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In the legal dispute concerning a television film produced on the Contergan scandal by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German Broadcasting Corporation - WDR), the Oberlandesgericht Hamburg (Hamburg Court of Appeal) largely set aside four judgments on 10 April 2007 against the broadcasting of the film. In July 2006, Grünenthal GmbH, the former manufacturer of the drug Contergan (thalidomide) and the lawyer who represented the victims at that time obtained an interim injunction against the broadcasting of the film (see IRIS 2006-8: 12). The Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court) had regarded...

Recent reports reveal that, on 21 February 2007, the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court) confirmed an interim injunction issued in December last year prohibiting the company Impressions Future Media from using certain music recordings for its on-demand service known as StayTuned.de. At the StayTuned.de platform, music titles can be selected and played for a fee. The service also comprises a choice of radio programmes and offers the possibility of “borrowing” downloads. The Deutsche Phonoverbände (German Phonographic Associations, which include the German section of the IFPI), representing...

In a judgment of 25 April 2007, the Landgericht Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf District Court) was required to rule on whether news items and texts developed in the context of journalism may be duplicated, distributed, published in an edited form, or otherwise made available to the public by third parties, either in whole or in part. A company that distributes such texts to organisations like television and radio stations and the press had sued a non-profit-making association and its chairman, claiming that its news items had been taken and published either unchanged, or in modified form, at the association’s...

On 24 May 2007, the Landgericht München I (Munich District Court I) dismissed an application for temporary legal protection that was filed by the creator of the well-known television and children’s literature figure “Pumuckl” against the artist who draws the cartoon. In a contribution to a television programme concerning a children’s painting competition on the subject of “A friend for Pumuckl”, the respondent (the artist) had said that Pumuckl deserved to have a girlfriend. The competition organiser also promoted this by announcing that the winner could visit the artist’s studio and attend the...

On 26 April 2007, the Bundestag Sub-Committee on New Media held an expert hearing on “The protection of minors in the media and violent computer games”. In his introduction, the Director of the Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen e.V. (Lower Saxony Criminal Research Institute - KFN) showed a number of violent scenes from computer games and described the aims of these games, all of which were to move up to a higher level in the game hierarchy. He then presented the results of studies that allegedly prove that extremely violent computer games make young people more aggressive. According...