NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

Article 10 of the Convention concerns not only the press and traditional media, but nowadays the issues related to violations of freedom of expression on the Internet, as well. In the case of Times Newspapers Ltd v. the United Kingdom (nos. 1 and 2) , 875 the applicant company, Times Newspaper Ltd, the proprietor and publisher of The Times newspaper, published two articles, which were allegedly defamatory for a private individual, G. L. Later both articles were uploaded onto the website of the applicant company. 876 Following the publication, G. L. brought proceedings for libel against the newspaper. As a result of the proceedings, the newspaper added a notice to the Internet archives announcing that both articles were subject to libel litigation and were not to be reproduced or relied upon without referring to the legal department of the company. The main question of the case was whether the application of the restrictions to the Internet publication was ‘necessary in a democratic society’. The Court accepted that Internet archives are an important source for education and historical research, but noted that the states have a wide margin of appreciation in such situations. It was of importance that although libel proceedings had been commenced in respect of the two articles in question in 1999, no qualification was added to the archived copies until the next year. Since the archives were managed by the newspaper itself and the domestic courts had not suggested that the articles be removed altogether, the requirement to add an appropriate qualification to the Internet version was not disproportionate. The absence of safeguards for journalists in domestic law in the course of defamation proceedings was an issue in the case of Editorial Board of Pravoye Delo and Shtekel v. Ukraine . 877 The applicant newspaper published an anonymous letter it had downloaded from a news website, which contained allegations that senior officials of the Ukrainian security service had engaged in unlawful and corrupt activities and had links to organised crime. The newspaper provided reference to the source of the information and published a comment indicating that the information in the letter might be false. The proceedings against the applicant company were instituted by a person who claimed that he had been defamed by the information contained in the letter. The domestic courts held the company liable, and ordered it to pay damages and publish a retraction. The Court observed that at the material time, Ukrainian law granted journalists immunity from civil liability for the verbatim reproduction of material published in the press, but no such immunity existed for journalists reproducing material from Internet sources. Given the lack of adequate safeguards in the domestic law for journalists using information obtained from the Internet, the applicant company could not foresee the consequences the impugned publication might entail. This enabled the Court to conclude that the requirement of lawfulness contained in the second paragraph of Article 10 of the Convention was not met. The case-law of the Court shows that an Article 34 NGO shall be responsible for defamation in its capacity as the discloser of the comments posted, even by unknown 875 Times Newspapers Ltd v. the United Kingdom (nos. 1 and 2) , nos. 3002/03 and 23676/03, ECHR 2009. 876 VOORHOOF, D. European Court of Human Rights: Case of Times Newspapers Ltd. (nos. 1 and 2) v. UK . URL: < http://merlin.obs.coe.int/iris/2009/5/article1.en.html> accessed 20 July 2015. 877 Editorial Board of Pravoye Delo , cited above.

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