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On 26 October 2005, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) decided that the rules contained in the Bayerisches Mediengesetz (Bavarian Media Act) concerning a cable service charge were unconstitutional. Under these rules, the Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (Bavarian New Media Office) charges a fee to owners of cable connection points, which is due in addition to subscription costs payable to cable network operators for the use of cable connection points and the licence fees that are mainly used to fund public service broadcasting. The income generated from the charge...

Following several complaints from cable network operators, the European Commission announced on 9 November 2005 that it considered subsidies worth around EUR 4 million granted by the Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg media authority - mabb) to commercial broadcasters for the use of the digital terrestrial television network (DVB-T) to be in violation of EC law. Commercial broadcasters including RTL and ProSiebenSat .1 had received a subsidy towards their transmission costs via the DVB-T network launched in November 2002, even though the Commission had not been notified. In return,...

The Institute for Communication of the Land Baden-Württemberg (LFK) has, by a recently initiated invitation to tender for the allocation of broadcasting capacity, launched a nationwide pilot project for mobile broadcasting services (“Handy-TV”) and in so doing was the first Land Media Institute to implement a decision of the Directors' Conference of the Land Media Institutes. At the end of August 2005, the aforementioned institutes had recommended taking the necessary steps for the implementation of the project. The objective of the project, as identified by the LFK, was essentially the acquisition...

On 10 October 2005, the Assembly of the Bureau for Media and Communication (LMK) for the Land Rhineland-Palatinate rejected the rebuttal by the private television company Sat 1 of a complaint concerning surreptitious advertising. The company has been accused of violating the principle whereby television programmes and advertising remain separate. Fault was found with a television game, where the rabbit figure of a sweet manufacturer was faded into television series, films and entertainment shows. Television spectators were supposed to count the number of rabbits and could win prizes. This, in...

The Commission for Youth Media Protection (KJM) has for the first time positively evaluated two partial solutions to age verification systems (AVS) for securing closed user groups on the Internet as defined by § 4 paragraph 2 line 2 of the Youth Media Protection Treaty. (JMStV). The modules are based on the plans of “fun SmartPay AVS” of fun communications ltd and “Identity Check with Q-Bit” of the SCHUFA Holding AG (an organisation involved with loans). In the KJM's opinion, an age verification system can only fulfil the requirements of the JMStv treaty, if firstly, the user's age may be verified...