Search results : 305

On 31 May 2011, the Austrian Bundeskommunikationssenat (Federal Communications Board - BKS) asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling on the application of Article 15 of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2010/13/EU (AVMSD), which regulates short reporting rights. The procedure before the BKS concerned a decision taken by the Kommunikationsbehörde Austria (Austrian Communications Authority - KommAustria) in December 2010 in a dispute between Österreichischer Rundfunk (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation - ORF) and Sky Österreich GmbH (Sky). In 2009, Sky...

On 19 July 2011 the European Commission sent requests for information in the form of letters of formal notice, the first step in the process of an EU infringement procedure, to 20 EU member states. The member states in question, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, have not yet notified to the Commission measures to implement the new EU Telecoms Package, formally adopted after two years of heated negotiations at the end of 2009...

The Austrian Datenschutzkommission (Data Protection Commission - DSK) has approved the Google Street View service for Austria under certain conditions. Google Street View was first registered with the DSK in January 2010. After it was revealed in spring 2010 that Google collected and, in some cases, recorded, WLAN data when gathering images for the Street View service, the DSK instigated a test procedure in accordance with Article 30 of the 2000 Data Protection Act (DSG 2000). Google subsequently erased the data it had collected and promised that no more WLAN data would be gathered by Street View...

An Austrian and a German film producer have, with the support of the Verein für Antipiraterie (Anti-Piracy Association - VAP), been granted an injunction against one of the largest Austrian Internet access providers by the Handelsgericht Wien (Vienna Commercial Court). The operators of the Internet platform kino.to, which was the subject of the dispute and provides links to streams of copyrighted films, are thought to be based in Russia and were therefore beyond the plaintiffs’ reach. The Internet access provider, which provides access to the portal kino.to (as do virtually all other providers...

In Austria, Internet service providers are required to inform the public prosecutor’s office, at its request, about the master data of the user to whom a particular IP address was assigned at a particular point in time. In a ruling of 13 April 2011, the Austrian Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court - OGH) confirmed this on the basis of the legal situation before the introduction of data retention. It therefore rejected a nullity appeal lodged by the Generalprokuratur (Procurator General’s Office). The initial case concerned the identification of a suspect who was accused by the Steyr public prosecutor’s...