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In two decisions delivered on 20 September 2016, the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation deliberated on two cases between the leader of the Front National political party, Marine Le Pen, and France Télévisions, after the broadcasting of two humorous sequences during the programme ‘On n’est pas couché’ that she had considered to be insulting. The Court appeared not to share her appreciation of where the limits of the freedom of expression lay. In the first case, the sequence at issue showed on-screen a number of posters parodying candidates for election as president which had been published...

At the end of February 2016, the Chair of the Commission for the Classification of Cinematographic Works, submitted to the Minister for Culture a report on the classification of cinematographic works with regard to minors between 16 and 18 years of age. The report follows on from a number of controversies connected with the courts’ suspensions of approval certificates for films including scenes of extreme violence or non-simulated sex. The public authorities are indeed currently reconsidering “the automatic nature of banning showing [such content] to minors, which is the result of current law as...

With the appearance of Decree No. 2016-1191 of 31 August 2016, new arrangements regarding tax credit for expenditure on the delegated production of cinematographic and audiovisual works have come into force. Article 111 of the 2016 Finance Act amended Article 220 sexies of the General Tax Code, which governs these arrangements, under which cinematographic or audiovisual production companies subject to company tax which take on the function of delegated production companies are able to benefit from a tax credit. This tax credit relates to certain items of production expenditure, listed in the legislation,...

In France, the audiovisual sector’s return to work after the summer break was marked by the launch, on 1 September 2016, of the new public-service news channel ‘France Info’, using the name of the new global offer of public news. This is the fourth continuous news channel in France on digital freeview television, after BFM-TV (NextRadioTV group), i-Télé (Canal+ group), and LCI (TF1 group). France Télévisions has recruited 176 people for the project, half of them internally, but there have been social problems, and on 13 September, the regional court in Paris was called on to adjudicate on one of...

In a decision delivered on 10 June 2016, the Court of Appeal in Paris upheld a sentence for plagiarism that hit the headlines when it was delivered in the initial proceedings, and substantially increased the amounts awarded in damages. In the case at issue, an American director claimed that the film ‘Lock-Out’, released in 2012, was very similar to the film ‘Escape from New York’ (French title: ‘New York 1997’), released in 1981, which he had co-written. The French production company of the film ‘Lock-Out’ and the film’s writers were summoned to appear in court to answer charges of plagiarism....