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On 11 June 2010, the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) adopted an amendment to the Filmförderungsgesetz (Film Support Act - FFG). The Bundesrat (upper house of parliament) had already decided not to raise any objections on 26 March 2010 and adopted it on 18 June 2010. Under the revised FFG, whose entry into force was backdated to 1 January 2010, the television industry is now legally obliged to pay a fixed level of contributions to the Filmförderungsanstalt (Film Support Office - FFA). Previously, television companies were free to negotiate the level of their contributions with the FFA (Art....

In early July, the LandgerichtDuisburg (Duisburg district court - LG) reinstated a temporary injunction, under which the erotic broadcaster Beate-Uhse.tv was provisionally prohibited from transmitting its programmes via the pay-TV broadcaster Sky before 11 p.m. According to media reports, however, the OberlandesgerichtDüsseldorf (Düsseldorf court of appeal - OLG) lifted this injunction on 21 July 2010. The programmes may now again be shown from 8 p.m. onwards. The case follows a complaint from a company that itself operates an encrypted online pornography service and believed that the Sky service,...

On 24 June 2010, the European Commission issued a set of reasoned opinions to 12 member states (Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia) requesting that they proceed with updating their national broadcasting legislation in order to bring it into compliance with the Audiovisual Media Service (AVMS) Directive. The Directive, which replaced the Television without Frontiers Directive of 1989 (as amended), was adopted in December 1997 with the intention of bringing the EU’s broadcasting rules up to speed with the digital age. The...

On 6 May 2010, the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media - BKM) presented a model for the financial support of full cinema digitisation, developed in partnership with the Filmförderungsanstalt (Film Support Office - FFA). The aim of the project is to protect the diversity of the cinema landscape and provide a basic cultural service. To this end, cinema operators who cannot afford to switch to digital projection technologies themselves will receive financial support. These particularly include art house cinemas, municipally-owned...

On 27 April 2010, the Verwaltungsgericht Berlin (Berlin Administrative Court - VG) ruled on the decisive criteria for defining "structural improvement" in the sense of Art. 56 para. 1 no. 1 of the Filmförderungsgesetz 2004 (2004 Film Support Act - FFG 2004) and the date on which such criteria should be applied. In the underlying case, the plaintiffs had applied to the Filmförderungsanstalt (Film Support Office - FFA) in 2006 for financial assistance with the construction of a multiplex cinema with 10 screens and 1,200 seats. The FFA refused the application, most recently in a decision taken on...