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On 12 February 2024, Austrian legislators took the last remaining step to remove a historic and blatant obstacle to freedom of information. From September 2025, Austria will have a constitutionally guaranteed right to information for citizens vis-à-vis the state, together with the necessary rules for its enforcement. Both the National Council and the Federal Council of the Austrian Parliament gave the green light for a corresponding amendment to the Constitution and an accompanying Freedom of Information Act with the required two-thirds majority. The new legal regime is to end the decades-long...

The EU's AI Act will have massive implications for Austria. Still, the government decided not to wait an additional two years up until EU law enters into force but to respond to the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) at the national level and prepare well ahead. Even before the EU AI Act comes into force, Austria will implement a labelling requirement for AI systems for transparency purposes. A survey on the use of AI applications in the federal ministries has already been carried out for this purpose. Thus, in December 2023, an amendment to the KommAustria Act and the Telecommunications...

A judgment of 5 September 2023 of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) dealt with a complaint under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) about the refusal to hold the publisher of an Internet news portal liable for hate speech in users’ comments against a female journalist. With reference to its earlier Grand Chamber case law in the context of freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR, as in Delfi AS v. Estonia (IRIS 2015-7/1) and more recently Sanchez v. France (IRIS 2023-6:1/15), the ECtHR reiterated that when comments take the form of hate speech and direct...

The Austrian federal government has announced that a new incentive scheme for film producers will be introduced on 1 January 2023, with the aim of strengthening Austria’s position as a film location. As a result, the existing film funding model will be restructured and streaming productions will be included for the first time. The proposed model offers automatic, non-repayable subsidies worth up to 35% of film production expenditure in Austria, granted in accordance with a list of criteria and of which 5% is subject to environmental criteria. A maximum of EUR 5 million will be payable for...

In principle, the operator of a video-sharing platform or a file-hosting and sharing platform (in this case, YouTube) does not make a “communication to the public” of content that users illegally make available to the public. The Austrian Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court – OGH) concluded that this was the case, at least prior to the implementation of Directive (EU) 2019/790 of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC (DSM Directive). In a decision published on 17 September 2021, the OGH considered...