Search results : 1366

In a decision taken in summary proceedings on 28 August 2019, the Verwaltungsgericht Berlin (Berlin Administrative Court) temporarily removed the immediate enforceability of a decision taken by the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) denying the suitability of the ‘JusProg’ youth protection system. The court ruled that the KJM’s decision that the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia-Dienstleister e.V. (FSM) had exceeded its scope of discretionary power by declaring the system suitable was unlawful. On 2 February 2019, the FSM, a recognised...

In a ruling of 30 April 2019 (Case no. VI ZR 360/18), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH) decided that the BILD newspaper had infringed the right to privacy of pop star Lena Meyer-Landrut by publishing a report about nude images of the singer. The report followed the theft, by unknown individuals, of a laptop owned by the singer’s boyfriend that contained private images of the singer. The thieves then demanded that the singer pay a large sum of money to prevent them from publishing the images. The BILD newspaper wrote that “spicy photos of the pop star” would be accessible “with...

In a recently published decision of 5 June 2019, the German Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH), Germany’s highest civil and criminal court, largely confirmed several prison sentences imposed against the operators of the right-wing extremist Internet platform ‘Altermedia Deutschland’. The defendants had appealed against a ruling of the Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart (Stuttgart Higher Regional Court) imposing immediate or suspended prison sentences on one of them for leading a criminal organisation and sedition, and on the others for being members of a criminal organisation and sedition...

In a judgment of 12 September 2019 in Case C-299/17 (VG Media Gesellschaft zur Verwertung der Urheber- und Leistungsschutzrechte von Medienunternehmen mbH v Google LLC), the Court of Justice of the European Union decided that the German regulation that prohibits search engines from using short texts or text excerpts ('snippets') without the publisher’s prior permission was inapplicable because it had not been notified to the Commission before it was adopted. It should have been notified because the corresponding provisions of Articles 87f and 87g of the German Gesetz über Urheberrecht und verwandte...

On 3 July 2019, the Bundesamt für Justiz (Federal Office for Justice – BfJ) fined Facebook Ireland Limited EUR 2 million for infringing the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (Network Enforcement Act – NetzDG) in its transparency report for the first half of 2018. Since 1 January 2018, as a social network provider, Facebook has been obliged under Article 2(1) NetzDG to submit a report in German twice a year explaining how it has dealt with complaints about illegal content, and to publish these reports in the Federal Gazette as well ason its own website. According to Article 1(3) NetzDG, unless it is justified,...