Search results : 1372

In a judgment of 3 June 2016 (Case 324 O 78/15),  the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg Regional Court) ruled that a former pupil of the Odenwaldschule boarding school in Hesse, in which child abuse took place on several occasions, is not entitled to injunctive relief against the rebroadcasting by the TV station WDR and the production company of the feature film “Die Auserwählten” (The Favoured Few) depicting those events, despite the fact that he was himself a victim. The Odenwaldschule was the focus of public attention when it came to light that systematic sexual abuse of pupils had been perpetrated...

According to media reports, the Landgericht Aachen (Aachen Regional Court) ruled in a decision of 24 May 2016 (Case 8 O 168/16) that the planned filming of the Gladbeck hostage drama was within the law, and the personality rights of the person convicted of the hostage-taking and murder were no obstacle to carrying out the project. In August 1988, the hostage-taker and another perpetrator robbed a bank in Gladbeck. While they were on the run through Germany and the Netherlands, two hostages and a police officer were killed. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1991 by the Landgericht Essen...

The Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) ruled, in a judgment of 22 June 2016 (Case 6 C 9.15), that a broadcaster is in breach of the ban on surreptitious advertising if it fails to identify advertising content in one of its programmes when the purpose of the programme does not provide sufficient justification for this. The plaintiff, which operates the TV channel “Sport1”, aired the programme “Learn from the Pros”, originally produced for the American TV market, in which professional poker players provide tips for playing the game. The plaintiff had acquired the programme...

At its meeting in Halle on 26 April 2016, the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht (Commission on Licensing and Supervision - ZAK) of the Landesmedienanstalten (Regional Media Authorities) reached a decision on breaches of advertising rules. It criticised three cases of unlawful product placement and two involving the inadequate separation of advertising and programming content. The three cases of unlawful product placement it criticised were in the TV show “Germany’s Next Topmodel” on the ProSieben channel operated by ProSiebenSat.1 TV Deutschland GmbH. In the media watchdogs’ opinion, the focus...

In a judgment of 1 March 2016 (Case 5 K 977/14.NW), the Verwaltungsgericht (Administrative Court) in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse declared lawful the extension granted by the Rhineland-Palatinate Landeszentrale für Media und Kommunikation (Regional Media and Communication Authority - LMK) to the licence for the regional window programme “17:30 Sat.1 live”, which is made by the TV production company TV IIIa GmbH & Co. KG (TV Illa) and forms part of the schedule of the commercial broadcaster Sat.1. Under section 25(4) of the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement), in order to foster...