Search results : 306

On 10 January 2020, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Richard Bruton TD, published the general scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2019 (hereinafter ‘the Bill’). The purpose of the Bill is to create new online safety laws to bring legislation up to date with the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) which governs the EU-wide coordination of national legislation on all audiovisual media, which concerns both traditional TV broadcasts and on-demand services. The proposed Bill will establish an Online Safety Commissioner as...

On 19 December 2019, Advocate General Saugmandsgaard Øe (AG) delivered his opinion in the high-profile case Data Protection Commissioner v. Facebook Ireland Limited (Schrems II), on whether the use of standard contractual clauses can constitute a valid legal basis for transferring and processing personal data outside of the European Union. The AG opined that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) should consider standard contractual clauses as a valid mechanism for the transfer of personal data abroad. Previously, in Schrems, the CJEU had declared the Commission’s ‘safe...

On 24 October 2019, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Charles Flanagan, launched a public consultation process on hate speech. The consultation forms a crucial part of the review of the relevant law in this area – namely, the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 – and aims to ensure that Ireland’s legislation on hate speech is fit for purpose and is effective in meeting the real needs of communities and individuals who experience the impact of hate speech.  The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 prohibits certain forms of threatening, abusive or...

On 17 September 2019, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) published a research report on political social media advertisements. The ElectCheck 2019 research report was commissioned by the BAI and undertaken by the Institute for Future Media and Journalism (FuJo) at Dublin City University. The research examined the political advertising activity on Facebook, Twitter and Google during the European elections in May 2019, in the context of the platforms’ commitments in the self-regulatory Code of Practice on Disinformation to address the spread of online disinformation and fake news....

On 24 September 2019, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) issued a decision rejecting three complaints relating a programme on the issue of transgender. The BAI’s Compliance Committee (unanimously) found that the public service broadcaster, RTÉ, had not infringed the requirements of the Broadcasting Act 2009 the BAI Code of Fairness, Objectivity and Impartiality in News and Current Affairs, or the Code of Programme Standards in the broadcast. The decision concerned an episode of “Prime Time”, a well-known current affairs programme broadcast twice weekly by the public broadcaster RTÉ on...