Issues of protection of honor, dignity and business reputation in the case of recourse to court in a separate non-litigation proceedings

In practice, lawyers who specialize in the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation often have to defend the interests of their clients in this area in a separate non-litigation procedure.

What is it and how does it work?

Let's imagine that inaccurate information about you has been spread on the Internet, which damages the inviolability of your honor and dignity, and in some cases, your business reputation.

The consequences of such a spread can be the formation of a negative opinion in society about a person about whom inaccurate information is spread, mental suffering, which is reflected in the physical and mental state of a person, proving his depressed state, deteriorating health.

Next, let's imagine that such information is spreading more and more on the Internet, at a time when the distributors of such information are unknown and cannot be identified.

To begin with, you will need to try to obtain information about the website owner by sending a lawyer's request to the site administrator or a request to the court to obtain evidence in accordance with the CPC of Ukraine from the administrator of the domain name registration and registration system. Currently, the organization that can provide the necessary information to the court about the owner of the website is the Association of Enterprises "Ukrainian Network Information Center".

However, one of the main methods of obtaining information about the owner of the website may be the so-called "Whois-service", which allows the Claimant to obtain information about the owner of the domain name and IP address, if it is not hidden.

However, in practice, the managers of such information ignore both the lawyer's requests and the relevant requirements of the court after the opening of the proceedings, without providing the necessary information.

What are the problems in this direction of legal protection?

The first thing that lawyers face is the opening of proceedings. Courts in most cases refuse to initiate non-litigation proceedings to recognize a relevant legal fact. The courts motivate this decision by the fact that in such cases there is a fact about the dispute between the parties. That is, courts in making such decisions inattentively examine all the circumstances of the case, case law in this area, which adds to the application of lawyers and costs of their clients, as they have to appeal to the court of appeal to appeal such a decision.

The court of appeal then returns the case to the court of first instance, which in turn opens the case. Then it is possible to recognize the information as inaccurate and at the same time try to block such a site.

However, the problem is not even in the judiciary, but in the fact that the legislative level in Ukraine in no way regulates the activities of Internet sites and does not provide for the responsibility of their owner when the resource is spread slander, etc.…

It turns out that the above mechanism remains the only protection mechanism in cases of anonymous dissemination of inaccurate information.