Возможности правовой самозащиты лиц при распространении сведений, порочащих их деловую репутацию

Abstract

The dissemination of information discrediting the business reputation of an organisation or a citizen is one of the main factors hindering the normal economic or professional activities of a person, as well as entailing financial losses and loss of trust on the part of counterparties and (or) clients of a person. At the same time the potential or already incurred damage, especially in view of rapid development of modern information and telecommunication technologies, should be levelled not only through jurisdictional protection, but also in the form of legal self-defense, which, unlike judicial and other jurisdictional protection of law,takes a variety of forms and differs as to the speed of implementation. But the analysis of available possibilities of legal self-defense revealed that not all forms of self-defense of business reputation are equally effective. Thus, the placement of the response, replica or comment of the affected person in the media or other data sources that are available to counterparties and clients of the person, including with the application of evidence of inconsistency of defamatory information with reality, is clearly more effective than attempts to remove defamatory information from a specific source: this is because of almost uncontrolled dissemination of information on the Internet and the possibility of duplicating this information on other media. In addition, it should be noted that the self-defense of business reputation must meet the conditions of proportionality and ethical correctness, since otherwise the protection of the right may take the form of an offense and present the affected person as intolerant to negative opinions about him, after which the general public will be reluctant to deal with him, which may entail additional losses due to the refusal of clients and counterparties to enter into any legal relationship with this citizen or organisation.