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The Court of Cassation has found in favour of Orange (a subsidiary of France Télécom) in its dispute with its competitors SFR and Free, which claimed it was making access to its sport channel Orange Sports dependent on subscription to its triple-play offer (television, Internet and telephone) (see IRIS 2009-6: 12/19). The applicants claimed that the two-fold exclusivity for distributing and broadcasting exclusive audiovisual programmes constituted joint selling, which is prohibited by Article L 122-1 of the French Consumer Code, and hence was an act of unfair competition on the part of Orange....

On 24 June 2010, the European Commission issued a set of reasoned opinions to 12 member states (Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia) requesting that they proceed with updating their national broadcasting legislation in order to bring it into compliance with the Audiovisual Media Service (AVMS) Directive. The Directive, which replaced the Television without Frontiers Directive of 1989 (as amended), was adopted in December 1997 with the intention of bringing the EU’s broadcasting rules up to speed with the digital age. The...

The Act designed to open up to competition and regulate the on-line gaming sector adopted on 6 April 2010 was gazetted on 13 May 2010, after validation by the Constitutional Council, thereby achieving the French Government’s aim of allowing the market to be liberalised before the start of the football World Cup. The Act is intended to open up the market for on-line gaming (betting on sporting events, betting on horse racing, and poker) in a regulated fashion by authorising, through the new authority regulating on-line gaming (Autorité de Régulation des Jeux en Ligne - ARJEL), operators who will...

In a deliberation adopted on 22 July 2008 “aimed at protecting children under the age of three years from the effects of television”, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (audiovisual regulatory body - CSA) required the distributors of television services established in France to warn their subscribers regularly of the risks television poses for children under the age of three years, even in the case of channels directed specifically at them, and to pass on the same message in their communication documents and in their subscription contracts. Promotion of television services presented as being...

The companies La Chauve-Souris and 120 Films had a statement drawn up by sworn officers of the association to combat audiovisual piracy (Association de Lutte contre la Piraterie Audiovisuelle - ALPA) noting that the video-sharing platform Dailymotion was showing shortened extracts of the film Sheitan, of which they are the producers. Dailymotion subsequently withdrew the unlawful content from its site. As extracts of the film were still being shown, the producers had the platform charged with piracy. Referring to its by now well-established jurisprudence, the third chamber of the regional court...