Delfi AS is the owner of an internet news portal that publishes up to 330 news articles per day. Following the news articles, Delfi provides fields for readers’ comments, the commenter's name and his or her e-mail address (optional). The comments are uploaded automatically under the article and are, as such, not edited or moderated by Delfi, which Delfi indicates in its ‘Rules of comment’. However, there is a system of notice-and-take-down in place: any reader could mark a comment as insulting or inciting hatred and the comment would be removed expeditiously. Furthermore, Delfi runs a system of automatic deletion of comments that includes certain obscene words. In addition, a victim of a defamatory comment could directly notify the applicant company, in which case the comment would be removed immediately. The articles receive about 10,000 readers’ comments daily, the majority posted under pseudonyms. Delfi has a notorious history of publishing defamatory and degrading readers’ comments.
In January 2006, the Delfi portal published an article under the heading ‘SLK Destroyed Planned Ice Road’. Ice roads are public roads over the frozen sea, which are open between the Estonian mainland and some islands in winter. The abbreviation ‘SLK’ stands for a shipping company providing a public ferry transport service between the mainland and certain islands. The article attracted 185 comments. About 20 of them contained personal threats and offensive language directed against L., a member of the supervisory board of SLK and a company's shareholder. Those comments included, inter alia: ‘bloody shitheads’, ‘burn in your own ship, sick Jew!’, ‘go ahead, guys, [L.] into the oven!’, ‘knock this bastard down once and for all’, ‘[L.] very much deserves [lynching], doesn't he’, ‘I pee into [L.'s] ear and then I also shit onto his head’, and further comments of that sort. In March 2006, six weeks after the publication, L.'s lawyers requested Delfi to remove the offensive comments and claimed approximately €32,000 in compensation for non-pecuniary damage. Delfi complied immediately with the request for removal, but refused the claim for damages. Upon L.'s lawsuit, the Estonian courts awarded €320 in compensation for non-pecuniary damage.
(Based on ECtHR, Delfi AS v. Estonia [2015] App. no. 64569/09)