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?

From 16–27 April 2007, the UN Forum on Forests (“UNFF”) gathered in New York for its 7th session (“UNFF7”). After two weeks of intense and difficult negotiations, in the early hours of 28 April, UNFF adopted three documents. The main document was the “Non-legally binding instrument on sustainable forest management of all types of forests” (the “Instrument”), which was adopted by the General Assembly by resolution on 17 December 2007.

Cosmopolitan constitutionalism contends that supranational governance can achieve a democratic character. It assumes that an essential core of the concept of democracy can be disembedded from the notion and institutions of the constitutional nation state and re-planted within transnational governance systems, in the EU and beyond, even while these fail to provide for representation and accountability along traditional lines. It further asserts that social ordering deriving from transnational governance that is democratic will be legitimate.