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Under the amended German Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement - RStV), which came into force on 1 May 2019, some of the rules governing the public service broadcasters’ telemedia remit have been revised. The RStV, an agreement between the German Bundesländer concerning broadcasting and telemedia, is one of the legislative cornerstones of Germany’s dual broadcasting system. In the document that entered into force in May, the rules on the retention time of public broadcasters’ programmes in online media libraries were relaxed. The so-called “seven-day rule”, under which public...

In a ruling of 30 April 2019 (Case no. 11 O 27/18), the Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt (Frankfurt Court of Appeal) decided that an internationally-oriented Internet platform on which literary works are published free of charge is liable for copyright infringements in Germany if it publishes German-language works that are not yet in the public domain under German copyright law and claims ownership of their content. The defendant in this case was a US-based not-for-profit corporation that operates an internationally-oriented website, www.gutenberg.org, from which more than 50 000 books, including some...

The Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) of the Federal Republic of Germany recently took two decisions in urgent proceedings concerning election campaign ads for the NPD political party, while a third case was decided by the Hessische Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Hessian Administrative Court - VGH). A number of public service television and radio broadcasters had refused to broadcast the ads. In two of the three cases, the courts decided that they had been wrong to do so. Under provisions such as Article 11(1) of the ZDF-Staatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on ZDF), political...

At its closed meeting on 22 March 2019, the assembly of the Landeszentrale für Medien und Kommunikation Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate Media and Communication Authority - LMK) adopted a position paper on the protection of children and young people in the media. The LMK is the regulatory body for broadcasting and telemedia services in Rhineland-Palatinate. The paper talks in particular about a technical paradigm shift. Despite legislation and the involvement of numerous actors, protection from content and the risks of Internet use is still inadequate. Children and young people are now only...

At its meeting on 11 April 2019, the media council of the Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (Bavarian New Media Authority - BLM) adopted a set of digital ethics guidelines. Its position paper, focusing on the ethical and socio-political aspects of digitisation, is designed to stimulate debate on the consequences of the increasing use of technology in the media and on future approaches to regulation. It forms part of the media council’s efforts to identify how social rules on the use of new technologies can be established. The BLM is the regulatory body for broadcasting and telemedia...