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The State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted on 21 April 2017 amendments to the Federal Statute on Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information (see IRIS 2014-3/40) that introduce a prohibition of foreign and restrictive regulation of national online cinemas. The act provides the notion of "the owner of an audiovisual service" and enumerates its responsibilities. Such an “owner” is defined as “the owner of a website and/or the website page on the Internet, and/or an information system, and/or a computer programme that are used to form and/or organize the distribution...

Portuguese homes in which children grow up are increasingly digital. This is one of the main conclusions of the study released in February 2017 by the state media regulatory body, ERC (“Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social”), entitled “Growing up between screens: Use of electronic devices by children (3-8 years)”. The study was focused on the use of electronic media by children aged three to eight years old and sought to identify the environments of screens, in which children live (namely television, computers, consoles, mobile phones, tablets), their modes of access and uses, as well...

According to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Iceland has breached the right to freedom of expression of the editor of a web-based media site, by holding him liable for defamation. The applicant in this case is Mr. Ólafsson, editor of the web-based media site Pressan. He published articles alleging that a political candidate (‘A.’) had sexually abused children. The allegations were based on statements made by relatives of ‘A.’ who had declared that he had sexually abused them when they were children. These allegations were also forwarded to the police and the child protection services,...

On 8 March 2017, the Conseil d’Etat (Council of State) deliberated on an application for the suspension of two film licences issued by the Minister for Culture for the animated film ‘Sausage Party’, which prohibited the film from being shown to anyone under 12 years old. The appeal was lodged by a number of associations against the judgments delivered under the urgent procedure rejecting their application. One of the licences had been issued for the original version of the film, the other for the French version. The applicant associations claimed, in support of their appeal, that the licencing...

On 8 March 2017, the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC) denounced two child pornography websites to the State prosecution and to the Catalan police. The Council took this action following a complaint made against the two above-mentioned websites. The two sites are in English and offer free-to-view photographs of underage girls who are nude or semi-nude. One of the two websites announces that on a pay-per-view basis, each user can access a range of 1,000 videos and 10,000 pictures banned on social networks. The first website belongs to the profile of an online community based in the United States...