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In Spring 2002, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty entered into force. Germany had signed both treaties on 20 December 1996, at the conclusion of a Diplomatic Conference on copyright and related rights held in Geneva. Under German law, ratification of these treaties depends not only on a new Vertragsgesetz (Treaty Act) being introduced in accordance with Article 59.2 of the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) - the Gesetz über die Zustimmung des Deutschen Bundestages zum WIPO-Vertrag (Act on the Approval by the German Bundestag of the WIPO Treaty) - but also on German...

In a letter sent in mid-October 2002 to the President of the Rundfunkkommission (Broadcasting Commission) of the Länder and the Minister-President of Rheinland-Pfalz, the public service broadcasters - the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Union of German Public Service Broadcasters - ARD), Zweite Deutsche Fernsehen (ZDF) and DeutschlandRadio (DLR) - explained how they understood their public service remit. The reason for the letter was an amendment to the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on Broadcasting - RStV), adopted...

With the exchange of ratification documents between the current Mayor of the Berlin Land and the Minister-President of the Brandenburg Land, the merger of the two regional broadcasting authorities was officially completed on 29 November 2002. The broadcasting authorities, Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) and Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg (ORB) have therefore amalgamated to form a single public service broadcaster known as Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) (see IRIS 2002-7: 8). The Inter-State Agreement, which needed the approval of the parliaments of both Länder, was given the green light by the...

On 12 November 2002, the Kommission zur Ermittlung der Konzentration im Medienbereich (Commission on Concentration in the Media - KEK), which is responsible for monitoring media concentration in Germany, provisionally approved the acquisition of shares in news broadcaster n-tv by RTL Television GmbH (RTL), which is part of the RTL Group. The decision was given on the proviso that, if the RTL Group attains a dominant position, measures will be taken to guarantee diversity of opinion. RTL will acquire the stakes of GWF Gesellschaft für Wirtschaftsfernsehen mbH & Co. KG (47.33 %), Verlag Norman Rentrop...

On 10 October 2002, in the legal dispute setting broadcasting corporations against the Regulierungsbehörde für Post und Telekommunikation (Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Post - RegTP), the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) dismissed a points-of-law appeal from the broadcasters against a decision given by the court of first instance. The subject of the original dispute had been an objection raised by the Regulatory Authority against Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) on account of the charging of different fees for the feeding-in into cable networks...