Search results : 978

According to media reports, on 9 February 2012 the Amtsgericht Eschweiler (Eschweiler district court - AG) acquitted two Dutch journalists of breaching domestic peace (Art. 123 of the Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code - StGB)) and violating the confidentiality of the spoken word (Art. 201 StGB). The two defendants interviewed the joint plaintiff in 2009. The latter, as a member of the SS, had shot dead three civilians in the Netherlands in 1944. The death penalty that was originally ordered for these crimes was subsequently mitigated to life imprisonment, a sentence that he never began because he...

On 16 February 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its preliminary ruling in the case of SABAM v. Netlog NV. The judgment was issued on a request made by the Court of First Instance of Brussels. In the main proceedings the Belgische Vereniging van Auteurs, Componisten en Uitgevers CVBA (‘SABAM’), a management company representing authors, composers and publishers of musical works, alleged that the hosting service offered by Netlog, a social network, enables its users to make works from SABAM’s repertoire available to the public. Consequently, other users of the network could...

In two judgments of 7 February 2012 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has balanced the right to freedom of expression by the media (Article 10 of the Convention) with celebrities’ personality rights and their right of privacy (Article. 8 of the Convention). The overall conclusion is that media coverage including pictures of celebrities is acceptable when the media reporting concerns matters of public interest or at least to some degree contributes to a debate of general interest. In the case of Von Hannover v. Germany (no. 2), the Court held unanimously that the publication...

At the beginning of December 2011, the Slovak Supreme Court (court of final resort) overruled a decision of a regional court (court competent to review administrative sanctions delivered by State authorities) and cancelled a penalty imposed on the Chief editor of the Slovak magazine Zurnal issued by the National Security Authority (hereinafter: NSA). The Supreme Court issued the same decision in late November in an identical matter concerning a journalist of the same magazine. The rulings effectively dismissed both NSA’s decisions and returned these cases back to NSA for new legal investigation. In...

On 21 December 2011, the Senate (upper Chamber of the Romanian Parliament) unanimously rejected the new draft Law on the retention of data generated or processed by providers of public electronic communications networks and by electronic communication services providers directed at the public, issued in November 2011. The new Draft was intended to implement the EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC, after the Curtea Constituţională a României (Romanian Constitutional Court) decided on 7 October 2009, that the transposing Law 298/2008 was unconstitutional due to a breach of Art. 28 of the Romanian...