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The advertising standards board (BVP), the self-regulatory body of the advertising professions, has just published a recommendation on advertising on Internet. The recommendation refers at length to the revised guidelines drawn up by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in 1998. The rules laid down by this text are aimed at both defining the limits of advertising activity and guaranteeing the legality of the content of messages circulating on the Internet. Thus the first point concerns the identification of the advertiser origin ating an advertising message; the identity must be clear and...

In two judgements of 1 December 1999, the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof - BGH) decided to award the heirs of deceased prominent figures the right to an injunction and, for the first time, compensation for unauthorised commercial use of images of the deceased. In the first case, the producer of the musical "Marlene" had allowed a car manufacturer to bring out a "Marlene" model and had given permission for a cosmetics producer to advertise the so-called "Marlene-Look" using a portrait of Marlene Dietrich. He also arranged the production and sale of merchandise bearing a picture of Marlene...

The Regional Court (TGI) in Nanterre has just added a new nugget in the debate on the liability of Internet hosts. In a case on which judgment was delivered on 8 December, the solution adopted by the judges has already aroused applause on the one hand and severe criticism on the other. Once again the case involved a model prohibiting the publication on Internet sites of photographs of her in which she appeared partly or totally unclothed. In its judgment in favour of the model, the Court began by referring to the absolute right of any individual in respect of personal portrayal, which entitled...

In a decision of 12 October 1999, the Hamburg Court of Appeal (Oberlandesgericht - OLG) ruled that, during the investigative stages of a television programme, there could be no justification for an injunction against the subsequent broadcast of the material gathered. The applicant wanted to prevent the defendant from broadcasting pictures of his house and interviews with tenants. However, the Court decided that the film in question was raw material which needed to be processed by the programme editor. It was still unclear whether and to what extent the aforementioned pictures would be used in...

In a decision of 25 November 1999, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht - BVerfG) overturned two court rulings which a private television broadcaster had complained were unconstitutional. The courts concerned had banned the broadcaster from showing a particular film. A further appeal against a ruling which had permitted the broadcast, however, was rejected. Each case concerned a film about the murder of several soldiers in Lebach in January 1969. The two main offenders responsible for the murders had taken court action to prevent the programme being broadcast. Whereas the...