Search results : 145

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered an interesting judgment on the impact of the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) within private relations and the positive obligation of the authorities to safeguard the right to freedom of expression and information in contractual relations. The ECtHR unanimously found that imposing a fine on an actor for having disclosed confidential information about the terms of his contract with a TV company, did not violate the actor’s freedom of expression. The Court held that the dissemination...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found a violation of the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in a case concerning the sharing of a Facebook post criticising a municipality. The case started in 2014 when K. published a post on his Facebook page calling on the inhabitants of Tata, a town in the northwest of Hungary, to participate in a demonstration as a protest against the sale of a building belonging to the Tata municipality. According to K. the building was sold for an unreasonably low price to a local businessman, who...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a judgment in a case concerning the decision by Hungarian courts to order the Internet news portal Index.hu to pay compensation for having published a story recounted by a third person, which the domestic courts found to have been false and defamatory. The ECtHR considered the imposition of objective liability on Index.hu for the reproduction of the statements, irrespective of whether the author or publisher acted in good or bad faith and in compliance with journalistic duties and obligations, to be a violation of Index.hu’s right of journalistic...

The Hungarian Parliament implemented the AVMSD’s new rules on video-sharing platform services in May. The new rules were incorporated into the e-Commerce Act through Hungarian legislation, thus the rules were not embedded in media regulation, but in the act which implemented the e-Commerce Directive in 2001. In fact, a hybrid solution was created, since the definitions, such as the definition of a video-sharing service platform, were incorporated into the Hungarian Media Act. In the future, the legal framework surrounding video-sharing services is going to be determined by both the Hungarian...

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has confirmed the conclusion of the chamber judgment in the case Magyar Kétfarkú Kutya Párt v. Hungary (23 January 2018, see IRIS 2018-3/2). The case concerns the use and promotion by a political party of a mobile application (app) which allowed voters to anonymously share photographs of their ballot papers. The Grand Chamber found that a fine for distributing the app had violated the political party’s right to freedom of expression because the interference with the applicant’s right was not ‘prescribed...