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In rulings of 29 July 2021 (III ZR 179/20 and III ZR 192/20), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH) decided that Facebook’s terms of business, governing the deletion of users’ posts and the blocking of accounts when its internal standards had been breached, were ineffective. This was especially the case if Facebook did not agree to inform users about the removal of their posts, at least in retrospect, and about the intention to block their accounts in advance, indicate the reason for doing so, and grant them the opportunity to respond and request a new decision....

In two recent decisions, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court – BVerwG), Germany’s highest ordinary administrative court, ordered the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Agency – BND) to show greater transparency towards journalists. Under these decisions, the BND is required to disclose to journalists the identity of parties, involved in court proceedings, who had fought against the disclosure of press contacts in a separate court procedure, and that of media representatives invited to hold ‘informal briefings’ with the BND. These information...

Following numerous violations of the Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (State Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media – JMStV), the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) ordered the blocking of a pornographic website in a case referred to it by the Landesanstalt für Medien NRW (North-Rhine Westphalia media authority – LfM NRW). Many user profiles on the widely used German-language website provide unrestricted access to pornographic content, that is clearly likely to seriously impair the development...

On 22 June 2021, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) issued a judgment on the joined cases C‑682/18 and C‑683/18. The case concerned several infringements of the intellectual property rights held by Mr Peterson and Elsevier committed by users of the video‑sharing platform operated by YouTube and the file-hosting and -sharing platform operated by Cyando, respectively. The judgment follows the German Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) request for a preliminary ruling concerning the interpretation of Article 3(1) and Article 8(3) of the InfoSoc Directive, of Article...

On 31 May 2021, the German Bundestag (lower house of parliament) adopted the federal government bill of 12 February 2021 bringing the copyright law into line with the requirements of the Digital Single Market. The new legislation is designed to implement the Digital Single Market Directive (DSM Directive (EU) 2019/790). The main purpose of the bill is to reform the copyright liability of online platforms. Under its provisions on platform liability and extended collective licences, new legal instruments are introduced in German copyright law. It also amends numerous provisions of the Urheberrechtsgesetz...