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On 30 January 2012, the Spanish Constitutional Court declared the use of hidden cameras in a journalistic field to be unconstitutional, regardless of the public relevance of the investigation’s purpose. This statement arises from a lawsuit filed against a Spanish TV production company for the infringement of the rights to honour and to personal portrayal, when a journalist went to an appointment with an estheticienne (beautician) posing as a patient. The appointment was at the beautician’s home, which was partly used as her office, where the journalist recorded the voice and image of the beautician...

The criminal procedure against a famous TV weather presenter accused of rape, which has attracted huge media interest, has also repeatedly occupied Cologne’s civil courts in recent months. The journalist, who has since been acquitted, launched numerous lawsuits - some of which were successful - following media reporting of the case which he believed had infringed his personality rights (see IRIS 2012-3/16 and IRIS 2012-1/19). In three judgments issued on 14 February 2012, the Oberlandesgericht Köln (Cologne Appeal Court - OLG) considered the extent to which questioning of the accused about his...

In a ruling of 9 February 2012, the Oberverwaltungsgericht Münster (Münster Administrative Appeal Court - OVG) overturned the decision of the lower-instance court (see IRIS 2010-2/11) and ruled that Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) is, in principle, obliged to provide information to a journalist under the North Rhine-Westphalia Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (Freedom of Information Act - IFG NRW). The procedure followed a journalist’s request to WDR for information about which companies it cooperated with and how much money was involved. The journalist had requested this information because he suspected...

The Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) has partially upheld a complaint about storage and disclosure obligations laid down in telecommunications law. The complainants had mainly argued that Articles 111-113 of the Telekommunikationsgesetz (Telecommunications Act - TKG) infringed their basic rights. Article 111 TKG requires telecommunications service providers to store certain data concerning the connections they provide and the owners of those connections. The BVerfG considered this requirement to be justified on the grounds that it enabled the State authorities to...

On 22 February 2012, the European Commissioner for Trade, Karel De Gucht, announced that the European Commission would refer the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The European Commission has already passed ACTA to national governments for ratification and to the European Parliament for debate and vote. Moreover, the Council has adopted ACTA unanimously and has authorized member states to sign it (see IRIS 2011-8/7). The opinions on ACTA are however far from unanimous. While at the institutional level the ratification process seemed to be going...