Některé právní aspekty komunikace s veřejností

The article deals with selected legal aspects of Public Relations, i.e. a phenomenon whose importance has recently been continuously growing in industrial and especially marketing activities in various spheres of economy and life of the society. Consequently, the most fundamental topics include the issues of copyright protection in the spheres of press release, responsibility for publicized data and, obviously, the protection of personal rights of natural persons, which, in a wider context, also include the protection of personal data otherwise regulated by a special Act. The presented contribution is divided into several parts, the first of them being devoted to the fundamental and for further explanations necessary principles of the new copyright law, which, in the relevant areas, creates environment compatible with the European structures. The author then naturally moves on to the fundamental legal aspects of public relations, in which passages he makes the reader acquainted with the legal nature of typical press release in respect of daily news and comparable data within the scope of s. 2 (6) of the Copyright Act. These, in their elementary (i.e. not exposed to any creative process) nature do not enjoy any copyright protection. Reprinting articles and quoting citations under the rules of copyright law represent another separate issue. Reprinting is basically permissible only in articles of contemporaneous content covering political, economic and religious topics, provided such treating the material is not ruled out – the relevant instructions are usually mentioned on the printed periodicals’ imprint page. As for the quotations, their inclusion is substantially easier and much more frequent in practice suppose the legal prerequisites are satisfied (the name of the author, the work and its source stated). Another, conceptually and generally controversial area, is that of statement authorisations, for which, surprisingly, there is absolutely no provision in the law and they are entirely dependent on the individual agreements between the parties (typically the reporting person – a journalist – on one hand and the one making the statement or giving the interview on the other hand). In the area of media legislation and practice, special legal concepts of the press law are frequently applied with the purpose of establishing certain rules in implementing the freedom of expression. On the other hand, the same approach guarantees general availability of information and prevents biased or one-sided presentation of such information. It is the right of response and additional statement, that are dealt with in this article. The leading principle is the right guaranteed by law to publicize an adequate response (perspice in the sense of the challenged statement). The legislator expresses his concern about effective remedy by setting an eight-day time limit (starting from the day of delivery of the application for publishing the response) in order to fulfil the duty to publicize timely the respective response or additional statement. Act No. 101/2000 Coll. (as amended) to regulate the protection of personal data of a natural person, provides for the protection of personal data or any data concerning natural persons. This subject is dealt with by the last passage of the contribution. The law strictly defines the rights and duties of the data processing bodies, which are the state organs, local self-governing bodies and other public bodies as well as natural and artificial legal persons engaged in the data processing. The definition of this activity is, naturally, stipulated by law which presents a list of individua) operations. Under the law, persona) data include all those data that identify a specific natural person (typically with respect to the birth identification number). Data specifying e.g. person’s race or ethnic origin are considered by law as sensitive and are paid extraordinary attention. It is no surprise then, that basically any usage and manipulation with such information is conditioned by a consent, which has to be given by the respective natural person, reduced to writing and properly signed by him or her. Such document must evidence the data which are covered by the consent and the person who is allowed to use them. The consent may naturally be repealed at any time. It clearly follows from the above that work with persona) data within the framework of Public Relations is a rather problematic area.