Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: What about Germany
Author: Oliver Breidenbach Posted: 4/18/2000; 10:22:21 AM Topic: On Censorship Msg #: 16372 (In response to 16366) Prev/Next: 16371 / 16373
In Germany, the situation is largely unregulated which is the core problem. People make mistakes that are quite easy to avoid like using Trademarks in texts and links without proper credits and forgetting to mention their adress on the web-page.In principle for the web the same laws apply as for a printed publication, but it is far easier to infringe on the copyrights of someone else using the web. And some of the laws simply do not translate properly to the web. And as always there are some people that make a profit out of this situation.
Mostly the bad feeling arises when the laws catch up with the reality. Suddenly a domain name that was perfectly legal 5 minutes ago is violating someone elses rights. What makes this so frustrating is a system called Abmahnung. In Germany, someone whose rights have been violated has the right to employ a lawyer to defend those rights. The costs have to be taken care of by the violator. So you get a letter from the lawyer of someone who thinks you violated his rights along with an invoice from his lawyer charging you a hefty sum for the letter which he copied in five minutes. Some lawyers make a living out of sending hundreds of those letters.
Linking to another site is painless as long as you explicitly disclaim any responsibility and properly credit the source.
As far as the sites location is concerned, the place where you actually create the stuff that is in question is the point. If you are a resident of Germany, the law assumes that your "crime" has taken place in Germany regardless of where your page is hosted.
Anyways, I don´t believe that violating someone elses rights should be protected by some sort of free speech thing. And as long as you don´t do that, you are free to voice any opinion in Germany. It is a little tricky with criticism of products and services, however, where you need to stick absolutely to the facts in order to not violate any rights of the opposing party.
Anyway, I believe that Dave is not acting in his own best interests. Instead of beating on Conexion (the motives for which I can perfectly understand) he should concentrate on fixing the problem for his customers. He and we won´t gain anything from this fight. It is not a win-win situation. Like a high profile german manager said recently on german tv: "I have no problems in my business. A business has a problem if there are no customers and no orders to fullfill. Everything else are merely inconviniences which I am paid for to deal with". I hope Dave can put this to rest pretty soon and return to being the old positive force of weblogs again that we are used to.
Cheers,
Oliver.
PS (Positively Shameless): How do you like the new design at The Far Side of My Mind?
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