Search results : 399

On 23 March 2012, the Council of State handed down its judgment in the case AGCOM v. Sky Italia. On 13 July 2011, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR Lazio) annulled AGCOM’s rules on short news reports set out in decision 667/10/CONS insofar as they set at three minutes the maximum duration for such reports, but confirmed the applicability of those rules both to internal and cross-border situations (see IRIS 2012-1/31). AGCOM and the broadcaster Sky Italia appealed the TAR Lazio ruling before the Council of State. Its judgment clarifies the territorial scope of the provisions on short...

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...

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...