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On 26 May 2009, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) made public its latest reports on Belgium, Germany and Slovakia, adopted in the fourth round of its monitoring of the laws, policies and practices to combat racism in the Member States of the Council of Europe (for commentary on earlier reports, see IRIS 2009-5: 4, IRIS 2008-4: 6, IRIS 2006-6: 4 and IRIS 2005-7: 3). In respect of Belgium, ECRI “strongly recommends” that the State authorities “pursue and step up their efforts to combat the presence of racist expressions on the Internet” (para. 100), including through...

In a ruling of 28 May 2009 (case no. 7 O 17548/08), the Landgericht München I (Munich District Court I - LG) rejected the claim by German pay-TV provider Premiere Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG against aerial manufacturer Kathrein-Werke KG for payment of a penalty for breach of contract of more than EUR 26 million. Between 2003 and 2007, Kathrein had made decoders for the reception of Premiere's television service. Agreeing to pay a penalty of EUR 50,000 for any breach of its contract with Premiere, Kathrein had promised not to manufacture, either itself or via third parties, devices which could be used...

In a ruling of 12 March 2009 (case no. 7 A 10959/08.OVG), the Oberverwaltungsgericht Rheinland-Pfalz (Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate - OVG) dismissed the complaint of a lawyer, who had appealed against decisions taken by Südwestrundfunk (SWR) that he should pay a licence fee for a PC with Internet access that he used for his work. In the previous instance, the Verwaltungsgericht Koblenz (Koblenz Administrative Court - VG) had ruled in favour of the lawyer on 15 July 2008 and overturned SWR's decisions to impose the monthly licence fees on the grounds that the abstract notion...

In May, in the dispute over the use of programme information in electronic programme guides (EPGs) on the Internet, the Landgericht Leipzig (Leipzig District Court - LG) ruled in favour of the plaintiff, the collecting society VG Media (case no. 5 O 2742/08). According to this decision, the information may only be used if a licence fee has been paid to the relevant rightsholders (see IRIS 2008-4: 12). The defendant company, tvtv, operates a website under the domain name tvtv.de, which contains information about television programmes. It uses additional information, such as content descriptions...

The Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) has reinstated the delaying effect of two legal challenges in an accelerated procedure (case nos. 6 VR 3.08 and 6 VR 4.08). The challenges were lodged by two public limited companies under Danish law, which operate the Kurdish-language television station Roj TV under a Danish licence. The channel can be received all over Europe via satellite. The Bundesministerium des Inneren (Federal Ministry of Home Affairs - BMI) had assumed that the television channel was a propagandist mouthpiece of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), which...