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On 25 January 2002, the German Bundestag (lower house of parliament) adopted a Government Bill aimed at strengthening the contractual position of authors and performing artists. The Government's objective in tabling the Bill was to ensure that authors and performing artists receive reasonable remuneration and, for the sake of legal certainty, to provide guidelines on what constitutes reasonable remuneration. The idea was that legal disputes between authors and users should, as far as possible, be avoided. Since the legislative process began in May last year (see IRIS 2001-7: 14), the Bill has...

In a decision of 25 February 2002, the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office - BKartA) prohibited Liberty Media's planned acquisition of six regional cable networks owned by Deutsche Telekom AG (DT). The authority had already expressed reservations about the American media company's proposal in a warning issued at the end of January; following subsequent negotiations with the company, which were apparently unsuccessful, the Cartels Office's misgivings concerning the restriction of competition in the cable TV market have prevailed. The Cartels Office ruled that the merger, investigated in accordance...

On 1 March, the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) approved the Gesetz über den Schutz von zugangskontrollierten Diensten und von Zugangskontrolldiensten (Act on the protection of restricted access services and conditional access services - ZKDSG), thus transposing Directive 98/84/EC into German law. The Act aims to protect conditional access services from unauthorised infringements, including technical measures or devices that enable a restricted access service to be used legally. Such services are defined as broadcasting, teleservices and media services provided against remuneration and which...

A resolution adopted on 1 March 2002 by the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament), which represents the Bundesländer at federal level, mentions various issues that should be taken into account during the forthcoming revision of the "Television Without Frontiers" Directive. First of all, the Bundesrat suggests that the Directive should stipulate that its provisions may be transposed in conformity with Community law by means of self-regulatory mechanisms. With regard to Article 3a, various adjustments are proposed in response to past experiences with the practical enforcement of Member States'...

In a ruling of 20 February, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) offered an explanation of the ban on the TV broadcasting of pornography set out in para. 3 of the original Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on Broadcasting - RStV a.F.). The aforementioned paragraph states that TV programmes are unlawful "if they are pornographic (see Penal Code Section 184)". This reference to the Strafgesetzbuch (Penal Code - StGB) formed the background of a legal dispute between a private broadcaster who had shown a series of films on pay-TV and the relevant supervisory...