Obligations to Provide Information in Telemedia Law and User-generated Content

The PhD project deals with the conditions under which providers of user-generated content on the Internet are subject to certain obligations to provide information. The applicable legal framework has changed due to the revision of the telemedia law on 1 March 2007, so that, with the aid of juridical interpretative methodology, it must be established anew who has to divulge their name, address, email address or telephone number in their service offer, or has to nominate a responsible editor.

This will take place against the background of a constitutional law analysis, in the framework of which the question will be resolved as to whether, and to what extent, anonymous communication in the Internet is protected under the Basic Constitutional Law. The focus here lies, as also with the entire project, on the rights and duties of “private” media users, who have become themselves media creators in the times of Internet as an even more interactive medium. This latter phenomenon can be seen on video platforms, for instance, as YouTube, recently sold to Google, on collaborative software platforms like Wikipedia, in so-called weblogs or in discussion forums.

The actual provisions of sec. 5 Telemedia Act, sec. 55 Interstate Treaty on Broadcasting and Telemedia are promulgated in sub-constitutional law. Here, it is initially a question of clarifying in which cases the user of a telemedium can be at the same time also a provider of their own telemedium service. And in addition, attention will be paid to the question when a telemedium is "normally provided for remuneration", which is relevant for European law in terms of the free rendering of services.

Finally, the project will, in connection with the interpretation of the sec. 55 para. 2 Treaty on Broadcasting and Telemedia, address the problem of the significance to be allotted to journalistic-editorial activity in the information age – a problem as of now only dealt with relatively unsystematically in research. This takes place from the viewpoint of lay-journalism, as carried on in the form of web­logs or collaborative news sites on the internet.