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As early as 1995 the European Commission spoke out against the procedure introduced by the Federal Republic of Germany, as it felt that foreign television organisers were being prevented from retransmitting their channels by the regulations operative in a number of Federal Länder on the occupation of space available on broad-band cable. The Commission held this to be an infringement of the freedom to provide services contained in Article 59 of the EC Treaty in that the reference to specific characteristics constituted camouflaged discrimination. In January 1996 the Federal Government then responded...

On 4 March 1998 the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) adopted the Victims Compensation Act (Opferanspruchssicherungsgesetz - OASG) in order to provide civil-law compensation for victims of crime (for report on Bill, see IRIS 1997-3: 12). The Act gives legal entitlement to receive damages from a perpetrator of or participant in a crime in respect of sums received from third parties for portrayal in the media. The purpose of the Act is to prevent perpetrators of crimes deriving immoral profits from the commercialisation of their crime in the media, for example in the form of income from film...

In a judgment delivered on 23 December 1997, the Regional Court (Landgericht - LG) in Cologne ordered the television broadcaster RTL to refrain in future from acting in a legal advisory capacity in a broadcast on consumer affairs. The broadcaster in question had been taken to court by the largest German association of lawyers on the grounds of unauthorised legal counselling. The complaint was basically that these broadcasts, in which the defendant acted on behalf of citizens, presenting their predicament or what they felt was ill treatment on the part of authorities or commercial undertakings,...

In a judgment on 18 March 1998 the Regional Court (Landgericht) in Frankfurt-am-Main set aside a default judgment against the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and dismissed the claim of a television production and marketing company. The case concerned the FIA's decisions on 20 October 1995 and 11 June 1997 amending the provisions of Article 26 of its "General Prescriptions" to the effect that from 01 January 1997 all broadcasting rights in respect of all motor sport series taking place in more than one country lay with the FIA. The FIA had entrusted the exclusive marketing of these...

In a decision on 20 Febraury 1998 the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht - BVerfG) allowed the constitutional appeal made by a private Bavarian broadcaster against a judgment delivered by the Bavarian Constitutional Court of Appeal (Bayerischen Verfassungsgerichtshofes) and upheld the basic right to the freedom to broadcast in accordance with Article 5, para.1, sentence 2 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz - GG) in respect of other private Bavarian broadcasters. On the basis of Article 111a of the Bavarian Constitution (Bayerischen Verfassung - BV), broadcasting in Bavaria is a...