Search results : 1348

In December 2009, two court rulings were issued in relation to whether programme providers can charge a licence fee for the use of their programme information in electronic programme guides (EPGs). According to reports, the Oberlandesgericht Dresden (Dresden Appeal Court - OLG) ruled that this was the case on 15 December 2009 in an appeal procedure between the collecting society Verwertungsgesellschaft Media (VG Media) and the online programme magazine tvtv.de. It therefore upheld a first instance decision taken by the Landgericht Leipzig (Leipzig District Court - LG) in May 2009. The LG had decided...

In a ruling on 20 November 2009, the Verwaltungsgericht Köln (Cologne Administrative Court - VG) decided that Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) is not obliged to provide information to citizens under the North Rhine-Westphalia Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (Freedom of Information Act - IFG NRW). The proceedings followed a complaint lodged on the basis of the IFG NRW by a freelance journalist against the broadcaster's refusal to disclose information. The plaintiff had wanted to know which companies WDR cooperated with and how much money was involved. The journalist had requested this information because...

On 27 November 2009, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) upheld a decision of the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt am Main District Court - LG) of 2 October 2008 (case no. 2 StR 104/09), imposing a prison sentence against a former television presenter and editor of Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) for corruption and embezzlement. According to the BGH's ruling, editors working for the public broadcasting companies affiliated to the ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio qualify as office-holders within the meaning of criminal law and can therefore be punished for accepting bribes. In the...

In a ruling of 15 December 2009, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) rejected the plaintiffs' demand that certain old reports should be removed from the online archive of a radio broadcaster. Both plaintiffs were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 for the murder of a well-known German actor and have since been released on parole. Until 2007, the defendant made available, in its publicly accessible online archive, an article from the year 2000, in which - on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the actor's murder - the crime was reported, revealing the full identities of the...

Representatives of the cinema industry have rejected the offer made by the Filmförderungsanstalt (Film Support Office - FFA) on the initiative of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media concerning support for the full digitisation of cinemas in Germany (see IRIS 2009-8:10). Under the proposal, the FFA would provide start-up funds of up to EUR 40 million for digitisation. In return, the FFA demanded that the cinema industry drop its complaints about the obligation to pay film contributions on the grounds that it infringed the principle of fair contributions, and that it pay the contributions...