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Legal Questions of Excluding Participants from Internet Discussion Groups: On the Guaranteeing of Freedom of Communication through ‘Network- Adapted' Private Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Karl-Heinz Ladeur

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The development of media law in recent years is – following a brief stage of calm in the course of establishing the ‘dual broadcasting system' – being affected by new dynamism sparked particularly by the rise of the Internet. The increasing multiplicity of forms and possibilities of communication, in particular of ‘hybrid' coupling of elements of individual and mass communication (e.g. individual exchange of pieces of music by a generally accessible procedure such as Napster and Gnutella, Internet discussion groups among people who do not know each other, Video-on-Demand etc.) has brought broadcasting regulation within a ‘positive order' oriented towards ‘pluralism' under pressure. New hybrid services can no longer be sharply distinguished from broadcasting, nor simply classified with traditional individual communication. The content too may be disseminated in various contexts: for instance, the same film may be disseminated as a full programme, a side programme or part of a media service. Can the difference in context then justify, say, differentiation of legal requirements relating to advertising?

Type
Articles
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 8 , 01 August 2008 , pp. 965 - 981
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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