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In a ruling of 30 September 2014, which has not yet been published in full (case no. VI ZR 490/12), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) decided that the public’s right to information should take precedence over a politician’s general privacy rights. Although the judgment concerns print media, it is also relevant to reporting in the audiovisual media sector. The plaintiff held various political posts between 1994 and 2010, including that of Finance Minister, Home Affairs Minister, and Head of the State Chancellery of a German Bundesland. In 1997, he had a daughter from an extra-marital...

In an unexpected judgment, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of the right to respect for private life, as it considered that the confiscation of computers containing illegal software was not “in accordance with the law”, as required by Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). Rumen Trifonov Prezhdarov and Anna Aleksandrovna Prezhdarova had started a business in their garage renting computers to clients, without having the necessary software licence for reproduction and distribution of the software and games that were installed on the computers....

To what extent does the protection of fundamental rights need to be rethought in the face of the upheaval brought about by the digital era? In its annual study made public on 9 September 2014, the Conseil d’État – as the guardian of fundamental rights and freedoms – attempts to answer the question, drawing up a statement of the current situation and putting forward fifty proposals. The study addresses a number of topical issues (neutrality of the Internet, the right to be forgotten, data ownership, the use made of data and its incorporation in Big Data, etc). This article focuses on those issues...

On the basis of the decision delivered by the CJEU on 13 May 2014 (see IRIS 2014-6/3), the Paris courts, in an order delivered on 16 September under the urgent procedure, ordered the company Google France to delete links to articles that had been judged as being defamatory. The applicant parties claimed that they had been victims of defamatory statements made on-line, for which the perpetrator had been found guilty in March 2014 by the criminal court. Having discovered that entering their surnames in the Google search engine produced a list of links containing the statements that had been the subject...

In a decision of 31 July 2014 (case no. 1 BvR 1858/14), the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court – BVerfG) partially upheld an application for a temporary injunction against a procedural order restricting press reporting on a criminal procedure before the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court – LG). In the criminal procedure, which concerned a three-year old girl who had died from internal injuries, the LG Hamburg had issued several orders. Firstly, audio, photographic, and video recordings in the courtroom could only be made by a pool of two camera teams (one private and...