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The Norwegian Broadcasting Act has been amended with a regulation requiring pre-consent for new services which Norsk rikskringkasting AS (the Norwegian public service broadcaster - NRK) wants to launch. The procedure requires an application of what is often called a public value test prior to a decision to add any significant new service to the NRK’s public service remit. The amendment was enacted by Parliament on 19 June 2009 along with several other changes (see below), all with effect from 1 January of this year. The EFTA Surveillance Authority has long expressed its dissatisfaction with how...

On 6 November 2009, a District Court in Norway ruled that there were no grounds for ordering Telenor, a major Norwegian Internet Service Provider, to block Internet access to the peer-to-peer search engine The Pirate Bay. The court ruled that Telenor cannot be held liable for copyright violations that arise from illegal downloads. The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine, enables the download of data from multiple sources on a peer-to-peer file-sharing system. This rather popular service has been a frequent target for the entertainment industry, with lawsuits filed in several countries across...

Following pre-notification contacts between the European Surveillance Authority, the EFTA watchdog body, and the Norwegian exhibitors’ organisation Film & Kino, full digital roll-out to all 440 cinema screens in 220 locations across Norway will commence this autumn, to be completed by 2011. Implementation of the ambitious scheme follows the publication by the ESA in May of a preliminary assessment, in which it declared itself satisfied that no State aid is involved in the funding of the digitalisation programme. Norway’s exhibition structure is dominated by municipally owned and operated cinemas,...

On 9 July the Norwegian Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe signed the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-Production (ETS 147) on behalf of the Kingdom of Norway. Norway thus becomes the 40 ^th signatory to the Convention. The signature follows a Royal Decree of 26 June 2009 establishing the legal basis for the signing and the approval of the Convention. Norway is the last of the Scandinavian countries to sign the Convention. The decision to accede comes after a protracted process, involving film industry lobbying for accession, administrative review of the compatibility...

The European Court in a recent judgment clarified the relation of the freedom of the press (Art. 10) vis à vis the right of privacy (Art. 8) and the presumption of innocence (Art. 6 para. 2) in a case of crime-reporting in the media. The applicant, A, is a Norwegian national with a criminal past. The case concerns A’s complaint about the unfavourable outcome of a defamation suit he brought against the Fœdrelandsvennen newspaper, following its publication of two articles concerning the preliminary investigation into a murder case which implicated him. A had been questioned as...