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On 1 October 2020, the German Landesmedienanstalten (state media authorities) published a report on the different forms of disinformation and its distribution from both communication-related and legal perspectives. The report defines various types of disinformation, categorises them from a legal point of view and describes measures that can be taken to combat them. The report describes the seven main forms of disinformation or misinformation and the threats they each pose to society and democracy. They include deliberate decontextualisation of real information; deliberate misinformation; manipulative...

On 30 September 2020, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) ruled that youth protection rules had been breached on the Twitter platform. Unable to prosecute the account holders concerned on account of their anonymity, the KJM held Twitter itself responsible. In six separate cases, the KJM found that Twitter users had breached the German Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (Inter-State Treaty on the protection of minors in the media – JMStV) by making pornographic content publicly accessible. Since the service providers...

On 10 September 2020, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar published his opinion in the case between VG Bild-Kunst and Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (C-392/19) concerning copyright infringements resulting from the embedding of third-party content on websites. He concluded that embedding works using automatic links (so-called inline linking) requires the authorisation of the copyright holder, whereas embedding them using clickable links using the framing technique does not. The same would apply if the works were embedded by circumventing technical measures taken or instigated by the copyright...

In two recent judgments issued on 21 July and 9 September 2020, the Landgericht Köln (Cologne Regional Court, Case no. 33 O 138/19) and the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe Regional Court of Appeal, Case no. 6 U 38/19) ruled that Instagram influencers were obliged to label references to brand names as advertising. The Landgericht Köln decided that such posts by Instagram influencers should be labelled as advertising even if no remuneration was involved. Product recommendations constituted a commercial practice even if no advertising contract had been agreed. In this case,...

On 21 August 2020, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) published a report entitled “Search engine filter mechanisms”. The report, prepared by jugendschutz.net on behalf of the KJM, studied the security settings of Germany’s two most popular search engines, Google and Bing. It concluded that, even when security settings were activated, children and young people using both platforms could easily come into contact with content that could harm their development, especially through search results relating to...