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On 7 November 2022, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) announced that it had approved another age verification system, which means there are now 102 KJM-approved age verification systems on the market. The latest system to be approved, known as “FaceAssure”, was devised by Privately SA. Machine learning was used to train it to estimate a person’s age based on their biometric features. In order to mitigate the fact that some young people look older than they really are, the KJM requires the system to...

At their meeting on 21 October 2022, the Minister-Presidents of the German Bundesländer adopted the 3. Medienänderungsstaatsvertrag (third state treaty amending the state media treaty), which, among other things, sets out the framework for public service broadcasting in Germany, defines the remit of the broadcasters that make up the ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio, and contains guidelines for jointly organised channels and additional services. At the heart of the reforms is a new definition of the remit of public broadcasters. Under their remit, the public broadcasters are to act as...

In a judgment of 25 August 2022 (case no. 3 K 606/21), the Verwaltungsgericht Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe Administrative Court) decided that the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) did not infringe third-party rights by informing journalists of its decisions before they were officially published. The Bundesverfassungsgericht gives full members of the Juristenpressekonferenz (conference of legal journalists) access to important decisions the evening before they are officially published. The Juristenpressekonferenz is a private association which, according to its statutes, is made...

The Landesmedienanstalten (state media authorities) have published a so-called "public value list", ordered alphanumerically, of media (television, radio and telemedia) that, through their content, significantly contribute to the formation of public opinion. Inclusion in the public value list is meant to represent a special seal of quality for the services concerned. Public-value services were selected on the basis of the criteria set out in Article 84(5)(2) of the Medienstaatsvertrag (state media treaty – MStV), which the media authorities had explained in more detail in a statute...

In September 2022, the Niedersächsische Landesmedienanstalt (Lower Saxony media authority – NLM), implementing resolutions of the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht (Commission on Licensing and Supervision – ZAK) of the state media authorities, filed complaints concerning a total of three advertising infringements by private television broadcasters: one concerned the RTL channel operated by RTL Television GmbH and two were directed against the teleshopping channel CHANNEL21. Firstly, the Hanover-based authority criticised a split-screen advertisement for a smartphone,...