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By a letter dated 29 May 1996 to Parliament, the Dutch under-secretary for culture announced that the Council of Ministers has agreed to extend the Media Authority's regulatory power on access to cable networks until 1 January 1997. Originally, amendment of the Media Act of 2 April 1996 gave the Authority this power of intervention until 1 July 1996. ( See IRIS 1996-5 : 12) The Parliament now has to approve the extension of the power under article 69 of the Media Act. The amendment - as the under secretary announced - will be put before the Parliament on the shortest possible term. The term is...

In a dispute between pay-TV-firm NetHold and the Amsterdam cable network A2000 over who controls the access to cable subscribers, the Amsterdam administrative court on 15 May made an inconclusive ruling. It sent the matter back to the Dutch Media Authority, who earlier ruled in favour of NetHold. NetHold and A2000 are fighting over who should decide on the type of decoder that should be installed on the A2000 network. A2000 (now jointly owned by an affiliate of Philips Electronics and US West) wants to impose use of its own type of Philips-made decoders. NetHold, Europe's third-largest pay-TV concern...

In a ruling of 10 May 1996 the Dutch supreme court, the Hoge Raad, has adopted the European Court for Human Right's judgement in the case of Goodwin v UK ( see IRIS 1996-4: 5). As in the case of Goodwin, the Hoge Raad ruled that Article 10 ECHM entails in principle a privilege of non-disclosure for a journalist to protect his sources of information. The European Court's judgement forced the Dutch judiciary to alter its position on the question of a 'journalistic privilege'. In its last judgement on this subject, of 11 November 1977, the Hoge Raad ruled that Dutch law generally forced the journalist...

On 2 April 1996 the Dutch Parliament approved the proposed change to the Media Act, which now allows commercial broadcasting local and regional level. This result is attained by removing the limitation that commercial broadcasters have to broadcast nationwide. The new Media Act also renders permanent the up to 1 January 1996 experimental advertising regime, by which the local and regional broadcasters were allowed to broadcast advertisements and keep the advertising income themselves. Furthermore, the modified Media Act appoints the Dutch Media Authority supervisory power in conflicts concerning...

In IRIS 1996-2: 14 we reported that the Holland Media Group SA (HMG) had decided to shut down its television channel RTL5 following the decision taken by the European Commission of 20 September requiring HMG to sell RTL5. In reaction to the decision, Mr Karel van Miert, the Commissioner responsible for competition matters, indicated that this constituted a new situation in which the Commission would have to reconsider its initial point of view. In the meantime, as we report elsewhere in this issue of IRIS a new private commercial television channel is being established in the Netherlands, i.e.,...