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The Court of Appeal in Paris delivered an interesting decision on 24 September 1997 on musical pirating on television. The public-sector channel France 2 had used extracts from three musical works by the group Daft Punk to provide a musical background to the presentation of its programmes. The co-authors of the pirated songs and their beneficiaries, considering that such broadcasting constituted a serious infringement of their copyright protection, took the dispute to the courts under the urgent procedure, but their demand for such broadcasting to cease was thrown out. They appealed against the...

The Commission has announced that it is considering starting proceedings against Italy before the European Court of Justice of the European Communities because of its failure to respect certain provisions of the Television without Frontiers Directive. The Commission referred mainly to the measures applicable to advertising slots and the broadcasting of European productions. The broadcasting quotas provided for in Italian legislation apply only to cinematographic works and do not cover all the types of programme intended by the Directive. Moreover, no national measures have been adopted to support...

On 24 November 1997, the Media Authority of The Netherlands (Commissariaat voor de Media) wrote a letter to the Holland Media Groep (HMG) that it will extend its monitoring activities for compliance with the Dutch Media Act, to the broadcasters of HMG (esp. RTL4 and RTL5). A similar letter was sent to radio broadcasters Sky Radio and Classic FM. This decision is based on the revised 'Television without Frontiers' Directive which stipulates that a broadcaster is deemed to be established in a Member State when it has its Head Office in this Member State and takes its editorial decisions in this...

On 3 December, the Flemish Parliament voted in the new decree aimed at reorganising the Flemish Media Council and which also allows for the setting up of a Flemish Media Commission. The Flemish Government's Bill (see IRIS 1997-10 : 12) was approved by Parliament with just a few amendments. Setting aside the regulatory power, which is not related to the audio-visual regulatory process and which remains the province of Parliament and the Government, everything else within the audio-visual sphere will come under the Media Council in its role as independent authority. The Council will be made up of...

In January 1994, the Association against Animal Factories (Verein gegen Tierfabriken - VgT) asked The Television Advertising Co. (AG für das Werbefernsehen - AGW), a subsidiary of the Swiss Radio and Television Corporation (SRG) to show a television spot highlighting the cruel conditions in which working animals were kept and urging viewers to eat less meat. But the AGW refused, because of the spot's "political content", and also because the association was not prepared to rework it to bring it into line with the requirements of the Radio and Television Act (Radio- und Fernsehgesetz - RTVG). The...