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On 27 July 2011, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that two cosmetic advertisements were “misleading”. L’Oreal’s brands, Lancôme and Maybelline, were the object of adverse adjudications because “they could not demonstrate that images of Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington, which had been digitally enhanced, were an accurate representation of the results the products could achieve. As such we judged the ads were misleading.” Whilst the specific matter concerned magazine advertisements, misleading advertising is prohibited likewise under UK advertising rules applying to broadcasts,...

On 28 July 2011, the English High Court ordered BT, the UK’s largest internet service provider, to block access to a site which aggregates a large amount of illegally copied material found on Usenet discussion forums. BT has decided not to appeal the decision, which is likely to provide the basis for a number of other claims in the future. It also supplements the provisions in the Digital Economy Act 2010, which survived a recent legal challenge (see IRIS 2011-6/20). The case was brought by six major film studios and production companies, all members of the Motion Picture Association of America...

The purpose of the international tax credit instituted by the 2009 Budget and embodied in Art. 220 quaterdecies of the General Tax Code is to make it easier to shoot and manufacture in France cinematographic and audiovisual works originated by a non-French producer and containing elements that attach it to the culture, heritage or territory of France. Thus the tax credit is granted to a company that carries out the executive production of a work in France, subject to the company being approved by the national cinematographic centre (Centre National de la Cinématographie - CNC). The credit represents...

In its groundbreaking judgment of 4 October 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union has essentially legalized the import, sale and use of foreign satellite television decoder cards. The judgment, which was given in two joined (originally British) cases, concerned decoder cards that provide access to encrypted satellite transmissions from Greece of British Premier League football matches. Foreign decoder cards such as these are widely sold and used in the United Kingdom, both for private viewing and in public houses, because they provide access to televised Premier League football at substantial...

The long-running story of the bid by News Corporation to purchase the whole of BSkyB (see IRIS 2011-2/4, IRIS 2011-3/22 and IRIS 2011-5/25) has reached a surprising conclusion with the withdrawal of the bid as a result of the effect of the UK phone-hacking scandal on the reputation of News International. In March, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport had announced that he intended to accept undertakings from News Corporation as an alternative to referring the bid to the Competition Commission for a full investigation on plurality grounds. The undertakings would have involved Sky...