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The Consiliul Naţional al Audiovizualului (National Council for Electronic Media - CNA) imposed in February 2012 numerous severe sanctions on several Romanian television stations for breaching audiovisual rules with regard to the right to private life; the right to one’s own image; the protection of reputation and human dignity; the limit of advertising; the modification of rebroadcasting without permission; and the “must carry” principle (see inter alia IRIS 2011-1/44, IRIS 2011-6/31, IRIS 2012-1/38, and IRIS 2012-2/32). The commercial station Antena 1 was sanctioned for severe infringements of...

On 29 February 2012 the Minister for Jobs, Innovation and Enterprise signed into law the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2012. The statutory instrument amends s.40 and s.205 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 by inserting provisions that permit the owner of the copyright or a related right in a work to apply to the High Court for an injunction against an intermediary whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right in respect of that work. The statutory instrument describes an intermediary, against whom an application for an injunction...

The High Court has decided that the operators of The Pirate Bay website and its users are both guilty of infringing the copyright of rightsholders in the music industry. This means that internet service providers can now be forced to block their customers’ access to the site. The case was brought by major record companies against the six major UK internet service providers. The Pirate Bay is a website which enables users to search for and download copyrighted material, including music and films, and the record companies sought an injunction from the court to force the service providers to block...

The UK Supreme Court has now determined the final appeal in the “Sugar” case relating to the application of the Freedom of Information Act to the BBC (see IRIS 2010-3/25 and IRIS 2009-4/15). The BBC is listed as an organisation covered by the Freedom of Information Act that provides public rights of access to official information, but on in relation to information held “for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature.” In 2005 Mr Sugar had applied under the Act for disclosure of the Balen Report, an internal management report relating to the question of whether BBC coverage of the...

The new anti-piracy law in Spain (the so called Sinde Law after former Ministry Ángeles González Sinde, see IRIS 2012-2/18, IRIS 2011-3/17 and IRIS 2011-2/23) has hit a setback after the country’s Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by the Asociación de Internautas (Association of Web Users), who claimed the Sinde Law is unconstitutional. Spanish copyright laws have been criticised for over a decade after various courts ruled that the file-sharing of unlicensed content was not illegal, hindering civil legal action even against those who provide software or web services that enable copyright...