Search results : 978

On 16 January 2014, the court of appeal of Douai overturned the judgment handed down in January 2012 by the regional court of Lille in the high-profile case of the documentary entitled Le Mur (not to be confused with Dieudonné’s banned show!), which criticises the treatment of autism by psychoanalysis (see IRIS 2012-3/20). Three psychoanalysts had agreed, under the terms of an authorisation to use their images and their voices, to be filmed and interviewed for the three-part documentary. When the film was released, they had called on the courts to completely ban its showing, on the grounds that...

According to media reports, the Oberlandesgericht Oldenburg (Oldenburg Appeal Court - OLG) fined the online service of a major daily newspaper EUR 10,000 in a ruling of 10 December 2013. The portal had published video footage of a police operation in which the faces of the police officers involved had not been pixellated. The videos showed a person being arrested during a police operation at a disco in Bremen on 23 June 2013. The police officers’ faces were clearly visible. A temporary injunction was issued against the online service on 26 August 2013, ordering it to make the officers unrecognisable. The...

According to media reports, the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court) issued a decision on 24 January 2014 (case no. 324 O 264/11), ordering the search engine provider Google Inc. to remove from its search results six secretly taken photographs showing the plaintiff engaging in sexual acts with prostitutes. Third parties had taken the photographs illegally and first published them on the Internet in 2008. The person depicted had successfully taken court action to stop distribution of the images in 23 countries. Although he had also demanded several times that Google should prevent the...

In a ruling of 11 December 2013 (1 BvR 194/13), the 3rd chamber of the First Senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) decided that the description of somebody as a "durchgeknallte Frau" (“crazy woman”) on an Internet portal was not covered by the fundamental right to freedom of expression. The complainant, a former district administrator and member of the Bavarian parliament, posed for Playboy magazine at the end of 2006. The photos were published in 2007. The defendant in the original procedure had published the images on its website, along with a text containing...

On 27 January 2014 the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA) approved the Broadcasting Code for audiovisual media operators. According to the regulator, the Code is meant “as a step to further complete the legal and sublegal framework for the monitoring and controlling of radio and television stations’ activity.” The Broadcasting Code further specifies the guiding principles regarding content of audiovisual media laid out in the Act on Audiovisual Media No. 97/2013 approved in March 2013 (see IRIS 2013-8/9). More specifically, the Code tackles in detail the guiding content-related principles for audiovisual...