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On 20 February 2008 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a Declaration on protecting the dignity, security and privacy of children on the Internet. This Declaration focuses on the content that children can create about themselves on the Internet, including all forms of traces that they can leave online (logs, records and processing). "We are determined to ensure that our children can use the Internet safely, and that the Internet cannot be used against them", said Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The Committee is aware that children...

This survey is based on the reports and the available data of the four regulatory and/or inspecting bodies for the period of one year. It includes all complaints related to contents, which might (seriously) impair the physical, mental and moral development of minors directly via the Internet or via mobile phones, via broadcasting and advertising in the audiovisual sector, as well as via advertising for Internet content in print. The report of the Inspectorate for Culture and Media includes a complaint that questioned gratuitous violence content in a broadcast, and another complaint against the...

In a decision of 20 December 2007 (case no. 11 W 58/07), the Oberlandesgericht (Appeal Court - OLG) of Frankfurt a.M. ruled that the owner of an Internet connection was not necessarily responsible for copyright infringements committed by a family member – in this case, so-called file-sharing infringements. Connection owners should only be held liable if they were under an obligation to monitor the Internet use of family members. Such an obligation only applied if the connection owner had actual grounds for suspecting that the connection might be used to break the law. Such grounds only existed...

Videotext is an information system in which text and simple graphics are transmitted by the broadcaster in parallel with the television programme itself. Alongside basic and supplementary information relating to TV programmes, videotext can be used to provide a wide range of information that can be constantly updated. There is the also the possibility of so-called "videotext chat", in which viewers themselves transmit information. Some user-generated information transmitted in this way has been criticised in the past because it contained vulgar and obscene language. These messages could be accessed...

As reported earlier (see IRIS 2007-6: 19) the Slovak Ministry of Culture and Arts had prepared a new draft media law the main purpose of which was to bring Slovak audiovisual law in line with the European Convention for the Protection of the Audiovisual Heritage. The new law has now entered into force on 1 January 2008 as Act. No. 343/2007 concerning conditions of registration, public distribution and storage of audiovisual works, sound and picture recordings of artistic performances and multimedia works, called the Audiovisual Act. This Act has completely replaced the former Audiovisual Media...