Germany: : Extent of obligation to delete illegal comments by journalists

• Autores: Ingo Beckendorf
• Localización: IRIS: Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory, ISSN-e 1023-8565, Nº. 6, 2015, págs. 8-9
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • According to media reports, the OLG Hamburg (Hamburg appeal court - OLG) ruled on 18 February 2015 (case no. 7 W 24/15) that daily newspaper journalists are not obliged to take legal action against third parties who publish an article that the journalists themselves have been prohibited from distributing. The court decided that an injunction obtained against the journalists did not apply to the publication of the article in other media, since once the journalists had completed the article and submitted it to their employer they no longer had any control over the article. The publication of the article on another newspaper’s website therefore lay outside the journalists’ sphere of influence. According to the OLG, it did not matter whether the article had been published with or without the consent of the journalists’ employer. Although the current judgment concerns a newspaper article, it applies equally to the distribution of audiovisual content.