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The Communications Regulatory Agency (RAK/CRA) recently published its 2009 report on the Internet in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There are currently 77 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) legally registered in the country. However, seven ISPs were not included in this survey; RAK did not give specific reasons for this. In total, there are 399,329 Internet subscribers and close to 1.5 million Internet users, which is an increase of 63,166 Internet subscribers and approximately 200,000 Internet users compared with the previous year (see IRIS 2009-5: 7/10). 37% of the country’s total population (estimated...

A very specific case recently prompted a reaction from the Communications Regulatory Agency (RAK) concerning the sensitive issue of judging broadcast programme content. The political magazine “60 minutes” of the Federal Television (FTV), a public broadcaster, in its issue broadcast on 8 February 2010, borrowed from YouTube inserts from the movie “Der Untergang” (“Downfall”). The story is about Hitler and his closest associates in his Berlin bunker, shortly before Berlin’s final downfall. The video clip was named “Vidimo se u Bileci” (“See you in Bileca”) and makes an allusion to an election debacle...

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has expressed its strong concern about the situation of public service broadcasting in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The EBU Director General sent a letter to both Houses of the Parliament of BiH on 18 February 2010, copied to the joint Presidency and the Prime Minister, calling upon them to act in favour of public service broadcasting. This letter was also copied to the main international actors in the post-Dayton BiH, including the Council of Europe, the OSCE and UNESCO. The letter states, inter alia, that “a media law in line with European standards came...

The Communications Regulatory Agency (RAK) has fined the public broadcaster Radio Televizija Republike Srpske (RTRS) BAM 100,000 (about EUR 50,000) due to a violation of Article 32 para. 1 of the BiH Law on Communications because of unauthorised use of the frequency band via 61 UHF channel around the area of Banjaluka, the capital of the Republika Srpska. On 12 December 2009 RTRS started its experimental digital terrestrial broadcasting under a regular programme schedule (DVB-T standard and MPEG 2 compression). On 14 December 2009 the RAK warned RTRS and ordered it to stop the unauthorised digital...

The difficult political, administrative and ethnic situation in BiH has its resonance in the country´s media too, including communication in cyberspace. BiH is experiencing an expanding role of the Internet with a flood of private websites, forums and the like in which hate speech is also mushrooming. The Communications Regulatory Agency (RAK) has expanded its mandate on SMS broadcast via TV stations (see IRIS 2009-1: 1), but has not yet adopted further regulation regarding Internet content. A key problem is the global medium and local law dichotomy. But hateful messages posted (e.g.: “Bosniaks...