Search results : 1359

On 15 June 2021, the Landesmedienanstalten (state media authorities) ruled on the first six cases linked to possible discrimination against journalistic and editorial providers by media intermediary Google on the basis of the Medienstaatsvertrag (state media treaty – MStV), which came into force on 7 November 2020. Since the treaty came into force, media intermediaries have been subject to German media regulation aimed at protecting diversity of opinion. Search engines, which are a type of media intermediary, aggregate and select third-party editorial content and present it in the form...

In rulings of 29 July 2021 (III ZR 179/20 and III ZR 192/20), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH) decided that Facebook’s terms of business, governing the deletion of users’ posts and the blocking of accounts when its internal standards had been breached, were ineffective. This was especially the case if Facebook did not agree to inform users about the removal of their posts, at least in retrospect, and about the intention to block their accounts in advance, indicate the reason for doing so, and grant them the opportunity to respond and request a new decision....

In two recent decisions, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court – BVerwG), Germany’s highest ordinary administrative court, ordered the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Agency – BND) to show greater transparency towards journalists. Under these decisions, the BND is required to disclose to journalists the identity of parties, involved in court proceedings, who had fought against the disclosure of press contacts in a separate court procedure, and that of media representatives invited to hold ‘informal briefings’ with the BND. These information...

Following numerous violations of the Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (State Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media – JMStV), the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) ordered the blocking of a pornographic website in a case referred to it by the Landesanstalt für Medien NRW (North-Rhine Westphalia media authority – LfM NRW). Many user profiles on the widely used German-language website provide unrestricted access to pornographic content, that is clearly likely to seriously impair the development...

On 22 June 2021, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) issued a judgment on the joined cases C‑682/18 and C‑683/18. The case concerned several infringements of the intellectual property rights held by Mr Peterson and Elsevier committed by users of the video‑sharing platform operated by YouTube and the file-hosting and -sharing platform operated by Cyando, respectively. The judgment follows the German Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) request for a preliminary ruling concerning the interpretation of Article 3(1) and Article 8(3) of the InfoSoc Directive, of Article...