International Journal of Communications Law & Policy

THE ELECTRONIC PRESS: THE BELGIAN LEGAL FRAMEWORK

By Thibault Verbiest

Download the Paper in PDF Format: IJCLP Web-Doc 8-4-2000

Abstract

On the Internet, numerous sites periodically disseminate information in a form related to the newspaper or audio-visual industry. So, hundreds of online newspapers throughout the world are laid out the very same day of their publication on " paper " support, while others are published only on the Internet. As for the radio and television, there are already sites broadcasting real radio or TV programs (WebTV) [The world reference in this matter is www.broadcast.com, which offers 30 television channels and 370 radios, and represents today one of the strongest values of Nasdaq, the stock market of IT companies in the United States] . With the generalisation of high flow lines (ISDN, ADSL, cable, satellite, optical fibres etc…) and the improvement of the systems of compression of images, the phenomenon will undoubtedly increase. Some even prophesy that within five years the quality of the video image on the Internet will be comparable, even higher, with that of television.In these circumstances, to what extent do the existing legal texts, likely to govern the press activities, apply in the cyberspace, knowing that they were generally conceived before the emergence of the information highways? The question is of the most importance and notably relates to the question of the ownership of copyright for online publications, the concepts of "press crimes" and responsibility in series, the right to reply as well as to the penal texts repressing the acts inspired by racism or condemning the revisionism.