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The Federal Government has issued a statement in response to the bill tabled by the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament) amending the Telemediengesetz (Telemedia Act - TMG). The bill, based on a draft text adopted in June 2011 in order to improve data protection on online platforms, was tabled on 3 August 2011 (doc. 17/6765). By means of the bill, the Bundesrat endeavours to increase information obligations for service providers, improve transparency in relation to the gathering, processing and use of personal data, and provide clearer information, particularly for young people, about the “dangers...

On 9 August 2011, the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht der Medienanstalten (Media Licensing and Monitoring Commission - ZAK) filed complaints about several cases of unlawful advertising on the channels Sat.1, Sport 1 and the Turkish-language channels Kanal Avrupa and Türkshow. In the ZAK’s opinion, Sat.1 infringed the rules on the separation of advertising and programme material contained in Article 7(3) of the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Interstate Broadcasting Agreement - RStV) by broadcasting its own image trailer directly before commercial breaks. The trailer showed a famous female singer running...

In a ruling of 31 August 2011, the Landgericht Köln (Cologne District Court - LG) rejected an action brought by several manufacturers of audio storage media against an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The plaintiffs wanted to force the ISP to block its customers’ access to a well-known file-sharing platform. In the plaintiffs’ opinion, the ISP was liable under Article 97(1) of the Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act) because it enabled its customers to infringe their rights. The ISP was both technically and legally able to prevent its customers accessing the file-sharing service concerned by blocking...

According to media reports, the Oberlandesgericht München (Munich District Appeal Court - OLG) decided on 30 June 2011 that hotel operators and cable companies are obliged to pay reasonable compensation to broadcasters for the use of their television and radio programmes. In the proceedings, a hotel operator and a private news broadcaster had argued over whether compensation was due for the use of television programmes in hotel rooms. According to the reports, the OLG found that using the hotel’s own distribution equipment to retransmit programme signals to television and radio sets installed in...

On 22 September 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) published its judgment in the joined cases C-244/10 and C-245/10 following references for a preliminary ruling from the German Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) concerning the interpretation of the ban on the broadcast of programmes that incite hatred, enshrined in Article 22a of the Television Without Frontiers Directive 89/552/EEC (now: Article 6 of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2010/13/EU). The related national procedure concerned an order issued by the Bundesministerium des Innern...