The rapid development of information and communication technologies accelerated the changeover into a global information and knowledge society in recent years. Technical progress permits more and more to save, handle and process information without dependence on time, place or amount. The result is a coalescence of former separate economic sectors as computer technology, telecommunication and audio-visual media. The slogan "information highway" labels this new step in the process of industrial revolution. Notably the federal state of Nordrhein-Westfalen faces incising economic structural changes drawing the corpus of its prosperity from traditional branches of industry such as coal and steel.
Europe has only just begun to think about a legal framework for the information society. The European Commission (EC) has published a set of green books dealing with the requirements of regulation in regard of exclusive spheres, such as the liberation of telecommunication networks or copyrights. In some purviews, like the cross-frontier TV, the protection of data bases or data protection EC-directives are passed to unified national law. The EC takes a pan-European proceeding for necessary to obtain a leading position in global competition concerning information and telecommunication markets.

In Germany, efforts are increasingly made to manage the legal problems that coming along with the information society. It is most notably investigated if, and in which extent, conventional instruments of civil, criminal and administrative law are able to lead to appropriate solutions in the multimedia age. As far as the existing framework departing from the traditional distinction of individual and mass communication cannot guarantee an adequate legal relief. Therefore, possibilities for a timely regulation are sought. The telecommunication law, the law of telecommunication-services and the multi-media treaty of the states can be cited as examples. The last two initiatives tried to put the new online and internet jobs onto a safe legal basis. In other sectors such as telecommunication law, it is reflected about the displacement of the sectored working special (administrative) law by trust and competition law.

The Institute for Information, Telecommunication and Media Law (ITM) aims to explore the legal framework conditions of the information society. To learn from the experiences of other countries, comparative law is to be granted a special position. Furthermore, the tasks of the institute members embrace the representation of information, telecommunication and media law in academic teaching and further training. The institute members work on the application possibilities of interactive media in academic teaching and further topics of legal information.

The information, telecommunication and media law is a cross-section matter which cannot even be fully covered by any of the traditional legal disciplines: civil, criminal and public law. The ITM therefore strives for interdisciplinary research and teaching activities. For that reason, the board of directors of the Institute is supposed to content each a professor for civil law, criminal law and public law. This institute structure is so far without archetype in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoeren