Search results : 978

According to a decision issued by the Landgericht Köln (Cologne District Court - LG) on 9 November 2011, whereas photographs taken by a press photographer showing a well-known weather presenter held in a detention centre awaiting trial may not be distributed, photographs taken by the presenter showing the photographer at work can. The TV weather presenter had been under investigation in 2010 following a serious rape allegation. He was acquitted on 31 May 2011 by the LG Mannheim (Mannheim District Court). The proceedings attracted a high level of media interest from the outset. The accused won several...

On 3 November 2011, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) decided that the Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (Freedom of Information Act - IFG) applies, in principle, to all activities of the federal ministries. In the case at hand, the plaintiffs demanded access to certain documents of the Bundesjustizministerium (Federal Ministry of Justice - BMJ): firstly, internal submissions to the Minister in connection with the investigation into the possible need to reform the law on parent-child relations and, secondly, BMJ statements to the Petitions Committee of the Bundestag...

On 24 November 2011 the European Court of Justice delivered its long-awaited judgment on the legality of injunctions obliging ISPs to install filtering systems on their networks for reasons of copyright enforcement. The case involved a dispute between Scarlet Extended SA, an internet access provider operating in Belgium, and the Belgian collective management organisation Société d’Auteurs Belge - Belgische Auteurs Maatschappij (Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers - SABAM). SABAM initiated the proceedings alleging that Scarlet (formerly Tiscali) has knowingly permitted the illegal downloading...

In a judgment of 5 July 2011 the European Court of Human Rights found that five women broadcast on national television in a sauna romp with police officers should have received higher financial compensation for the breach of their privacy. This judgment became final on 5 October 2011. The applicants in this case are five young women, all friends, who complained about the broadcasting on Moldovan national television of an intimate video footage showing them in a sauna with five men, four of whom were police officers. At the time, three of the applicants were journalists, the first two for the...

On 21 October 2011, the Rechtbank Amsterdam (Amsterdam Court) dismissed an action brought by a convicted criminal against the broadcasting of the filming of his crime. The plaintiff was involved in the kidnapping of a well-known Dutch businessman in 1983. He is currently in prison for a conviction unconnected with the abduction. The defendant in the instant case was a Dutch film production company that filmed the kidnapping. Inter alia, the plaintiff claimed that the film portrayed the victim’s abduction and weeklong imprisonment as more violent than it actually was and thus breached his right...