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On 2 May 1997, the Supreme Court of The Netherlands (Hoge Raad) decided that the publication for advertising purposes of a photograph of a dancer, taken during his performance at a gay event, can amount to a breach of his right to personal privacy. The Supreme Court based its decision on Articles 21, 30 and 35 of the Dutch Copyright Act (Auteurswet), which stipulate that, in cases of non-commissioned portraits, the portrayed person retains a reasonable interest to oppose the use of his picture for commercial and advertising purposes. The use of a picture for advertising purposes necessarily involves...

Upon recommendation by the Canadian Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), the federal Government of Canada commissioned a study on the liability of owners, operators and users of bulletin boards, Internet and Usenet sites. The study was published in February 1997 and deals with the legal aspects of issues like obscenity, child pornography, hate propaganda, trade-marks infringement, defamation, invasion of privacy, communication of erroneous information, violation of secrecy, unfair competition, copyright infringement, and electronic commerce.

The Office of Telecommunications (OFTEL), responsible in the UK for regulating conditional access services for digital television, has published at the end of March its guidelines. These are the result of consultations began in last year (see IRIS Vol. III, No 1)). The regulations governing the provision of conditional access services were laid before Parliament in December 1996 and the Telecommunications Act class licence for conditional access services was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry. The regulations and licences require OFTEL to ensure that control of conditional access technology...

The Free State of Bavaria has submitted a Bill on compensation for crime victims to the Federal Council. The Bill not only aims at improving the procedural position of victims of acts of violence, but also at ensuring that the perpetrators can derive no immoral profits from commercial exploitation of their actions in the media. Fees paid for film treatments or talkshow appearances are now to go, on certain conditions, to the victims. So far, such assets have not usually been available to meet the legitimate civil law claims of victims, although publicising the crime often interferes with their...

The Barclay brothers, publishers of The European, sought to challenge the interpretation of Section 143 of the Broadcasting Act 1990, which refers to the power of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission to adjudicate on complaints alleging infringement of privacy arising out of programmes which had been broadcast. The question was: would it be competent to seek an adjudication in respect of material which had not yet been broadcast? What was the scope, in other words, of the adjudicative power of the BCC? The judge, who commented that in England and Wales there are no general constraints on the...