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On 15 June 2010 the plenary meeting of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation adopted a Resolution О практике применения судами Закона Российской Федерации «О средствах массовой информации» (On Judicial Practice Related to the Statute of the Russian Federation “On the Mass Media”) (hereinafter - the Resolution). Such resolutions routinely explain the statutory norms to the courts that have general jurisdiction over particular topical issues of legal practice in Russia (see IRIS 2005-4:18/32). According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation (Art. 126) “The Supreme Court of the Russian...

The Court of Milan has made public the decision in the criminal trial against four Google executives, charged of defamation and illegal personal data handling in relation to the publication on the video-sharing platform Google Video of a video containing an act of bullying against a person suffering from Down’s syndrome. The Court acquitted all the defendants on the charge of defamation, but found two managers and a former executive of Google Inc. liable for the illegal personal data handling. The case concerned a teenage boy with autism who was bullied by some classmates at a school in Turin in...

The Irish High Court on 16 April 2010 approved a settlement agreed in earlier litigation (January 2009) between a number of record companies (EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner) and Eircom, an Internet service provider which has about 40% of the market share. The settlement provided for a three strike approach to dealing with copyright infringement. On first detection a notice from Eircom would inform the subscribers that they had been detected infringing copyright; on a second infringement, they would receive a warning that unless they desisted they would be disconnected from the service; and finally,...

The rights to honour, privacy and self-image are established in the Spanish Constitution (Arts. 18 para. 1, 20 para. 4). They are considered to be fundamental rights and a limit to freedom of speech or expression, which is also protected as a fundamental right according to the Spanish Constitution. Honour, privacy and image rights are regulated in detail by the Spanish Act on Civil Protection of Right to Honour, Privacy and Self-Image. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, these rights cannot be considered to be absolutely unlimited, as was stated by the Supreme Court in a recent decision on this...

On 4 April 2010, the Bundesministerium der Justiz (Federal Ministry of Justice - BMJ) presented a draft law strengthening the freedom of the press. The bill aims to improve the protection of journalists and their sources in order to ensure that they can fulfil their oversight function vis-à-vis State activities. This is to be achieved by amending Art. 353b of the Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code - StGB), which provides for imprisonment of up to five years for breaches of official secrecy and special obligations of secrecy by public officials. An additional paragraph will be added to the article,...