Communicated on 4 June 2020
Published on 22 June 2020
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 59772/18
SIRIUS, OOO
against Russia
lodged on 12 December 2018
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant company, OOO Sirius, is a limited-liability company incorporated under Russian law in 2005 in the Serpukhov District of the Moscow Region. It is represented before the Court by its director general, Mr M. Razumeyko, and Mr T. Misakyan, a lawyer practising in Moscow.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant company, may be summarised as follows.
The applicant company is the owner and editor of a print and digital media outlet Glazey which covers the political, social, economic and cultural life in the Serpukhov District of the Moscow Region. It also owns and administers the websites www.glazey.info and www.glazey.ru which publish the materials of Glazey and local news.
Unbeknownst to the applicant company, on 8 June 2017 the Istrinskiy Town Court in the Moscow Region granted the town prosecutor’s public-interest claim for blocking access to the website www.glazey.info. It noted the markedly anti-Semitic and anti-Roma tenor of users’ comments on two publications and characterised them as hate speech. The Town Court held that the content of the website constituted information, the dissemination of which should be prohibited in Russia, and ordered immediate enforcement of the blocking order by means of adding the website’s URL to the Integrated Register of blocked content.
On 27 June 2017 the applicant company received by e-mail a notice from the telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor requiring it to take down the offending content or face blocking measures against the website. On the same day the applicant company removed the publications and comments and reported the taking-down to Roskomnadzor. On 17 July 2017 Roskomnadzor informed the applicant company that the website glazey.info had been removed from the Integrated Register.
On 1 August 2017 the applicant company received a new notice from Roskomnadzor by which it was informed that the website glazey.info had been added to the Integrated Register. In the same-day reply, the applicant company pointed out that already after the first notice, it had deleted all the offending content and started pre-moderating user comments to avoid a similar situation.
On 2 August 2017 Roskomnadzor replied to the applicant company that “according to an explanation which the Moscow Region prosecutor had given Roskomnadzor on the manner of enforcement of the Istrinskiy Town Court’s judgment of 8 June 2017, all content on glazey.info had been recognised as constituting prohibited information in Russia, to which access was to be restricted”.
On 3 August 2017 the applicant company filed an appeal against the Town Court’s judgment. It submitted that the offending comments had been diligently deleted, that new comments were subject to pre-approval, and that the blocking measure targeting the entire website had breached its right to impart information.
In the meantime, Roskomnadzor blocked access to the website glazey.ru on the grounds that its domain name also contained the term “glazey”. The applicant company filed an addendum to its appeal to clarify that the content of glazey.ru had been distinct from that of glazey.info, that it published official information and legal acts of the Serpukhov district administration and that it received over 120,000 visitors a month.
On 8 November 2017 the Moscow Regional Court set aside the Town Court’s judgment, finding a breach of procedure in that the matter had been adjudicated in the absence of a representative of the applicant company. It carried out a new assessment of the prosecutor’s claim and reached the same conclusion. It considered immaterial the fact that the offending comments had been deleted because it had occurred after the Town Court’s judgment. The Regional Court maintained the order blocking access to the applicant company’s website, without addressing its submissions that such excessive measure had been unnecessary and unlawful.
On 28 March and 4 July 2018 the Regional Court and Supreme Court, respectively, refused the applicant company leave to appeal to the cassation instance.
Access to the websites glazey.info and glazey.ru has remained blocked in Russia.
COMPLAINT
The applicant company complains under Article 10 of the Convention that the wholesale blocking measures targeting its entire websites did not have a sufficiently foreseeable legal basis, especially after the offending comments had already been deleted, and that the interference with its right to impart information had been disproportionate to whatever legitimate aim that was pursued.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of Article 10 of the Convention on account of blocking of access to the applicant company’s entire websites?
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy