Media and Telecommunications Law

As far as „large scale projects” are concerned, a continuity has been evident over the last few years in the field of media and telecommunications law. After work on the study „Co-regulation Measures in the Media Sector“, as contracted by the European Commission, claimed a particular importance for a year and a half, the Institute’s academic lawyers have been working over the last few months above all on the evaluation of the Law for the Youth Protection System in Germany, as sponsored by the Federal Government and the States. The German model for the protection of Minors in the field of media also has strong co-regulative elements, so that’s why links could be made to the experience of the European project.

The evaluation project is not only interesting from a methodological point of view, as it undertakes a retrospective assessment of legal consequences and hence follows not only jurisprudential lines, e.g. relating to constitutional law. It has also led the Institute into the midst of an intensive debate within media politics, which surrounds the – unfortunately designated – term: „killer games”. In order to make information available to the political decision-makers in good time, the evaluation of the area of computer and video games was brought forward. Nevertheless, in this aspect of its work the Institute has to struggle with the problem of, as far as possible, synchronising meticulous research work and idiosyncratic political processes.

With this evaluation in the area of „Games”, the Institute is, in the legal area as well, approaching questions, which are to be tackled in future in the „Games” Research and Transfer Centre.

This leads the Institute’s academic lawyers on to questions, which may appear abstruse at first sight but will in future gain in relevance, for instance, the regulation in and of virtual worlds. In conformity with this line of development, members of the Institute are continuing to engage with the legal questions of user-generated content and to analyse the copyright questions associated with search engines.

Alongside this, questions about the traditional media have also determined the Institute’s work, for instance, with regard to the function and the financing of public broadcasting. The question as to how dominant forces of opinion can be determined in future and, as the case may be, constrained, has figured in projects in this area of its work. Here, the Institute has equally looked at other countries comparatively. On the whole, it appears necessary to take the interaction of various media more strongly into account.

Researchers: Inka Brunn, Stephan Dreyer, Stefan Heilmann, RA Dr. Thorsten Held, Dr. Wolfgang Schulz (contact person), Felix Zimmermann.

Associate Staff in this area: Arne Laudien, RA Dr. Till Kreutzer, Malte Ziewitz

Current projects in this research area

Overview on all projects in this area