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At the end of last year, the Medienanstalt Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein (Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Media Authority – MA HSH), one of the 14 media regulators of the German Bundesländer, announced that it had instigated proceedings against social networking platform Twitter on account of breaches of provisions on the protection of minors in the media. According to the MA HSH, the US-based company, whose European headquarters are in Ireland, had already been asked to improve its youth protection procedures and the MA HSH had threatened further measures, possibly involving the Irish regulator,...

At its meeting on 19 November 2019, the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht (Commission on Licensing and Supervision – ZAK), the central organ of the German media authorities with responsibility for monitoring advertising on national television channels, decided that Sport1’s teleshopping window, Channel21, had infringed current advertising laws enshrined in Article 7(1)(3) and (4) of the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement – RStV) and Article 41(1)(4) in conjunction with Article 3 of the Heilmittelwerbegesetz (Medicinal Product Advertising Act –...

In a ruling of 8 October 2019, the German Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH) overturned a decision by the Oberlandesgericht München (Munich Appeal Court – OLG) to declare a well-known ad blocker lawful. Although the judges of the highest German civil court confirmed the appeal court’s findings with regard to competition law, they thought a number of questions remained unanswered where cartel law was concerned. A legal dispute over the functioning of ‘AdBlock Plus’, which was sold by Eyeo GmbH, has been rumbling on for almost five years. The software,...

On 27 August 2019, the German Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) decided that, before classifying a comment as ‘harmful to minors’ on the basis of the Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on the Protection of Minors in the Media), the author’s fundamental right to freedom of expression must be taken into account. The second chamber of the first senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht therefore upheld a constitutional complaint lodged by a regional association of the extreme right-wing NPD party. The case concerned the association’s...

On 30 October 2019, the German Bundesregierung (Federal Government) adopted a package of measures to combat right-wing extremism and hate crime, designed in part to extend law enforcement authorities’ powers to deal with online platforms. This follows an attack in Halle in early October, when a heavily armed right-wing extremist, who had been radicalised on the Internet, tried to enter a synagogue and shot two people dead. The attack was one of several recent acts of violence and threats targeting politicians and journalists in particular. The new measures are designed to make it easier...