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In a judgment on preliminary relief proceedings on 15 December 2015, the District Court of Amsterdam ruled that the Dutch public broadcaster PowNed acted unlawfully towards a Syrian refugee. PowNed broadcast video images in which the plaintiff refugee talked about a medical problem with his testicles and seemed to express an aversion to homosexuality. PowNed also shared the fragment on its Facebook page, where it was widely viewed, shared, liked and received many negative comments. The footage was made during a conversation between the plaintiff and a reporter of PowNed while she visited a temporary...

On 26 August 2015, the Vienna Commercial Court ruled that the Austrian legislation imposing a levy on blank cassettes is incompatible with the Copyright Directive and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The collecting society Austro-Mechana claimed payment of the so-called Leerkassettenvergütung (blank cassette levy) under section 42 of the Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act) for all storage media sold by Amazon. The collecting society won its case at trial and on appeal, but the Oberster Gerichtshof (Supreme Court) stayed the proceedings to refer several questions...

On 21 October 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in New Media Online v. Bundeskommunikationssenat, which was a preliminary reference from an Austrian court, asking whether a newspaper’s website containing video is covered by the EU’s Audiovisual Media Service Directive. The Court disagreed with Advocate General Szpunar’s recent opinion in July 2015, which had held that neither a newspaper’s website with audiovisual material, nor any section of such a website, is an “audiovisual media service” under the Directive (see IRIS 2015-8/3). The case concerned...

In a decision of 24 June 2015 (KOA 10.300/15-028), the Austrian broadcasting regulator, KommAustria, ruled that the public service broadcaster Österreichische Rundfunk (ORF) did not pay an inflated price for the rights to broadcast the UEFA Champions League for the next three seasons. The case followed a complaint lodged by Austrian private broadcaster Puls 4, which had accused ORF of breaching Article 31c(1) of the ORF-Gesetz (ORF Act). Under this provision, the public service broadcaster is forbidden from using licence fee income to purchase broadcast rights at excessive prices that cannot be...

On 1 July 2015, Advocate General Szpunar delivered his opinion in Case C-347/14, New Media Online GmbH, which was a preliminary reference from an Austria court asking whether a newspaper’s website containing video is covered by the EU’s Audiovisual Media Service Directive. In the advocate general’s opinion, neither a newspaper’s website with audiovisual material, nor any section of such a website, is an “audiovisual media service” under the directive. The case concerned the Tiroler Tageszeitung newspaper’s website (“Tiroler Tageszeitung Online”), which was operated by the Austrian company New Media...