Europos Žmogaus Teisių Teismas
2012 m. gruodžio 18 d.
Facts
The applicant owns and runs a website on which he publishes material including his academic work. It was set up using the Google Sites website creation and hosting service. The Criminal Court ordered the blocking of all access to Google Sites. As a result, the applicant was unable to access his own site. He applied to have the blocking order set aside in respect of his site, which had no connection with the site that had been blocked because of its illegal content. The Court dismissed the applicant’s application.
Complaint
The applicant complained of the impossibility of accessing his internet site as a result of a measure ordered in the context of criminal proceedings which were wholly unrelated to his site. In his view, the measure amounted to an infringement of his freedom to receive and impart information and ideas, guaranteed by Article 10 of the Convention.
Court’s ruling
The blocking of the offending site had a basis in law, but it was clear that neither the applicant’s site nor Google Sites fell within the scope of the relevant law since there was insufficient reason to suspect that their content might be illegal. No judicial proceedings had been brought against either of them. Furthermore, although Google Sites was held responsible for the content of a site it hosted, the law made no provision for the wholesale blocking of access to the service. Nor was there any indication that Google Sites had been informed that it was hosting illegal content or that it had refused to comply with an interim measure concerning a site that was the subject of pending criminal proceedings.
Such restraints were not, in principle, incompatible with the Convention, but had to be part of a legal framework ensuring both tight control over the scope of bans and effective judicial review to prevent possible abuses. However, by blocking all access to Google Sites, the Court had simply referred to the Telecommunications Directorate’s opinion that this was the only possible way of blocking the offending site, without ascertaining whether a less severe measure could be taken. Such wholesale blocking had rendered large amounts of information inaccessible, thus substantially restricting the rights of internet users and having a significant collateral effect. The interference had therefore not been foreseeable and had not afforded the applicant the degree of protection to which he was entitled by the rule of law in a democratic society. The measure in issue had arbitrary effects and could not be said to have been designed solely to block access to the offending site. Furthermore, the judicial review concerning the blocking of internet sites was insufficient to meet the criteria for avoiding abuses, domestic law did not provide for any safeguards to ensure that a blocking order concerning a specified site was not used as a means of blocking access in general.
Thus, the Court ruled that there was a violation of Article 10.