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On 23 March 2011, the Bayerische Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Bavarian Administrative Court - BayVGH) endorsed the decision to restrict the broadcast times of two episodes of the programme "MTV I want a famous face" to between 11pm and 6am, thereby upholding the appeal of the Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (Bavarian Centre for New Media - BLM) on youth protection grounds (see IRIS 2009-10/8). The decision followed a complaint by the provider of the MTV music channel against the broadcast time restriction imposed by the BLM for several episodes of the “MTV I want a famous face” series, which...

On 21 March 2011, the Bayerische Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Bavarian Administrative Court - BayVGH) decided, in a temporary injunction procedure, that the state monopoly on sports betting based on the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Gambling Agreement), which is valid until the end of 2011, does not comply with European legislation (see cases C-447/08 and C-448/08). In the court’s opinion, due to the steadily increasing number of licensed slot machines in amusement arcades, which can be much more addictive than sports betting, the objective of systematically and coherently limiting betting and...

According to media reports, the CDU/CSU and FDP coalition committee decided on 5 April 2011 to overturn the Gesetz zur Erschwerung des Zugangs zu kinderpornographischen Inhalten in Kommunikationsnetzen (Act on the obstruction of access to child pornography via communication networks - Zugangserschwerungsgesetz), which was passed by the previous government on 18 June 2009 with the aim of enabling internet sites with child pornography content to be blocked. The law came into force on 17 February 2010 but, in accordance with the coalition agreement of the then newly-formed Federal Government and on...

As some facts remain to be clarified, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) has referred a dispute concerning the allocation of frequencies below 1GHz for mobile telephony back to the lower court. In particular, the BVerwG criticised the fact that the existence of spectrum scarcity, which is a necessary precondition for the auction procedure, had not been sufficiently established. The Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency - BNetzA), which is responsible for the allocation of radio frequencies, had ordered the allocation by auction of the frequencies previously...

On 2 March 2011, the German cabinet adopted and published the government’s draft amendment to the Telekommunikationsgesetz (Telecommunications Act - TKG). The main purpose of the proposal is the implementation of the changes to the EU’s regulatory framework for electronic communications adopted at the end of 2009. Under the conditions established by the Directive, the implementation must be completed by May. As early as September 2010, the ministry responsible, the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (Federal Ministry for the Economy and Technology) forwarded the ministerial draft...