Search results : 393

On 7 March 2012 the Second Chamber of the Regional Administrative Court of Latium referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling on the question as to whether Directive 2010/13/EU (the AVMS Directive) and EU primary law should be interpreted as precluding the asymmetric hourly advertising limits for pay-tv operators provided by Italian law. The so-called Romani Decree, adopted by the Italian Government to implement the AVMS Directive (see IRIS 2010-4/31), includes a number of provisions having no exact match in the AVMS Directive. In particular, Article 38, para. 5, of...

In 2009 Centro Europa 7 complained in Strasbourg that for a period of almost ten years the Italian Government had not allocated it any frequencies for analogue terrestrial television broadcasting, while the company had already obtained a licence for TV broadcasting in 1999. The company submitted that the failure to apply the broadcasting law of 1997, the refusal to enforce the Constitutional Court’s judgments imposing the effective allocation of frequencies for new private TV stations and the duopoly existing in the Italian television market (RAI and Mediaset) were in breach of Article 10 of the...

On 2 May 2012, the board of the Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni (the Italian Communications Authority - Agcom) presented an assessment of its term of office from 2005 to 2012, showing how during this period the overall landscape of the communications sector has changed drastically: in 2005 the most successful company in regard to capitalization was Exxon corporation, in 2012 it is Apple; in 2005 social networks were at a start-up phase, today they reach over one billion subscribers. Internet has enhanced the circulation of products and services and the number of companies registered...

On 15 March 2012 the Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni (the Italian Communications Authority - Agcom) adopted Resolution no. 130/12/CONS, launching a public consultation with the view of drawing up guidelines on the obligations on public service broadcasting for the years 2013 -2015, pursuant to Article 45, paragraph 4 of the Italian AVMS Code (IRIS 2005-9/24 and IRIS 2010-2/25) according to which prior to each three-year renewal of the Contract of Service between RAI and the Ministry of Economic Development, Agcom, in consultation with the Ministry, shall lay down guidelines for the...

On 15 March 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union published two decisions (case C-162/10 and case C-135/10) on the right to equitable remuneration when a user allows his own clients to hear music as background music in a place subject to the user’s control. In case C-135/10, SCF, the Italian broadcasting and neighbouring rights collecting agency sued Mr Marco Del Corso, a dentist who played background music, free of charge, in the waiting room of his dental practice. At national level, the Court of Appeal of Turin (Italy) requested a preliminary ruling on the question whether the free...