European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Final Judgement, Akdeniz v. Turkey, 20877/10

(1) Last.fm was blocked by Turkish courts at the request of a local group representing rights holders. It was challenged by the applicant simply as a user of the site, without involvement by last.fm or local ISPs. He was denied standing by Turkish courts. (2) The Second Section ECHR found that the applicant could not claim to be a victim of an Article 10 violation. Two main arguments were put forward to sustain the inadmissibility decision: (a) the content was available to the applicant through other means and was not ‘of special interest’ to the applicant (cf. Khurshid Mustafa case where Iraqi family was prevented by landlord from installing a satellite dish to receive Arabic channels not available otherwise) (para. 25); (b) the case did not raise an important question of general interest – i.e. it was not political but commercial speech in whose regulation states enjoy a greater margin of appreciation (para. 28).