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In its role as the guarantor of pluralism and ethical presentation of news, the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA - official regulatory body) called on all radio and television companies on 3 October to exercise extreme vigilance in handling international events since the terrorist attacks in New York. While praising the discretion and control exercised by most of the audiovisual media in recent weeks, the CSA's Chairman has asked them, in carrying out their editorial responsibilities and having regard to both the regulations in force and their negotiated undertakings, to maintain respect...

Seven Community Directives on consumer protection have now been transposed into French national law. The first section of the transposing order is devoted to comparative advertising, amending Articles L. 121-8 to L. 121-12 of the Consumer Code in order to take account of the provisions of Directive 97/55/EC of 6 October 1997. The rules governing comparative advertising have been relaxed; this is now defined as "any advertising that compares goods or services by identifying, implicitly or explicitly, a competitor or goods or services offered by a competitor". As previously, such advertising must...

For the third time this year the Court of Cassation has found provisions of the French regulations on communications law incompatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The present case referred to Articles 1, 11 and 12 of the Act of 19 July 1977 that prohibit publishing, circulating and commenting on opinion polls during the week preceding an election. Between the two ballots in the parliamentary elections in 1977, the newspaper Le Parisien published an analysis and commentary of an opinion poll under the heading "First round of parliamentary elections - what the...

In recent years judges have had to deal with a number of cases concerning journalists' copyright when their articles are re-used on-line, and the Court of Cassation has just delivered an important decision on the subject. In the case in question, an appeal had been lodged with the Court by a freelance journalist whose former employer had, without his consent, re-used - in several issues of the same magazine - photographs he had taken that had been published previously in the magazine. The substance of the case did not therefore concern their reuse on-line, but the principle behind the Court of...

Last summer the Conseil d'État cancelled the exploitation licence issued to the film Baise-moi allowing the film to be shown to anyone over the age of 16 years. The case gave rise to considerable controversy regarding gaps in the classification of cinema films in France. According to the 1990 decree, there are four common-law classifications for cinema films - authorisation for showing the film to the general public, authorisation for showing the film to anyone over the age of 12 years, authorisation for showing the film to anyone over the age of 16 years, or a total ban on showing the film. In...