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The European Commission has finished the preliminary analysis of the measures implementing the Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive into national law notified by 16 Member States: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Subsequently, the European Commission has sent fact-finding letters to these states inquiring about these implementing measures. The Commission is thus seeking to ensure that all provisions of the AVMS Directive have been correctly transposed into...

Access to the audiovisual media is important for associations and the causes they defend, as they are able in this way to make their action more widely known and, for those that appeal to public generosity, to make potential donors more aware of the issues involved and persuade them to donate. In 2009, in the run-up to the Téléthon (a programme lasting several hours organised by the French association to combat myopathies (Association Française contre les Myopathies), the aim of which is to collect funds), there was some discussion on the place that a cause defended by a specific association could...

Speaking in March 2010 in a television debate on the integration of immigrants, a reporter said, “Why are these people getting their ID checked so often? Why? Because most traffickers are Blacks and Arabs - that’s just the way it is, it’s a fact.” He was prosecuted after complaints were made by a number of anti-racism associations on the grounds of racial defamation and provocation of racial hatred. Article 32 (2) of the Act of 29 July 1881 on the freedom of the press lays down a sentence of one year’s imprisonment and/or a fine of EUR 45,000 as the penalty for public defamation committed “in respect...

Google has suffered a serious setback, with the court of appeal in Paris delivering four judgments on 14 January 2011 ordering the major Internet player to pay more than EUR 500,000 in damages to various film production companies. These companies had complained that their films were being broadcast in their entirety free of charge via Google Vidéo (the films at issue were two documentaries on the Clearstream case, another on the Armenian genocide, and the feature-length film ‘Mondovino’), even though their withdrawal had previously been requested. Although Google had withdrawn them, the films were...

With the publication of the Decree of 4 February 2010 and the four Orders amending the regulations on financial support for the cinematographic industry, the “Club of 13” has seen its efforts rewarded. The group of thirteen celebrities in French cinema circles, formed in 2008 on the initiative of the director Pascale Ferran, had drafted a report entitled Le Milieu n’est plus un pont mais une faille ("The middle ground is now a fault line rather than a bridge"), denouncing the increasing difficulties in financing and distributing "middle of the road" films in France, i.e., films occupying a position...