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The Communications Act 2003 prohibits political advertising on television or radio; this includes advertising which attempts to influence public opinion on a matter of public controversy or to promote the interests of a party or a group organised for political ends. An advertisement had been placed on seven radio stations by the Office of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland relating to the Hillsborough Castle Agreement. The Agreement allowed the devolution of policing and justice functions to the Northern Ireland Executive. The advertisement featured the First Minister...

On 13 May 2011, the first-ever decisions on appeals against determinations of The Authority for Television On Demand (ATVOD) to Ofcom were made. The two cases at hand concerned the question of whether two “adult websites” fall within the scope of the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2009, as being on-demand programmes (ODPs) comparable to a television programme. ATVOD concluded that both services met the statutory criteria, including that their “principal purpose is the provision of programmes, the form and content of which are comparable to the form and content of programmes normally included...

In the case Mosley v. the United Kingdom the European Court of Human Rights decided that the right of privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights does not require the media to give prior notice of intended publications to those who feature in them. The applicant in this case is Max Rufus Mosley, the former president of the International Automobile Federation. In 2008, the Sunday newspaper News of the World published on its front page an article entitled “F1 Boss Has Sick Nazi Orgy with 5 Hookers”, while several pages inside the newspaper were also devoted...

The UK High Court has rejected a challenge to provisions of the Digital Economy Act 2010 designed to limit file-sharing in breach of copyright law. They provide that internet service providers must notify subscribers if their internet protocol addresses are reported by copyright owners as being used to infringe copyright, must keep track of the number of reports about each subscriber and must compile on an anonymous basis a list of those reported on. After obtaining a court order to obtain personal details, copyright owners will be able to take action against those on the list. These provisions...

The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport has announced that he intends to accept undertakings from News Corporation on their proposed merger with BSkyB rather than referring the merger to the Competition Commission (see IRIS 2011-2/4; IRIS 2011-3/22). The minister took advice from Ofcom, the communications regulator, and from the Office of Fair Trading, the competition authority, before doing so, and allowed 18 days for consultation on the proposed undertakings. The use of undertakings avoids the delay of six-eight months that referral to the Competition Commission would entail,...