how i deal with impressumspflicht as a german
In Germany, we have something called Impressumspflicht or the Anbieterkennzeichnung; it is the requirement to have a legal notice (often referred to as an imprint, but not necessarily correct; legal notice is better) on your website, preferably accessible in 1-2 clicks. That means: Your name, address, e-mail address and/or phone number.
You likely have noticed that Tumblr blogs, Facebook profiles or more of your German friends likely don't contain this, and they usually don't have to. Businesses usually do. So where's the line?
It's not actually always clear; the most relevant portion of the law says
Anbieter von Telemedien mit journalistisch-redaktionell gestalteten Angeboten, in denen insbesondere vollständig oder teilweise Inhalte periodischer Druckerzeugnisse in Text oder Bild wiedergegeben werden, haben zusätzlich zu den Angaben nach den §§ 5 und 6 des Telemediengesetzes einen Verantwortlichen mit Angabe des Namens und der Anschrift zu benennen. Werden mehrere Verantwortliche benannt, ist kenntlich zu machen, für welchen Teil des Dienstes der jeweils Benannte verantwortlich ist. Als Verantwortlicher darf nur benannt werden, wer
- seinen ständigen Aufenthalt im Inland hat,
- die Fähigkeit, öffentliche Ämter zu bekleiden, nicht durch Richterspruch verloren hat,
- unbeschränkt geschäftsfähig ist und
- unbeschränkt strafrechtlich verfolgt werden kann.
In short and translated, this affects journalistic, editorial content that gets published periodically via text or images. That's actually pretty vague. Settled case law gives us a bit more interpretation, but not much; social media posts are usually excluded, and people have won not needing a legal notice if their website was for private use only, password-protected and so on. Whether your content is fitting the journalistic-editorial style is up to interpretation in your specific case. I'd say if you periodically share self-witten articles about researched topics, opinion pieces, reviews etc. in public to an audience or even newsletter, you'll probably want to look into it. I decided to stop risking it after I started my matcha review blog, and if I need it for one blog, I might as well include it in another.
You might read this as a non-German and wonder if that requires Germans to doxx themselves online, and you are right, and that's also why so many don't want to do it. But as anywhere, there are law firms who exist only to dish out legal warnings for bullshit like this, and they might come across you. My domain registrar protects my info on services like who.is, but will forward any legal requests to me and also comply with anything I assume, so they'd find out who is behind the site anyway to send the legal notice. I can't say how they'd do it without a domain or on a service like Bearblog and how much info Herman would even have and be willing to give out, so could be that you are safe if you cannot be traced to anywhere in Germany. But if you can, well.
The point is, no one wants to share their real address online, and thankfully there are services doing this for you. I came across one thanks to WBS legal (pretty popular law firm in Germany, with their own YT account). I pay a monthly fee and they give me an address that fulfills the legal requirements for an address. They open, scan and forward any mail I get. Signing up is relatively easy, but you also need to verify with a personal ID and work out some other things before you get approved.
The entire thing still sucks, but is better than being fined or doxxed. Just wanted to share in case it is useful for anyone. 8)
Published 03 Jan, 2025