Search results : 1095

On 16 July 2008, the European Commission adopted an anti-trust decision intended to prohibit copyright-handling practices that create artificial barriers to the provision of music across European borders. These involve clauses in reciprocal representation agreements between collecting societies (all of which operate under the umbrella of CISAC – the International Association of Collecting Societies of Authors and Composers) that have been deemed to infringe the European rules on restrictive business practices (Article 81, EC Treaty and Article 53, EEA Agreement; see also the European Court of Justice’s...

On the 30 May 2008, the 12º Vara Cível de Lisboa , a Portuguese Court, prohibited the exhibition of the programme “44.ª Corrida TV” (44^th TV bullfighting), scheduled by the Public Service Broadcaster, Rádiotelevisão Portuguesa (RTP), for Sunday afternoon (8 June) at 17h00. The Court decided that bullfighting could not be broadcast before 22h30 and without an identifying symbol advising viewers of the violent nature of the programme's content. In a country with a long tradition of bullfighting, this landmark decision was taken following a complaint of the animal rights association Animal,...

On 26 April 2008 new amendments to the Law on Alcohol Control came into force. The amended Law abolishes the unconditional prohibition to advertise alcoholic beverages in TV programmes. According to the former amendments of the Law on Alcohol Control (see IRIS 2007-8:15), which came into force on 1 January 2008, alcohol advertising was prohibited from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. in broadcast programmes of broadcasters under Lithuania’s jurisdiction. When the prohibition to broadcast alcohol advertising came into force, the broadcasters of Lithuania suspended the live broadcast of all sports and began to...

The European Commission has closed its procedure in accordance with Article 2a of the TVWF Directive involving the Romanian and the Hungarian media authorities and a television broadcaster called Cool Tv. Cool Tv is a television channel operating under Romanian jurisdiction but broadcasting in the Hungarian language for primarily Hungarian audiences. In recent years the Országos Rádió és Televízió Testület (Hungarian National Radio and Television Commission - ORTT) has received several complaints from viewers regarding one particular programme of the broadcaster entitled “Cool Sex”. The programme,...

On 21 April 2008, the Council of Electronic Media passed a rulebook on television broadcasting regarding the legal protection of minors. This was carried out on the basis of Article 15, paragraph 5, of the Law on Electronic Media. This rulebook contains regulations that television broadcasters have to obey when broadcasting programmes, the contents of which could pose a threat to the physical, mental and moral upbringing of minors and which are broadcast in un-encoded form. This implies inter alia all types of programmes containing extreme violence, sex scenes, vulgar expressions, and those showing...