Europos Žmogaus Teisių Teismas
2015 m. gruodžio 1 d.
Facts
A national court, finding that the content of 10 pages on the YouTube website infringed the prohibition on insulting the memory of Atatürk (considered the founding father of Turkey), imposed a blocking order on the entire website. The applicants, who are active users, appealed against that decision. Their appeal was dismissed as they were not parties to the investigation procedure and therefore did not have standing to challenge the blocking order.
Complaint
The applicants complained that the measure taken by the domestic courts had prevented them from having access to YouTube. They submitted that the measure amounted to an infringement of their right to freedom to receive and impart information and ideas, guaranteed by Article 10 of the Convention.
Court’s ruling
The material published by YouTube included, among other things, information that could be of particular interest to everyone. The blocking order blocked access to a website containing specific information of interest to the applicants that was not easily accessible by other means. The website also constituted an important source of communication for the applicants. Furthermore, YouTube was also a video website via which users could send, watch and share videos and was undoubtedly an important means of exercising freedom to receive or impart information and ideas. Political information not conveyed by the traditional media was often imparted through YouTube, which fostered the emergence of citizen journalism. In that sense the platform was unique in terms of its features, its level of accessibility and above all its potential impact, and there had been no equivalent at the time.
Consequently, although not directly targeted by the decision to block access to YouTube, the applicants could legitimately claim that the blocking order had affected their right to receive and impart information or ideas. Whatever the legal basis had been, such a measure was designed to affect access to the Internet. Accordingly, it engaged the responsibility of the respondent State for the purpose of Article 10.
Concerning the lawfulness of the interference, it had to be noted that the legislation in question had not authorised the imposition of a blanket blocking order on an entire Internet site on account of the content of one of the web pages hosted by it. A blocking order could only be imposed on a specific publication where there were grounds for suspecting that on account of its content that publication amounted to an offence stipulated in the legislation. Consequently, when the court imposed the blocking order on YouTube there had been no statutory provision giving the courts power to do so. The URL filtering technology for websites based abroad was not available in Turkey. Accordingly, in practice, an administrative body would decide to block all access to the entire website in question in the implementation of judicial decisions concerning content. The authorities should have considered that such a measure, which blocked access to a large quantity of information, would inevitably considerably affect the rights of Internet users and have a substantial collateral effect. Accordingly, the blocking order had not satisfied the condition of lawfulness, and the Court found a violation of Article 10.