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On 5 December 2019, the Ministerpräsidentenkonferenz (Conference of Minister-Presidents) of the Bundesländer agreed a draft inter-state agreement to modernise media regulation in Germany, where media legislation is the responsibility of the Bundesländer. The new regulations are designed to ensure that the legislative framework takes into account media digitalisation, in particular platforms and streaming services, and replace the Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement. The new agreement puts Germany in a pioneering role in terms of the implementation of the EU Audiovisual Media Services...

The Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Committee for the protection of minors in the media – KJM) has adopted a revised version of its criteria for evaluating age verification systems. The KJM is an organ of the German regional media authorities and comprises experts from national government and the Länder. It is Germany’s central supervisory body for the protection of minors in private broadcasting and on the Internet.  According to Article 4(2) of the Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on the protection of minors in the media – JMStV), content...

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,...