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The European Commission has endorsed Germany’s new film fund on the basis of EC Treaty state aid rules. The Commission’s assessment of the scheme was based on the criteria set out in its 2001 Communication on state aid for cinema and audiovisual works (see IRIS 2001-9: 6). The scheme has been approved until 31 December 2009. In summer 2006, the Federal Government decided to introduce measures to support the German film industry (see IRIS 2006-8: 12) and asked a group of experts to draw up the key allocation criteria for a new system of production cost rebates. After these key criteria were put...

The Federal Constitutional Court arrived at a decision on 22 August 2006 on a case in which there was a judicial initiative by the court, relating to the inheritability of assets pertaining to the right to privacy. The Court’s decision was the outcome of a lawsuit involving the use of a picture of Marlene Dietrich for advertising purposes. In 1993 the defendant in the original proceedings and subsequent plaintiff who deals in photocopying machines promoted the environmental friendliness of her equipment in a newspaper advertisement using a photograph of a well-known scene from the film „The Blue...

On 15 September the District Court of Hannover imposed a fine of EUR 10,000 on an Internet page provider. A photographer from Hannover had shown photos of minors striking unnatural and sexually suggestive poses on pages that he managed, some to which access was free and others which required payment. The Media Institute for Lower Saxony (NLM) had, on account of the violation of the Youth Media Protection State Agreement, imposed fines in November 2005 and June 2006 in this case, which the party concerned subsequently challenged in court. The District Court has now confirmed the legal view of the...

On the recommendation of its legal committee, the Bundesrat (Upper House of the German Parliament), during its plenary session on 22 September 2006, did not propose to summon a meeting of a mediation committee in accordance with Art. 77 Abs. 2 GG of the fifth law on the amendment of the copyright law (publication 811/06). The bill introduced into Parliament by the government and approved on 29 June 2006 in slightly amended form is accordingly passed into law. The law serves to transpose Directive 2001/84/EC of the European Parliament and Council dated 27 September 2001 on the resale right of the...

With the planned change to the law on private broadcasting as well as to the law on Hessian broadcasting, the regional government is striving, as it has explained, to modernise the legal framework regarding electronic media. Changes to the allocation of radio and television frequencies should lead in future to these being organised as economically as possible. Changes are also planned to the provisions referring to utilisation of analogue and digital cable facilities. The proposals submitted in a first draft for hearing were however received by the Association of Private Broadcasting and Telecommunications...