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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...

On 30 October 2009, the Minister-Presidents of the Länder signed the 13. Rundfunkänderungsstaatsvertrag (13th amendment to the Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement - RÄStV ). The primary reason for adopting the 13th RÄStV is to transpose the Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2007/65/EC into German law. In particular, product placement is allowed in certain cases for the first time (see IRIS 2009-6:9). Public service broadcasters are permitted to use product placement "during cinema films, television films and series, sports broadcasts and light entertainment programmes, which were not commissioned...

In the legal dispute between RTL Television GmbH and Sat.1 Satellitenfernsehen GmbH, the Oberlandesgericht Köln (Cologne Appeal Court - OLG) issued a ruling on 30 October 2009, rejecting RTL's complaint and overturning the decision of the court of lower instance. The underlying case concerns film material from the episode of an RTL talent show broadcast on 23 January 2008. The episode included an appearance by a candidate who broke down after one of the judges gave a devastating appraisal of his performance. On the following two days, the broadcaster Sat.1 reported on this incident, using several...