Search results : 1348

In January 2012, the Landgericht Köln (Cologne District Court - LG) dealt again with the question of whether photographs of a press photographer who wanted to report on a criminal procedure against a weather presenter that had attracted huge media attention, and the publication of the pictures on the Internet by the defendant, were lawful. In the ruling, issued on 11 January 2012, the court granted the photographer an injunction against the distribution of four images in which he appeared, in so far as they were distributed in the manner described in the complaint. In a separate case, the LG had...

On 15 December 2011, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) decided that it should not rule on a complaint by several music industry representatives against a judgment issued in a copyright dispute by the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) in October 2010. The case concerned an article published in 2005 by the defendant, a publishing house, in its online news service concerning a named piece of software that could be used to decode DVD films and circumvent copy protection software. As well as a warning that such activities were prohibited in Germany and...

In two judgments of 7 February 2012 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has balanced the right to freedom of expression by the media (Article 10 of the Convention) with celebrities’ personality rights and their right of privacy (Article. 8 of the Convention). The overall conclusion is that media coverage including pictures of celebrities is acceptable when the media reporting concerns matters of public interest or at least to some degree contributes to a debate of general interest. In the case of Von Hannover v. Germany (no. 2), the Court held unanimously that the publication...

On 15 December 2011, the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office - BKartA) approved the takeover of the cable network operator Kabel Baden-Württemberg by the American media group Liberty. After the BKartA had expressed serious concerns about the takeover in October (see IRIS 2012-1/20), Liberty's German subsidiary Unitymedia was able to dispel its concerns by making certain commitments. For example, Unitymedia will no longer encrypt digital free-to-air channels, enabling cable customers in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hessen to receive around 70 digital channels without a smartcard or additional...

On 15 December 2011, the Minister-Presidents of all the Länder except Schleswig-Holstein signed a new Glücksspielstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Gambling Agreement) at the conference of Minister-Presidents in Berlin, after 15 Länder had expressed support for the liberalisation of the gambling industry in the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament). Schleswig-Holstein did not sign the draft agreement because it had already adopted its own Gambling Law in September 2011, which entered into force on 1 January 2012. In the field of sports betting, the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag makes provision for 20 national...