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On 26 November 2018, the EU Commission initiated proceedings for infringement of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union against 17 member states for non-compliance with the Directive requiring the transposition into national law of the Marrakesh Treaty (Directive (EU) 2017/1564) (see IRIS 2017-9/4 and IRIS 2016-9/4). The Marrakesh Treaty is a WIPO-administered convention that was signed on 27 June 2013 and entered into force on 30 September 2016, after the first 20 ratifications. The Treaty facilitates access to print works in formats adapted for persons who are blind, visually...

The National Council for Radio and Television (NCRT) is expected to complete the tender for licensing seven companies providing national free-to-air DTT content by the end of October 2018. Ultimately, five of the six companies that participated on 11 January 2018 met the legal requirements. According to the NCRT’s decision of 27 June 2018, one company should not be accepted for the principal reason that its sole ultimate shareholder had failed to fully establish its actual connection with the financial means used for the formation of the capital of the candidate company. It was underlined that...

On 22 February 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in Alpha Doryforiki Tileorasi Anonymi Etairia v. Greece concerning the fining of a broadcaster over hidden camera footage of a politician. The applicant in the case was the owner of a Greek television channel, ALPHA. In January 2002, ALPHA broadcast a television show named “Jungle” (Ζούγκλα) in which three videos filmed with a hidden camera were broadcast. In the first video, A.C., then a member of the Hellenic Parliament and chairman of the parliamentary committee on electronic gambling, was shown entering a...

In April 2017, the Athens Court of Appeals, by its Judgment no 1909/2017, upheld the Judgment no. 5249/2014 of the Court of First Instance, in a case concerning the posting of hyperlinks. More specifically, the website www.livemovies.gr, operating as an online inventory for audiovisual works (films, TV programs and TV series), contained hyperlinks leading users to third-party websites (usually, but not always, official TV channels’ websites), where those works were available for live streaming without any restrictions, technical measures or payment conditions. A Greek collecting society for musical...

New developments on the licensing procedure for free-to-air, nationwide, DTT are to be mentioned, after the abrogation of the former tender due to a decision of the Council of State (see IRIS 2017-3/19). In June 2017, the Parliament voted a provision requiring all providers of national coverage to broadcast their programmes using high definition and standard definition formats at the same time until 31 December 2021. In a report submitted to the Parliament, this decision is justified by findings that "a significant number of television sets are old-fashioned and do not receive a high-definition...