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The so-called ‘Avia law’ (named after the MP who tabled the bill), which aims to combat hate speech on the Internet, has been blocked. Having finally been adopted as France came out of lockdown on 13 May 2020 after a difficult legislative process lasting almost 18 months, the law, which had been criticised by numerous bodies and institutions, was rejected by the Constitutional Council on 18 June. The text, which would have seen criminal sanctions imposed by the CSA (the French audiovisual regulator) against platforms that failed to remove terrorist material or child pornography within...

On 13 February 2020, the Conseil d'État (Council of State) submitted to the Conseil constitutionnel (Constitutional Council) an application for a priority preliminary ruling concerning the constitutionality of the final three paragraphs of Article L. 331-21 of the Intellectual Property Code. This provision forms the legal basis for the Hadopi’s implementation of the graduated response procedure established under Act No. 2009-669 of 12 June 2009. According to Article L. 336-3 of the Intellectual Property Code, the owner of a connection to online public communication services...

The new (and controversial) Conseil de déontologie journalistique et de médiation (Council for Ethical Journalism and Mediation – CDJM), created at the end of 2019, has published its first three opinions, which were adopted at a plenary meeting on 18 May 2020. The CDJM is a body for mediation between journalists, the media, news agencies and the public on all matters linked to ethical journalism. Any citizen can ask the CDJM for its opinion on journalistic activity that is considered problematic. The CDJM’s members come from three groups, each one equally represented...

After the Conseil d'Etat (Council of State) issued a series of judgments on 6 December clarifying the implementation of the right to de-referencing (right to be forgotten), in particular where ‘sensitive data’ is concerned, France’s highest administrative court issued a decision on the geographical scope of this right. In the case at hand, Google Inc. had applied for the annulment of the decision of the French data protection authority (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés – CNIL) of 10 March 2016 to fine it EUR 100 000 for refusing,...

On 6 May, Emmanuel Macron announced a ‘plan for culture’, with measures designed to complement those adopted at the start of the health crisis. Eight days earlier, personalities from the world of art and culture, who said they felt ‘forgotten’ even though they had been severely affected by the lockdown, had written an open letter to the French President in a national newspaper. The President of the Republic began by granting the key demand put forward by the letter’s signatories, namely that the unemployment benefits paid to so-called ‘intermittents du spectacle’...