How much does the German Impressum, the legal disclaimer and copyright notice found on most german language based websites, actually validate within a foreign language environment? The German „Teledienstgesetz“ and „Mediendienst Staatsvertrag“ are meant to create this legal base for German websites. But what a German website is… this is the difficult question sometimes. One of my lectors asked me about four cases and I came up with the following conclusions – now if someone has more insight into this topic, feel free to comment.
Does German copyright apply to:
1) any website which can be viewed in Germany?
I believe this first case is impossible since german law cannot regulate international law and the law of other countries. If this would be the case, German law could forge some international TORT – or not?
2) any website in German, even if hosted elsewhere in the world?
If a US American citizen prefers to write in german because his ancestors lived in Germany or whichever reason this person has, how may the German government ever influence this decision of the author unless he/she is violating international law or his/her local law (i.e. US law). This sounds impossible for me, too.
3) any website made by a German citizen?
Since the TDG and MDStV are regulational laws for German citizens, this applies to all German citizens. Now here’s the catch! Where exactly does the website exist? On a server hosted in Germany or elsewhere in the world? In the first case, the German law applies. But for the second one, German law must find a backdoor in international law to contort the whole issue.
Am I liable under German law if I write my thoughts on a website in the USA or France as in a) server hosted, b) domain name registration (de, fr, us,…) and even worse c) if I use a foreign country’s dial-up account to post my critical thoughts on this particular website.
This here is an idea that makes the whole issue about the TDG and MDStV becoming useless: How will German law react if I write on a „de“ website which is hosted in France while I have a dual citizenship for Germany and the USA?
4) any website made in Germany, even if in English and intended for use elsewhere?
This is similiar to above I think, because I can design and maintain a website for anybody in the world. If I as German citizen have the most valuable business contact to a French company and decide to publish their material on a german language based website (i.e. www.french-german-connection.de), will I be the one who is held liable for distributing the material written for somebody else or is it the foreign company for which I only do the provision of service?
On the other hand, I believe the idea to publish english content as a German citizen or company is a question of authority. Just because your language differs from the national language, I am still bound to my national law – in this case the German law. Even if I am German and write in i.e. Sorbian or Frisian, it’s still a matter for German law.
In the end, the „Impressumspflicht“ is mainly a security mechanism for the parties involved to hold one person liable for any misues or copyright issues AND uphold regulations which apply in special cases. The „Impressum“ for an AG must include certain information which may not be included in an „Impressum“ for private persons (like myself), or Doctors or Lawyers must include special information just to make sure no other opponent will file a lawsuit against them.
Here’s some resource from the german Law-Blog on http://www.law-blog.de/archives/000103.html which refers to the „Teledienstgesetz“ and „Mediendienst Staatsvertrag“.
Todo-List
BlogkulturI’ve got a few things to do this week concerning the Blogosphere and it’s virtual insanity, and this list shall provide me with some input for my brain.
1. Have a Skype-Call with Philippe concerning the translation of Blogspirit.
2. Have an E-Mail Conversation, Skype-Call or Phone-Call with Robert Basic for some ideas, must summarize first.
3. Summarize my ideas for „E-Awareness Management“ course at University.
4. Design a Blog on Blogspirit for my fellow lector Rafael Tito and instruct him on the use.
5. Finish the papers for Spanish 2 and Spanish 4, and the assignments Desarollo Regional 2
6. Visit a free appartment with my girlfriend for a possible rent-deal.
7. Read papers and assignments for Marketing 2.
8. Find sleep…
Mögliche Verluste bei AdSense
MarketingAm Samstag fielen einige Unregelmäßigkeiten bei Google auf, die sicherlich a) bei manchem ein Schmunzeln hervorrufen, b) anderen den Frust beim täglichen Googleing immens steigern und c) so einigen Webseitenbetreibern das Einkommen durch AdSense schmälern konnten. Wer also seine AdSense Auswertungen noch nicht angeschaut hat, sollte lieber diesen Monat auf den Kauf der neuen Home-Cinema-Anlage verzichten. ;)
Ihr seid Deutschland!
MedienI must confess that I’m really disappointed by the latest campaign named „Du bist Deutschland.“ (You are Germany.) In fact, it appears more that they are proud of themselves while others (including myself) are not. Thanks Johnny ;)
Sober my Hotmail
SpamIt’s normal to receive about 30-50 emails per day containing nothing else but annoying spam. But there’s something new. Since the recent variant of the Sober virus is sending out e-mails with ZIP files attached, I received a ton of these emails on top of the spam over night. Isn’t it wonderful if the email addresses and servers of my most beloved spammers get infected? Yes it is! Stupidity is no excuse, and I do not need debt services, erection help and porn. If I recount the IPs of my inbox’s email transfer, there’s usually one spam and one virus. Can’t this sober just shut their spammer PCs off? ;)
CNN Spam
Blogkultur, Medien, SpamI’m just going to test if CNN is going to harvest my blog for adding corrective pagerank information or not. Apparently, they’re reported to spam several people who have placed CNN as topical statement into the recent entries or even linked to their site. Why would CNN do this? Just to increase the pagerank for their own site and decrease the pagerank of possible negative critics. I still like to watch their news reports on TV and read through their website, but if they’re going to do this… who knows what they’ll unleash?
Design Directory
DesignJust a small note since this might turn out handy for the future of anybody who likes to hire designers: The Design Directory is an international links database with approximately 1625 categories. (You may hire me, too.)
WordPress Date Bug
BlogkulturBy reading serveral of my RSS feeds, I noticed a frequent date error which occurs since last weekend on various blogs based on WordPress. I found this in the pubDate field within the RSS2 output:
So far, this datestring looks absolutely perfect, but you notice the variations between the abbreviations for the months? It’s a simple inconformity between the english and german abbreviations, since the dates originally are displayed in english, so I guess it’s some language update which might cause this error. I advise everybody to check their WordPress RSS2 php file for fixing this small bug – it usually puts your newest (german) entries below those with english date strings.
Destroy Me!
DesignWhile reading some RSS feeds I came accross the Searchenginewatch which featured Netdisaster. You may enter any URL at Netdisaster and choose from several catastrophes like mold, dinosaurs, wasps, spilled coffee and cigarette burning. Or you may want some harder stuff, then try to drop nuclear weapons over the entire web-site or keep Mars Attacks! digitally alive with some of the most devastating effects – or just take your paintball gun and colorize the website.
Firefox hit 50 Million
MedienThe (un)expected happened – the Firefox Browser is challenging Microsoft’s Internetexplorer more and more. On April 29th 2005 „at 8:58 AM PST, we rolled over the 50,000,000 downloads line.“ I love open-source software…
[via Dimension2k, Spreadfirefox]
The German Impressum
BlogkulturHow much does the German Impressum, the legal disclaimer and copyright notice found on most german language based websites, actually validate within a foreign language environment? The German „Teledienstgesetz“ and „Mediendienst Staatsvertrag“ are meant to create this legal base for German websites. But what a German website is… this is the difficult question sometimes. One of my lectors asked me about four cases and I came up with the following conclusions – now if someone has more insight into this topic, feel free to comment.
Does German copyright apply to:
1) any website which can be viewed in Germany?
I believe this first case is impossible since german law cannot regulate international law and the law of other countries. If this would be the case, German law could forge some international TORT – or not?
2) any website in German, even if hosted elsewhere in the world?
If a US American citizen prefers to write in german because his ancestors lived in Germany or whichever reason this person has, how may the German government ever influence this decision of the author unless he/she is violating international law or his/her local law (i.e. US law). This sounds impossible for me, too.
3) any website made by a German citizen?
Since the TDG and MDStV are regulational laws for German citizens, this applies to all German citizens. Now here’s the catch! Where exactly does the website exist? On a server hosted in Germany or elsewhere in the world? In the first case, the German law applies. But for the second one, German law must find a backdoor in international law to contort the whole issue.
Am I liable under German law if I write my thoughts on a website in the USA or France as in a) server hosted, b) domain name registration (de, fr, us,…) and even worse c) if I use a foreign country’s dial-up account to post my critical thoughts on this particular website.
This here is an idea that makes the whole issue about the TDG and MDStV becoming useless: How will German law react if I write on a „de“ website which is hosted in France while I have a dual citizenship for Germany and the USA?
4) any website made in Germany, even if in English and intended for use elsewhere?
This is similiar to above I think, because I can design and maintain a website for anybody in the world. If I as German citizen have the most valuable business contact to a French company and decide to publish their material on a german language based website (i.e. www.french-german-connection.de), will I be the one who is held liable for distributing the material written for somebody else or is it the foreign company for which I only do the provision of service?
On the other hand, I believe the idea to publish english content as a German citizen or company is a question of authority. Just because your language differs from the national language, I am still bound to my national law – in this case the German law. Even if I am German and write in i.e. Sorbian or Frisian, it’s still a matter for German law.
In the end, the „Impressumspflicht“ is mainly a security mechanism for the parties involved to hold one person liable for any misues or copyright issues AND uphold regulations which apply in special cases. The „Impressum“ for an AG must include certain information which may not be included in an „Impressum“ for private persons (like myself), or Doctors or Lawyers must include special information just to make sure no other opponent will file a lawsuit against them.
Here’s some resource from the german Law-Blog on http://www.law-blog.de/archives/000103.html which refers to the „Teledienstgesetz“ and „Mediendienst Staatsvertrag“.