Exercising your right of reply

Who may use this right

Any natural or legal person named or identified in content published on aubeactu.fr or aubeactu.com. Being identified does not require being named: a description that lets people recognise you is enough. The right is exercised in person, by the legal representative of an organisation, or by a successor in title.

The right does not depend on proving an error: having been put in question is enough. It is free of charge and not open to negotiation.

The three numbers that matter

• 3 months: the deadline to ask, running from the moment the content was made available to the public. After that the request is time-barred.
• 3 days: the period within which the publication director must publish the reply, running from receipt of the request.
• €3,750: the fine incurred for refusing to publish.

How to ask

Through the form below, which constitutes a request as soon as it is recorded and triggers a timestamped acknowledgement. By e-mail to droit-de-reponse@aubeactu.fr. Or by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt addressed to the publication director, Adnan TOURAK, AubeActu, 5 rue Michelet, 10000 Troyes, France.

Whatever the channel, the three-day period runs from receipt, and your request is entered in the same timestamped register. E-mail requests are checked every working day.

What the request must contain

• your full identity and your capacity — person named, legal representative, successor in title;
• a postal address, an e-mail address and a telephone number;
• the exact address of the content concerned;
• a quotation of the passages you dispute;
• the text of the reply you are asking us to publish;
• a document evidencing your identity.

The identity document is stored outside the site's web root, encrypted, never reachable at a public address, and destroyed five years after the file is closed. It is used only to verify that you are indeed the person concerned.

Length of the reply

The reply is limited to the length of the passage that prompted it, up to 200 lines. It must relate to the disputed passages.

How the reply is published

In conditions similar to the disputed content: in the same place, in the same typographic presentation, within the body of the article itself and not in a footer or on a separate page, reachable for as long as the article, and readable without JavaScript. It is headed "Right of reply" and remains indexable.

What may be refused

The grounds for refusal are exhaustive. A reply may be refused if it is contrary to the law, to public order or to public decency, if it infringes the legitimate interest of a third party, or if it damages the honour of the journalist. Any refusal is reasoned in writing and notified to you.

Correction, the other possible outcome

The publication director is not obliged to publish the reply if he or she makes the deletion or correction you ask for within three days of receiving your request (article 5 of decree no. 2007-1527 of 24 October 2007). In that case the correction is published at the foot of the article, dated, and you are informed. If the correction does not happen within that period, the reply is published.

If the three-month deadline has passed

The right of reply is no longer available, but other routes are: a factual correction, with no time limit; a removal, anonymisation or de-indexing request, which falls under data protection law; a report of unlawful content. Court proceedings remain possible within their own time limits.