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Last December, the Conseil d'Etat made a referral to the Constitutional Council for a preliminary ruling on the constitutionality of the guarantee of the rights and freedoms contained in the second paragraph of Article 34-2 of the Act of 30 September 1986. This provision requires cable operators and Internet access providers (IAPs) using the landline network to carry local public television services (local programmes on general channels, cable channels showing local news, and local channels) for their subscribers. There is a second side to this obligation: the cable operators and IAPs are also...

On 29 February, Jean-François Mary, Chairman of the Film Classification Board, submitted a report to the new Minister for Culture, Audrey Azoulay, on the classification of cinematographic works with reference to minors between the ages of 16 and 18 years. The report had been commissioned in September 2015, following the controversy over the courts’ suspension of the classification licence for films including scenes of non-simulated sex, such as ‘Love’ and ‘La Vie d’Adèle’ (see IRIS 2015‑8/15, IRIS 2015-10/13 and IRIS 2016-1/10). More recently, the suspension by the administrative court in Paris...

A French scriptwriter claimed that he realised, when viewing the trailer for the film ‘The Artist’, released in October 2011, that the key sequences of a screenplay he had written had been used. The director had written a project for a silent cinema film in black and white, entitled ‘Timidity, la symphonie du Petit homme’ in the form of a usable version, first in 2000 and then in 2006. He had a summons for infringement of the copyright protection for the screenplay of his film issued against the author and the director of the film ‘The Artist’, which won several awards the following year at the...

On 27 January - the day on which the film ‘Salafistes’ was released in cinemas - Minister for Culture Fleur Pellerin, adopting the Film Classification Board’s opinion, banned the showing of the documentary film to anyone less than 18 years of age. The film provides a sounding board for a number of theoreticians of Islamic terrorism, and shows the everyday application of sharia law in Mauritania, Mali and Iraq. It also includes video footage of propaganda by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) and by al-Qaeda, as well as amateur footage filmed during the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the attack...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has confirmed the robust Article 10 protection for investigative journalism expressed in a television documentary, holding that a conviction for defamation of a Saudi Arabian prince violated the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). In 2006, Prince Turki Al Faisal brought defamation proceedings against France Télévisions, Patrick de Carolis as its director, and a journalist, after the broadcasting on the TV channel France 3 of a documentary entitled “11 September...