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At the end of September, the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament) decided to table a bill that will make it a punishable offence to take photographs secretly and without permission. The Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code StGB) will be amended to strengthen the protection of privacy, with a new rule added alongside the existing ban on sound recordings. People's private lives will be protected against the unauthorised taking or broadcasting of pictures in their homes or similar places that are not directly visible to the public. According to the new para. 201a of the StGB, it will also be an offence...

The European Commission has opened infringement proceedings (under Article 226 of the EC Treaty) against Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, for failure to notify national measures implementing the new European regulatory framework for electronic communications. The new regulatory framework consists of a package of instruments, which were adopted in 2002 (see IRIS 2002-3: 4 and IRIS 2002-7: 6), namely: Directive 2002/21/EC (Framework Directive), Directive 2002/20/EC (Authorisation Directive), Directive 2002/19/EC (Access Directive), Directive 2002/22/EC...

A bill "intended to give a legal framework to protection from the unacceptable use of one's image and to reconcile this with freedom of expression" was tabled this summer by two Members of Parliament. It has been sent to the legal committee for examination. The aim of the text, which covers protection of the image of objects as well as people, is to make it impossible for anyone to "take legal action claiming protection from unacceptable use of an image without furnishing proof of malicious intent and actual prejudice", according to the wording of the explanatory memorandum of the bill. This text...

On 7 March 2002, the EU adopted a new European regulatory framework for the communications sector, comprising 5 Directives (see IRIS 2002-3: 4). The Directives were to be transposed into national law no later than 24 July 2003. In Denmark, the Directives have been implemented by Act No. 450 of 10 June 2003 (“the Act”), amending the main Danish Telecoms Act, Act No. 418 of 31 May 2000 on Competition and Consumer Issues in the Telecommunications Market (the Competition and Consumer Act), as well as a number of other regulations within the field of communications. It should be noted that in the 2000...

In Europe, as in other continents, the question of media coverage of criminal proceedings is a constant subject of debate between those who advocate maximum freedom of information on such proceedings and those who, in contrast, believe that this freedom should be restricted on account of the right to be presumed innocent, the right to a fair trial and the right to privacy. Numerous examples of abuses of various kinds reported in recent years in different European countries, some of which have had dramatic consequences for the parties to such proceedings or their families, prove that this is a highly...