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On 15 February 2010, the Oberlandesgericht Hamburg (Hamburg Court of Appeal - OLG) decided that looking at Internet sites containing child pornography is a criminal offence under Art. 184b(4) of the Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code - StGB). It overturned the first instance ruling and referred the case back to be heard again (case no. 2-27/09 (REV)). In the case concerned, the lower instance court had noted that the defendant had accessed files containing child pornography on the Internet in order to look at them. However, since the defendant had not known that the files would be automatically stored...

On 19 February 2010, the Oberlandesgericht München (Munich Appeal Court - OLG) issued a temporary order (case no. 6 WG 6/10) against the Zentralstelle für private Überspielungsrechte (Central Office for Private Copying Rights - ZPÜ), preventing it from setting a tariff for a levy on PCs and/or publishing such a tariff in the Bundesanzeiger (Federal Gazette) before it had reached an agreement with all negotiating parties. If these negotiations were unsuccessful, an arbitration procedure would be necessary. Furthermore, the court ruled that such levies should not be imposed until empirical investigations...

The Oberverwaltungsgericht (Administrative Appeal Court - OVG) of Berlin-Brandenburg has decided in several procedures concerning temporary legal protection that the plaintiffs, multiplex cinema operators, are, for the time being, not obliged to pay film contributions to the Filmförderungsanstalt (Film Support Office) under the Filmförderungsgesetz (Film Support Act - FFG). The OVG granted the cinema operators' applications with reference to the 2009 decision of the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG), which found that the different systems for contributions paid by...

The Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) has asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling in the legal dispute concerning the broadcasting ban imposed on television broadcaster Roj TV. The TV channel, operated by two Danish public limited companies under a Danish licence, broadcasts mainly Kurdish-language programmes all over Europe. The German Bundesministerium des Inneren (Federal Ministry of Home Affairs) banned the broadcaster's activities in Germany in 2008 under German association law on the grounds that Roj TV propagated violence...

In a legal dispute between a cable network operator and the Verwertungsgesellschaft Media (Media collecting society - VG), the Kammergericht (Supreme Court - KG) in Berlin decided on 25 January 2010 that cable network operators are obliged to pay a copyright fee to broadcasters for retransmitting their programmes. It thus upheld the lower instance ruling. The Landgericht Berlin (Berlin District Court - LG) had decided in 2008 that copyright fees were due to VG Media. In its appeal, the cable network operator had argued that the court had not interpreted the concept of cable retransmission in Art....