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In a ruling of 6 January 2022 (case no. 907 Ds 6111 Js 250180/19), the Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt am Main District Court) decided that the distribution of videos promoting Nazi ideology and images from the Nazi era via WhatsApp status constituted the punishable offence of incitement of the masses. It fined the defendant EUR 750. In 2019, the accused uploaded to his WhatsApp status a video that could be viewed for a period of 24 hours by anyone who had saved his phone number at the time on a device suitable for installing WhatsApp and had WhatsApp installed on that device. The first...

The German federal government adopted a new digital strategy on 31 August 2022. The strategy is designed to boost the digital transformation in Germany, where many sectors of state government and administration, civil society, industry, education and science are lagging behind with digital technology and hampered by an outdated analogue infrastructure and especially slow data transfer networks. The digital strategy therefore contains objectives and proposals for a “digital awakening” in various policy areas that are divided into three categories: (1) connected society and digital sovereignty,...

On 30 June 2022, the amendments to the Medienstaatsvertrag (state media treaty, MStV) that were brought in under the Zweite Medienänderungsstaatsvertrag (second state treaty amending the state media treaty, 2. MÄndStV) entered into force following their ratification by the parliaments of the 16 German Länder (federal states). The amendments are mainly designed to implement Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services and further strengthen the provisions of the MStV, aimed at...

The Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM), the central organ of the 14 German Landesmedienanstalten (state media authorities) responsible for the protection of young people in the media, has, for the first time, approved three age verification systems that do not rely on identity documents but use biometric age estimation software based on machine learning. The three systems can therefore be used in the future because they meet the requirements of the German Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (State Treaty on the Protection...

On 2 June 2022, the heads of government of the German Länder (federal states) agreed to reform the remit and structure of public broadcasting in Germany through the Dritte Staatsvertrag zur Änderung medienrechtlicher Staatsverträge (third state treaty amending the state media treaties, 3. MÄndStV), which deals in particular with the definition of the public service remit, programming flexibility, the further development of public broadcasters’ online mandate and the strengthening of their supervisory bodies. In concrete terms, the latest reforms extend the public service...