniary damage alleged; it therefore rejects this claim. However, it awards the applicant EUR 2,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage, plus any tax that may be chargeable. 21. According to the Court’s case-law an applicant is entitled to the reimbursement of costs and expenses only in so far as it has been shown that these were actually and necessarily incurred and are reasonable as to quantum (see Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) v. the United Kingdom, no. 11002/05, § 58, 27 February 2007). Regard being had to the documents in its possession and the above criteria, the Court 5