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On 27 August 2020, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH), the highest German civil court, decided that the operator of a social network must provide a deceased user’s heir with access to the user’s account. The heir must be allowed to access the account and its content in the same way as the original account holder. However, they may not actively use the account. The case concerned a ruling of the Landgericht Berlin (Berlin regional court) of 17 December 2015, which had previously been confirmed by the BGH (judgment of 12 July 2018 – III ZR 183/17 –...

In August 2020, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) of the German Landesmedienanstalten (state media authorities) updated its broadcasting and telemedia supervision criteria. New criteria were added to take account of new Internet trends, such as influencer marketing, and the dangers of online gaming addiction. The KJM is an organ of the Landesmedienanstalten. Germany’s federal structure, in which 14 state media authorities operate in the 16 Bundesländer (federal states), means that a joint body is needed...

On 1 October 2020, the German Landesmedienanstalten (state media authorities) published a report on the different forms of disinformation and its distribution from both communication-related and legal perspectives. The report defines various types of disinformation, categorises them from a legal point of view and describes measures that can be taken to combat them. The report describes the seven main forms of disinformation or misinformation and the threats they each pose to society and democracy. They include deliberate decontextualisation of real information; deliberate misinformation; manipulative...

On 30 September 2020, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) ruled that youth protection rules had been breached on the Twitter platform. Unable to prosecute the account holders concerned on account of their anonymity, the KJM held Twitter itself responsible. In six separate cases, the KJM found that Twitter users had breached the German Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (Inter-State Treaty on the protection of minors in the media – JMStV) by making pornographic content publicly accessible. Since the service providers...

On 10 September 2020, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar published his opinion in the case between VG Bild-Kunst and Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (C-392/19) concerning copyright infringements resulting from the embedding of third-party content on websites. He concluded that embedding works using automatic links (so-called inline linking) requires the authorisation of the copyright holder, whereas embedding them using clickable links using the framing technique does not. The same would apply if the works were embedded by circumventing technical measures taken or instigated by the copyright...