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The Agreement between the Federal States on Broadcasting which regulates public and private broadcasting concerns in Germany (originally adopted on 31 August 1991 and last amended by the third revised version of 26 August 1996/11 September 1996 - see IRIS 1996-8: 12) is to be up-dated. A draft version of a fourth Agreement between the Federal States to amend their existing Agreements on Broadcasting was submitted for discussion by the Länder on 16 January 1998. In addition to bringing in new regulations on certain forms of advertising, media services and data protection, the new version is primarily...

The Saarbrücken Appeal Court (Oberlandesgericht - OLG - Saarbrücken) and the Mainz Regional Court (Landesgericht - LG - Mainz) recently came to different conclusions when required to decide, in the case of a television film. The question was which was more important: the freedom to report which broadcasting bodies enjoy under Article 5, para. 1, sentence 2 of the Basic Law (the Grundgesetz), or the protection of personality rights guaranteed by Article 2, para. 2 in conjunction with Article 1, para. 1 of the Basic Law. Both proceedings were concerned with a film in the "Crimes which made History"...

In a judgment given on 17 Feburary, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled that the right to report news items in brief, provided for in Section 3 of the Act on the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne (the WDR-Act) and Section 3 of the Broadcasting Act for the Land of Nordrhein-Westfalen was essentially compatible with the Basic Law (Grundgesetz - see IRIS 1998-2: 12). The constitutional review procedure initiated by the Federal Government was nominally concerned with the said sections of the two acts, but those provisions essentially implement the rule agreed by all the...

On 17 December 1997, the Stuttgart Appeal Court (Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart) suspended proceedings in the dispute between the ARD (the first public television channel) and the private channel Pro 7. At the same time, it put several questions concerning interpretation of the revised "Television without Frontiers" Directive (Directive 97/36/EC) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 June 1997 to the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Luxembourg, in accordance with the preliminary decision procedure provided for in Article 177 of the EC Treaty. The case concerns an application...

In a judgment given in proceedings for an injunction on 22 September 1997, the Regional Court in Frankfurt/Main (Landesgericht - LG - Frankfurt) ordered a German firm to delete an Internet link to a web-site which carried comparative advertising. The firm, a subsidiary of a Japanese company, had included on its site a link to the site of another, American subsidiary, on which two software products were compared. Comparative advertising is banned in Germany, but permitted in the United States. The Web site material itself had been originated in America, but the court decided that the link constituted...