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In a press release published on 26 April 2023, the Verwaltungsgericht Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Administrative Court – VG) announced its decisions in the dispute over a ban imposed on three pornography platforms for breaches of rules on the protection of minors in the media. The VG ruled that the objection lodged and the subsequent ban imposed on the websites by the Landesanstalt für Medien Nordrhein-Westfalen (North-Rhine Westphalia media authority – LfM NRW), due to inadequate age verification mechanisms, were lawful. As a result, the decisions taken in the corresponding...

In a ruling of 23 May 2023 (case no. VI ZR 476/18), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice – BGH) decided that anyone who asks a search engine provider to de-reference the results of a general Internet search must prove that the information it contains is clearly inaccurate. However, such an obligation does not apply when images are displayed by a search engine’s image search tool (in this case, the “Images” tab of the Google search engine) merely in the form of a thumbnail of the original image published on a different website, to which the search engine provides...

According to a report on the financial results of the home video market, published by the German Filmförderungsanstalt (Federal Film Board – FFA), over EUR 3.8 billion was spent on cinema tickets and the purchase, rental or streaming of films in Germany in 2022. Combined spending on home video and cinema tickets was the highest since market data collection began. At just over EUR 3.1 billion, consumer spending on the different home video products alone also set a new record high and exceeded EUR 3 billion for the first time. Based on market research and statistics gathered by the FFA,...

At its meeting on 11 April 2023, the Kommission zur Ermittlung der Konzentration im Medienbereich (Commission on Concentration in the Media - KEK) decided to amend the Meldepflicht-Richtlinie (directive on notification of ownership structures) adopted on 11 May 2021. Previously, only minor changes to participating interests or other types of influence were exempt from the obligation to report changes, laid down in Article 63 sentence 1 of the Medienstaatsvertrag (state media treaty – MStV). Now, a further exemption applies to changes that are not minor per se, but that relate to companies...

On 24 March 2023, in order to meet the challenges of protecting young people in the media in the 21st century, media regulators from Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Cyprus set up an international working group on age verification, which will meet regularly to exchange information about topical issues related to youth protection in the media. They published a joint statement that sets out the main elements of their future cooperation. The working group’s current members are the French Autorité de régulation de la communication audiovisuelle et numérique...