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The audiovisual regulatory authority (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA) has published its response to the European Commission’s consultation on the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AMSD) - ‘A media framework for the 21st century’. This contribution to the current consideration of the evolution of Europe’s audiovisual framework highlights the need to extend the perimeter of the Directive to include digital intermediaries to which a set of suitable rules would be applied. The CSA uses a number of examples to exemplify the difficulty in qualifying certain on-demand services not included...

On 17 December the Court of Cassation delivered an interesting decision on the operating rights of the rightsholders of a deceased film director. In the case at issue, the director of the film ‘Le Sang à la Tête’ had, under a contract signed in 1989, ceded his cinematographic representation rights for TV broadcasting and video publication to a publishing house. The director has since died, and his rightsholders have refused to renew the contract on expiry. The company had them summoned to appear in court to answer charges of abusive refusal on the basis of Article L. 122-9 of the Intellectual Property...

On 20 November 2015 the Court of Appeal in Paris found against the heads of the TV channels M6 and Paris Première for broadcasting a programme during which three guests smoked. The programme ‘Rive Droite’ brings together, as for a dinner party, a number of well-known figures on the political and cultural scenes for an informal discussion on matters of politics, culture and society. Three of the guests (one musician, one journalist, and one female television presenter) on the programme broadcast on 9 November 2011 and available to view on the channel’s replay website for a further eight days thereafter...

A journalist who wrote a book about a famous political adviser to the Vth Republic felt that a documentary devoted to “the secrets of the Elysée’s gurus” broadcast on a public-service television channel two years after the book’s publication constituted an infringing adaptation of his work. He therefore had the producer and the channel summoned to face charges of infringement. When the Regional Court in Paris concurred, the producer and the television channel appealed against the judgment. In its decision delivered on 17 November 2015, the Paris Court of Appeal overturned the original judgment....

After the films “Love”, “Saw 3D” and “Nymphomaniac”, it is the turn of “La Vie d’Adèle” (English title: “Blue is the Warmest Colour”), which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, to have its classification licence issued by the Minister for Culture withdrawn. In the present case, an association and a number of parents of under-18-year-olds had applied to the Administrative Court for the decision by the Minister for Culture granting a classification licence to the film to be changed to include a ban on the film being shown to anyone under 12 years’ old and for it to carry...