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Since the beginning of 2009, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers (CM) has adopted five country-specific Recommendations concerning the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Serbia (first monitoring cycle); Armenia, Austria and Cyprus (second monitoring cycle) and Sweden (third monitoring cycle). The Charter contains a number of provisions of relevance for the (audiovisual) media, the most detailed of which are to be found in Article 11. Of the latest batch of Recommendations on the application of the Charter, the most specific references to the audiovisual...

In Austria, the private television stations have declared their intention to dispense with commercial breaks in children’s programmes in the future. A statement was issued on 15 September 2009 that, under the aegis of the Verband Österreichischer Privatsender (Association of Austrian Private Broadcasters - VÖP) and the Fachverband der Telekommunikations- und Rundfunkunternehmungen der Wirtschaftskammer Österreich (Austrian Chamber of Commerce’s Association of Telecommunications and Broadcasting Companies), a total of 14 TV broadcasters and these two associations had signed this declaration. The...

In a ruling issued on 14 July 2009 (case no. 4Ob41/09x), the Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court - OGH) explained that an Internet access provider cannot be forced to disclose the personal data of customers who download protected works using file-sharing systems. In the case concerned, the collecting society LSG GmbH had demanded that access provider Tele2 should disclose the personal data linked to IP addresses of customers who had downloaded files illegally. Tele2 had refused to comply. LSG had based its claim on Art. 87b (3) of the Copyright Act, which obliges providers, as intermediaries, to...

On 24 February 2009, the Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court - OGH) ruled that non-commercial advertising broadcast in return for payment is subject to the limits on advertising time laid down in broadcasting legislation. The plaintiff in this case was a private broadcasting company, while the defendant was Österreichische Rundfunk (Austrian public service broadcaster - ORF). The parties disputed whether ORF had exceeded the limit of six minutes of advertising on a particular day on a regional radio station. The courts ruled that this was the case if an appeal for donations to support the training...

The latest amendment to the KommAustria-Gesetz ( KommAustria Act - KOG) resulted in the creation of three funds, to be managed by the broadcasting regulators Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH (RTR-GmbH) and KommAustria . The Fonds zur Förderung des privaten Rundfunks (fund for the promotion of private broadcasting) is available to Austrian private commercial broadcasters and profit-oriented broadcasters that do not fall under Austrian jurisdiction but broadcast specifically to Austrian audiences. It will offer funding of EUR 5,000,000 per year. According to the Act, the money is to be used...