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For the first time to our knowledge, the Courts have pronounced on the legal status of e-mail correspondence. The dispute was between a research student in a laboratory, and the director and two IT network administrators at the laboratory, charged with having violated the privacy of correspondence by reading the student's e-mail correspondence without his knowledge. The defendants claimed that e-mail messages could not have the benefit of the rules of confidentiality enjoyed by postal correspondence since these messages, which were unencrypted, were entrusted to intermediary servers which carried...

In response to a claim brought by a consumer protection association, the company Canal Satellite (which markets a range of services and broadcasts digital television channels by satellite to its subscribers) has been ordered by the Regional Court of Paris to delete a number of clauses which were considered abusive from its subscription contract. According to the terms of Article L 132-1 of the Consumer Protection Code, clauses in contracts concluded between professionals and non-professionals or consumers are deemed to be abusive if their purpose or effect is to create a significant imbalance to...

The Conseil supérieur de la propriété littéraire et artistique (Higher Council on Literary and Artistic Property), announced by Lionel Jospin in January 1999, has just been instituted by decree and should be set up before the end of the year, for a period of six years. The Higher Council's mission is to advise the Minister for Culture and Communications; the Minister will give it an agenda and it must make proposals and recommendations on literary and artistic property. It is also to act as an observatory for the exercise and respect of copyright and neighbouring rights, monitoring the evolution...

On 20 September, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs notified the Secretary General of the Council of Europe of the objection of the French Government to the automatic entry into force of the Protocol amending the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. The Protocol in Article 35, paragraph 2, foresees its entry into force following the expiry of a period of two years after the date on which it has been opened for acceptance (i.e., 1 October 2000; for more information on the Protocol see IRIS 1998-9: 4). However, those States or the European Community which expressed their consent...

Almost two years after the Canard Enchaîné case, the European Court of Human Rights has again found that France has violated the principles contained in Article 10 of the Human Rights Convention. The case concerned the finding against the director of a newspaper and a journalist who had reported on the proceedings brought by a company that managed hostels for immigrant workers against one of its former directors. It was taken on the basis of Article 2 of the Act of 2 July 1931, which prohibits the publication before the Courts reach a verdict, of any information concerning proceedings...