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In March 2004 the Regional Court of Paris ordered the telephone operator SFR and the advertising agency Publicis to pay the film company Gaumont EUR 300 000 for parasitic conduct as it had run a large-scale advertising campaign that deliberately used elements that were evocative of the film (see IRIS 2004-5: 7). One month later, the two companies appealed against the judgment, as did Luc Besson, whose application to the Courts on the grounds of piracy infringing his moral right as co-author of the film had been dismissed by the Court. On 8 September, the Court of Appeal in Paris delivered a much-remarked...

On 9 July 2004, the Landtag (regional parliament) of North Rhine-Westphalia held a hearing on a Bill tabled by the Landesregierung (regional government) amending the Gesetz für den Westdeutschen Rundfunk (West German Broadcasting Act). The participants included representatives of regional broadcasting authorities, regulatory bodies, cable and satellite associations and academics. Based on the complaints management system used by the British public broadcaster BBC, the Bill proposes the creation of an independent programming and complaints body, which would decide on viewers' complaints in agreement...

RTL Television, the German subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based RTL Group, has withdrawn a complaint to the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) against a decision of the Oberlandesgericht Celle (Celle Appeal Court - OLG). The proceedings concerned the forfeiture of income earned from illegal advertising. In 1997, the OLG had ruled in the last instance that RTL could not take advantage of the more relaxed regulations governing series when calculating the maximum permissible number of commercial breaks (see IRIS 1997-7: 11). The relevant media supervisory body, the Niedersächsische...

The Czech Parliament has adopted Law no. 480/2004 on certain information society services, which entered into force on 7 September 2004. The new law is designed to implement Directive 2000/31/EC of 8 May 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market. In accordance with the Directive, the new law defines terms such as "information society services", "service provider", "established service provider", "recipient of the service", "consumer" and "commercial communication". The law explains that service providers are not liable...

Following the amendment of Austrian broadcasting laws, KommAustria was entrusted with an important new responsibility at the beginning of August. It will monitor broadcasters' compliance with advertising regulations on a monthly basis and publish its findings "in an appropriate way". The results will be published on the web-site of RTR GmbH. In August, KommAustria condemned breaches of advertising regulations by three commercial radio broadcasters, by ATV+, the only terrestrial TV operator providing programmes throughout Austria (see IRIS 2004-4: 6), and by Österreichische Rundfunk (ORF). KommAustria...