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According to the German Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on the protection of minors in the media - JMStV), some telemedia content that may be harmful to minors may only be transmitted if the provider ensures, through closed user groups, that it can only be accessed by adults. Content that may impair the development of children may be distributed if, for example, the provider ensures through a technical system that it cannot normally be accessed by children and young people in the relevant age groups. On 15 May 2019, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the...

On 15 May 2019, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the protection of minors in the media - KJM), which comprises 12 representatives of the highest federal and state authorities responsible for youth protection and directors of the Landesmedienanstalten (state media authorities), decided that the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia-Dienstleister e.V. (FSM) had exceeded its scope of discretionary power in its assessment of the suitability of “JusProg” as a youth protection system within the meaning of Article 11(1) of the Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement...

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...