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On 29 October 2015, by decision no. 210/2015, the Constitutional Court ruled on the constitutional legitimacy of Article 38(5) of Legislative Decree no. 177/2005 (Consolidated Text of the audiovisual and radio media services) as amended in 2010, which states that pay-TV channels are subject to hourly advertising limits shorter than those which apply to free-to-air broadcasters. The Constitutional Court ruled that this provision is in full accordance with the Italian Constitution. Article 38 provides stricter limits than those provided by Directive 2010/13/EU. The difference between the limit provided...

On 9 November 2015, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) published its new Guidelines on General Election Coverage (for previous guidelines, see IRIS 2014-5/23). The guidelines are designed to provide direction and advice to broadcasters as to how fairness, objectivity and impartiality can be achieved in their coverage of the upcoming general election in Ireland. Rule 27 of the BAI Code of Fairness, Objectivity and Impartiality in News and Current Affairs provides that broadcasters must comply with guidelines and codes of practice on election and referenda coverage. The new guidelines set...

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has decided to take the regulation of video-on-demand services in-house. These services were previously regulated by the Authority for Video on Demand (ATVOD), designated in 2010 as the co-regulator to take the lead in regulating editorial content for these services (see IRIS 2010-5/27). ATVOD originated as a self-regulatory body but was restructured with the creation of a board, with a majority of members independent of the industry. Ofcom retained concurrent responsibility to act in addition to, or in place of, ATVOD. The services include catch-up TV, on-demand...

In a judgment of 14 October 2015 (Case no. 6 C 17.14), the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) decided that a bumper introducing a block of commercials and linked to a programme announcement was in breach of the rules on separating TV programmes from advertising. During a break between two early evening programmes, the television broadcaster Sat.1 had broadcast commercial bumpers that included the word “Werbung” (advertisement). The bumpers also contained announcements for the programmes to follow. The Landeszentrale für Medien und Kommunikation Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate...

On 30 September 2015, the District Court of Midden-Nederland sent a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), containing the following question: does “communication to the public”, within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC, include providing access to copyright-protected material by media players using “add-ons”? Add-ons are software files made by third parties and are freely available on the Internet. They can contain hyperlinks to streaming websites on which access to copyright-protected material has been made available, not necessarily with...