Search results : 978

In a ruling of 15 December 2009, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) rejected the plaintiffs' demand that certain old reports should be removed from the online archive of a radio broadcaster. Both plaintiffs were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 for the murder of a well-known German actor and have since been released on parole. Until 2007, the defendant made available, in its publicly accessible online archive, an article from the year 2000, in which - on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the actor's murder - the crime was reported, revealing the full identities of the...

The Austrian Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Innovation und Technologie (Federal Ministry for Traffic, Innovation and Technology) has published a bill transposing the Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC into national law. The public had until 15 January 2010 to submit opinions on the bill as part of the consultation procedure. The bill amending the Telekommunikationsgesetz (Telecommunications Act), drafted on the ministry's behalf by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Menschenrechte (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights - BIM) sticks very closely to the provisions of the Directive. The data...

On 1 October 2009 the Department of Administrative Cases of the Supreme Court Senate issued a judgment in a dispute between a private person and the National Broadcasting Council (NBC). The underlying facts concern a private person, R., who requested from the private TV broadcaster LNT a copy of a broadcast that allegedly contained defamatory information on R. LNT offered a copy for a certain fee, which R. considered too high. Consequently, R. complained to the NBC, asking it inter alia to penalise LNT. The NBC denied the request and R. appealed this denial in the administrative court. The court...

On 10 June 2009, the Constitutional Council found that the power to suspend access to the Internet as punishment for the illegal downloading of works, as voted in the context of the “HADOPI” Act, could not be conferred on an independent administrative authority, in this case the high authority for the circulation of works and the protection of rights on the Internet (Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet - Hadopi) (see IRIS 2008-10: 10 and IRIS 2009-7: 12). The powers of the Hadopi, according to the original legislation, would lead to a restriction...

In a previously unpublished decision taken in summer 2009, the Oberlandesgericht Wien (Vienna Appeal Court - OLG Wien) set out the conditions under which a person can be considered to have consented to television reporting about him/herself. An Austrian television company had produced a documentary on the work of the motorway police. The plaintiff was filmed by a camera crew employed by the broadcaster while a police officer carried out his official duties in a service station car park. The footage was broadcast several times in early 2009. It showed defects in the plaintiff's car and the conversation...