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On 4 March 1998 the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) adopted the Victims Compensation Act (Opferanspruchssicherungsgesetz - OASG) in order to provide civil-law compensation for victims of crime (for report on Bill, see IRIS 1997-3: 12). The Act gives legal entitlement to receive damages from a perpetrator of or participant in a crime in respect of sums received from third parties for portrayal in the media. The purpose of the Act is to prevent perpetrators of crimes deriving immoral profits from the commercialisation of their crime in the media, for example in the form of income from film...

The UK Home Office fears that entertainment programmes' increasing use of video footage from security cameras is undermining public confidence in closed circuit television and may ban broadcasters from using such material. This follows a report published at the end of February by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, in which the Committee recommends that the UK Government establish a uniform policy on the control and release of CCTV (closed-circuit television system) derived images from publicly owned surveillance. Legislation would prevent the prurient use of material...

The Agreement between the Federal States on Broadcasting which regulates public and private broadcasting concerns in Germany (originally adopted on 31 August 1991 and last amended by the third revised version of 26 August 1996/11 September 1996 - see IRIS 1996-8: 12) is to be up-dated. A draft version of a fourth Agreement between the Federal States to amend their existing Agreements on Broadcasting was submitted for discussion by the Länder on 16 January 1998. In addition to bringing in new regulations on certain forms of advertising, media services and data protection, the new version is primarily...

A draft Bill on Computer Criminality (Voorontwerp Wet Computercriminaliteit) has been proposed in order to amend Article 53 of the Dutch Criminal Code ( Wetboek van Strafrecht) which protects publishers from being held liable for the content of the published material in the case where they were unaware of the criminal character of the content in question or when they by no means could control it. This liability-exception should, according to the draft, also extend to Internet Service Providers and all other intermediaries (therefore also to broadcasters) functioning as outlets for expressions...

The European Union has agreed with the United States on a Joint Statement on Electronic Commerce in order to set the necessary basis to build a predictable commercial environment where business on the Internet can be driven. The co-ordinated approach of EU and US aims to provide guidelines which, in the opinion of the authors of the Statement, should be followed, preferably at a global level, in order to further encourage trade, investments, and to create new sectors of activities on the Net. The document stresses the importance of the role covered by industry self-regulation conducted within...