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In a judgment of 30 October 2012 (Case VI ZR 4/12) the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice - BGH) ruled that the retention of reports on suspected offenders in online archives is lawful. The plaintiff worked as a “special operations officer” for the Ministry of State Security in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). However, in civil proceedings he made a statutory declaration that he had never worked for that ministry. As a result of this false testimony, the public prosecutor’s office instituted criminal investigation proceedings against him, which were subsequently discontinued against...

At its final meeting on the culture budget on 9 November 2012, the Budget Committee of the Bundestag voted an additional EUR 100 million for culture, an increase in funding of about eight per cent. This means that the culture budget has been significantly increased for the eighth year running. According to the Staatsminister für Kultur und Medien (Minister of State for Culture and Media), this cannot be taken for granted given the current public sector austerity measures and the constitutionally mandated “debt ceiling”. The total budget will amount to EUR 1.28 billion. The promotion of film production...

On 31 October 2012, the German government decided to amend the Bundesarchivgesetz (Federal Archive Act) to make it compulsory for producers and co-producers of German cinema films to register them in a Federal Archive database. The aim of this obligation to register is to safeguard the national film heritage. According to the Federal Government, films are not only economic but also cultural goods and comprehensive registration is accordingly in the overall public interest. Up to now, copies of films funded with public money have had to be deposited with federal and regional (Land) film funding...

In the late summer of 2012, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting - RBB) submitted to its statutory bodies a final report on the “Package of measures for increasing the potential number of licence payers in Berlin”. The aim is to induce those consumers of broadcasting services who possess operational radio and television sets, but have not paid the licence fee up to now, to comply with this requirement. The implementation of the package of measures was proposed in 2008 by the Kommission zur Ermittlung des Finanzbedarfs der Rundfunkanstalten (Commission for Establishing the...

The TV show “Tag des Glücks” (“Day of Luck”) run by the lottery organisation Süddeutsche Klassenlotterie (SKL) was taken off air in October 2012. This was the response of the companies involved to several decisions of the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht (Licensing and Monitoring Commission - ZAK), which had criticised the show and stopped its broadcasting on several occasions in the past few years. The ZAK had repeatedly found that the programme had infringed the ban on the public advertising of gambling pursuant to section 5(3) of the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Treaty on Gambling...