Search results : 978

On 4 May 2012 the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) issued its statement of findings and determination following an investigation into apparent breaches by RTÉ - the national public service broadcaster - of sections of the Broadcasting Act 2009 arising from a broadcast in 2011. The programme “Mission to Prey” was broadcast on 23 May 2011 and formed part of the long-running “Prime Time Investigates” series on RTÉ Television. The programme included a segment which wrongly alleged that a Catholic priest, currently in ministry in Ireland, had in the 1980s abused a teenage girl in Africa, that...

On 17 May 2012, the English High Court overturned the decision of a lower court that had required a number of broadcasters, including Sky, the BBC and Independent Television News, to hand over to the police footage of violent disorder accompanying the eviction of the inhabitants of a travellers’ site. The police had applied under s.9 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which empowers a court to grant access to ‘special procedure material’, including journalistic material, if there are reasonable grounds for believing that a serious offence has been committed, if the material would be...

On 2 May 2012, the English High Court made an order under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to require the major internet service providers to block customer access to The Pirate Bay peer-to-peer file sharing website. The Act (as amended) implements the 2001 Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC. The case was brought by record companies on their own behalf and on behalf of the British Recorded Music Industry and Phonographic Performance Ltd. The Act empowers the High Court to grant an order against a service provider where the latter has ‘actual knowledge’ of another person using their...

On 23 May 2012, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG), in a judgment that has not yet been published in full, ruled that the Bundesländer may, in their media legislation, empower the Landesmedienanstalten (Land media authorities - LMA) to confiscate advertising income received by private TV broadcasters in connection with programmes judged to be illegal. The case concerned clips shown in the “Bimmel-Bingo” section of the programme “TV total” broadcast by the TV company ProSieben, in which a camera crew had rung the doorbells of single-family houses unannounced at...

On 3 May 2012 the Nordic Consumer Ombudsmen presented a Joint Position regarding marketing in social media. These kinds of guidelines are not legally binding, but are generally well regarded and relied upon by Swedish courts when determining good market practices. In the Joint Position, the Nordic Consumer Ombudsmen confirmed that Marknadsföringslagen (the Swedish Marketing Practices Act - MPA) is technology neutral and applies in full to social media. The Joint Position deals among other things with issues such as (i) unsolicited commercial messages, especially relating to Facebook as this was...