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RTL Television, the German subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based RTL Group, has withdrawn a complaint to the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) against a decision of the Oberlandesgericht Celle (Celle Appeal Court - OLG).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...

The Federal Act amending the Private Radio Act, the Private Television Act, the KommAustria Act and the ORF Act and repealing the Television Signal Act was promulgated at the end of July, and most of its provisions entered into force on 1 August 2004. The new act heralds the most extensive modification in the broadcasting field since the reform of its legal framework in 2001. The amendment places private broadcasting laws as a whole on a sounder commercial footing, inter alia by relaxing certain guarantees designed to ensure media diversity. The provisions on controls have been amended with a...

In May 2002, the European Commission formally asked France to lift its ban on television advertising by the press, the distribution networks and the cinema and publishing sectors introduced by the Decree of 27 March 1992 (see IRIS 2002-6: 13). The Community authorities felt that these regulations, which France held were necessary to preserve the diversity of the press and culture and to protect small shops, restricted the free circulation of services within the Union. In a Decree of 7 October 2003, the French public authorities decided to authorise television advertising for the press, from 1 January...