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In December it was decided to bring the Broadcasting Law into line with the revised version of the so-called Television Directive. With the entry into force of the amended law on 1 January 1999 the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) has started to use visual symbols to identify programmes considered unsuitable for young persons. In Austria, broadcasting is regulated on the basis of federal legislation and subject to its provisions. Whereas the ORF, which is a public corporation, is governed by the Broadcasting Law, private television is the subject of the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting...

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Republic of Austria signed an agreement on bilateral relations in the audiovisual sector in Vienna on 23 January 2006. Under the agreement, films that are co-produced by Luxembourgian and Austrian film makers will in future be treated in the same way as domestic films as long as one of the partners is responsible for at least 20% of the overall film costs. Film producers in both countries are therefore granted full access to the respective national state privileges, such as tax advantages and preferential treatment in relation to film aid. Luxembourg has been...

A decision given in mid-August by the Supreme Court on an application for an interim injunction dealt for the first time with copyright law aspects of the use of works on the World-Wide Web (WWW). The proceedings originated in a contract concluded in 1984 between the widow of the writer, Konrad Bayer (1932-1964), and a publisher. In this contract, Mrs Bayer assigned "sole and exclusive publication rights in all impressions and editions" of her late husband's entire literary output to the publisher in question. The nature of the rights assigned was clarified by a list of the uses covered. An injunction...

The facts of the case were as follows : the defendant runs a hotel. The hotel rooms are equipped with television sets capable of showing not only the terrestrial channels broadcast by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) but also programmes from the ASTRA satellite picked up by a satellite dish installed on the hotel roof. These programmes are selected, processed and amplified in an indoor unit and fed over a coaxial cable to the individual hotel rooms after demodulation and conversion. The plaintiff, a collection society, requested that the defendant be required to render an account or...

Whoever by acting in breach of copyright law ( Urheberrechtgesetz-UrhG) culpably does prejudice to another has to pay damages to the injured party under § 87 UrhG. This claim for damages under copyright law has several special features vis-a-vis general liability law : for example, the wrongdoer has to pay the injured party for loss of earnings without consideration of the degree of liability (para 1) ; furthermore the injured party may call for appropriate compensation for intangible prejudice not covered by pecuniary loss suffered (para 2) and as compensation for pecuniary damage suffered, if...