German Football League To Try Novel Antipiracy Strategy Of Actually Having Legal Alternatives For Its Content

from the whoa-whoa-whoa dept

Of all the antipiracy strategies on offer for the content industries, we've always promoted the having affordable, legal, and convenient alternatives as the best of them. As study after study after study has shown, one of the primary motivators for copyright infringement is a lack of reasonable access to the content legally. Why this is such a hard lesson to learn is anyone's guess.

The popular German football league, Bundesliga, recently, and finally, came to the conclusion that the first step in competing with piracy of its games is to, you know, actually compete with it. The post starts off by mentioning how many of the larger football/soccer leagues are looking at site-blocking as the best tool for combating piracy. Bundesliga, however, apparently only recently realized that no legal alternative for many fans exists.

While several big leagues in Europe would also like to have these kinds of blocking tools at their disposal, it’s blatantly obvious that they can’t compete with piracy if they aren’t offering customers what they want legally. It’s a sentiment shared by Arne Rees, executive vice president of strategy for Germany’s powerful Bundesliga.

“One of the best defenses against [piracy] is certainly having legal product everywhere,” Rees said, as cited by SportsVideo.org. “If a fan simply can’t get you, their mind-set is, I want to watch it, and, if only a pirated stream is available, they will justify that. At the very least. we have to create an environment where legal product competes with the illegal product. The legal product will always be the better product,” Rees added.

The legal ways for fans to get Bundesliga games today is through a complicated series of streaming services across 200 countries that are rife with blackout restrictions, blackouts of the most important matches, or in some cases full restrictions for accessing any games at all. None of this is convenient or done with ease, making the simple matter of finding an infringing stream of a game the superior option. In cases where literally no option is available for a game, the league isn't competing with piracy at all. It's not even attempting to.

It's resulting in sympathy even from some unlikely sources.

A report by Aftenposten last month detailed how fans were shut out of the key match between Everton and Manchester City so turned to pirate streams instead. Sarah Willand, Communications Director at TV 2, said the company understands the dilemma faced by fans.

“We would be happy to broadcast all the matches so that people see everything from the Premier League,” Willand said. “I therefore understand people’s frustration, it’s annoying not to be able to watch their favorite team on TV when you have a subscription.”

It should go without saying that sports leagues and their broadcast partners are in the business of serving their customers, not annoying them. All the scare tactics about how dangerous pirate streams are in terms of malware, or pleas centering around their illegality, aren't doing much to deter their use. What certainly would do the trick is making sure fans have affordable and convenient ways to access all the content they want, rather than playing some insane game of streaming russian roulette.

This, of course, is completely illegal and to some extent probably hurts the earning potential of the various leagues around Europe and their broadcasting partners. However, it’s clear that the companies involved have the power – if they so choose – to solve this problem by offering all content, to all people, wherever they are, at a fair price.

Given the tangle of licensing agreements across dozens of regions, this is much – much – more easily said than done, few people will argue with that. But the cold, hard truth is that most fans don’t care. If they can’t get matches legally (and particularly if they already have an underperforming subscription service), many will feel justified turning to the high seas.

It's true: fans don't want to hear that offering real alternatives is hard because the tangled web of licensing deals struck with broadcasters makes it so. It's time for leagues like Bundesliga to start serving fans what they want. And it's nice to see they're finally realizing it.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, competition, convenience, copyright, germany, legal alternatives, piracy
Companies: bundesliga

170 Years Of German Publishers Demanding Special Copyrights For The Press Because Of New Technology

from the crying-wolf dept

While much of the focus on the debate over the EU Copyright Directive has focused on the upload filters of Article 13, we should be equally worried about the snippet taxes of Article 11, which journalists have already made clear will be used to enrich publishers at the expense of actual journalism (that is, if it leads to any money at all -- since attempts to pass basically the same law in both Germany and Spain failed to produce the expected revenue windfall).

Former Icelandic Parliament member Asta Helgadottir recently put together quite an amazing Twitter thread detailing 170 years of German news publishers demanding special extra copyrights just for their industry -- each time insisting that without it, new technologies would kill journalism. You can also read the whole thing on a single page at Threader, but here's a (lightly edited) snippet:

1850: German Press publishers want #copyright of news because the newly arrived technology of the telegram is ruining their business model. It is rejected.

1886: German Press Publishers want news to be covered by copyright in the Berne convention. It is rejected, and copyright exception for news is established.

1908: German Press Publishers want to limit the possibility of reproduction of news by #copyright in the Berlin meeting for the Berne convention. It is rejected, as copyright is intended for inherently creative production.

1908: The Berlin conference thus reiterates their 1886 distinction of creative production and non-creative information and news with regards to #copyright protection.

1925: The conference of industrial property in the Hague rejects a proposal to make news industrial property, citing the decision of the Berne convention.

Seventy-five years of trying to make some intellectual property protection of news had failed. Trying to cover news by #copyright seemed to be hopeless.

1920s: The wireless technology threatens the established German Press Publishers. The fact that any owner of a wireless could listen to the news! Blasphemy.

1920s: "News Theft" explodes in Germany. The big press publishers are astonished by the fact that people are not willing to pay a hefty fee to buy their printed material.

1927: The Germans lobby for a resolution within League of Nations giving unpublished news #copyright protection, governmental news in the public domain, but published news were up to each national authority.

1928: The German ministry propose a law to protect news of the day and miscellaneous information with intellectual property at home. "vermischte Nachrichten tatsächlichen Inhalts und Tagesneuigkeiten"

1928: The emergence of the radio was one of the biggest reasons in the German's new News law as it undermined the news industry.

1928-1933: The debate of the new German press law continues but is never realized because the ascension of the Nazi government and new press control laws made it redundant.

It goes on from there into modern times, and the story is always the same. German publishers demanding special extra copyrights on factual reporting, and whining over and over again about new technology upsetting its business model and threatening the "future of journalism" or whatever. And every single time they were wrong. They didn't get the special copyrights and journalism survived (and in some cases thrived).

Given this background, why is it that EU bureaucrats are now suddenly taking those very same German publishers at their word when they insist that the internet is destroying their business, and they need these special copyrights (with the friendly name of "neighboring rights") that serve no purpose other than as a wealth transfer from internet companies to legacy publishers who have failed to innovate?

Filed Under: article 11, copyright, germany, journalism, neighboring rights, press

Clash Of EU's Poorly Thought Out Laws: German Data Protection Commissioner Warns That Article 13 Might Violate GDPR

from the fight-fight-fight dept

As we've been noting recently, the EU really seems to be bending over backwards to pass poorly thought out laws about the internet (sometimes, though not always, with the best of intentions). For example, the GDPR certainly seems to have good intentions behind it, but in practice it has been a disaster in many specific cases, where it seems obvious that those who crafted the law simply ignored warnings about how it would intersect with real world situations -- especially those regarding free speech. Then, of course, there's the EU Copyright Directive and Article 13, where as far as I can tell, the EU is rushing forward with this effort, knowing that it's awful, because the entire point of the law is to be so awful that internet companies are pressured into grovelling before Hollywood not to sue them for violating a law with which it is literally impossible to be in compliance with.

Of course, in a bit of irony, at least one German official is recognizing that the intersection of these two laws may, in fact, cause some significant concerns. Despite what supporters have said about Article 13, it will require that most online platforms use upload filters. While supporters insist the law does not say that, when pressed on this issue, they only note that filters are one way to try to comply, and basically say that tech companies might need to "nerd harder" to come up with alternatives. However, in all practicality, this law is a giant government handout to filter companies. Indeed, as we noted, some of the strongest lobbying in favor of Article 13 came from Audible Magic, which is the recognized leading independent upload filtering company (many, many other companies use its technology, with the one major exception being Google, which built its own filtering tech).

TorrentFreak points us to a letter to the EU Parliament from Germany's Data Protection Commissioner (basically, the person in charge of enforcing the GDPR), warning that since there are so few filter companies, and Article 13 will more or less mandate their usage, it will raise significant concerns about all the data those companies (really: Audible Magic) will collect on people and their internet habits. The letter was first translated into English by Florian Mueller, who received an official "approval" from the German Federal Commissioner that his translation was accurate.

The letter starts off by brushing away the silly claim that Article 13 won't require filters:

The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Ulrich Kelber, therefore warns against the potential consequences of the reform in question: "Even though upload filters are not explicitly mandated by the bill, they will be employed as a practical effect. Especially smaller platform operators and service providers will not be in a position to conclude license agreements with all [copy]right holders. Nor will they be able to make the software develoment effort to create upload filters of their own. Instead, they will utilize offerings by large IT companies just the way it is already happening, for one example, in the field of analytics tools, where the relevant components created by Facebook, Amazon and Google are used by many apps, websites, and services."

From there, Kelber notes that with so few filter vendors on the market, significant data protection concerns are raised about the government mandating these companies basically sift through the entire internet:

"At the end of the day, this would result in an oligopoly consisting of a few vendors of filtering technologies, which would then be instrumental to more or less the entire Internet data traffic of relevant platforms and services. The wealth of information those vendors would receive about all users in the process is evidenced by, among other examples, current media coverage of data transfers by eHealth apps to Facebook."

Therefore, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information sees a clear and present danger of a further concentration of data in the hands of an oligopoly of vendors as an adverse effect of the present EU proposal. Against the background of the decision the Federal Cartel Office [Germany's national antitrust authority] handed down against Facebook a few weeks ago, the objective should actually be to achieve the opposite [of such concentration of data].

Ulrich Kelber calls for further steps to be taken to avert the previously-outlined scenario: "If the EU believes platform operators can meet their new obligations [under the proposed copyright directive] without upload filters, it must make a clear showing. That is why I am awaiting with great interest the [European] Commission's forthcoming recommendations. In the other event, data privacy considerations require a thorough overhaul of the bill. Notwithstanding the need to update the protection of author's rights in our times, such a measure must not harm or compromise the protection of Internet users' data."

In other words, it looks like Article 13 in the EU Copyright Directive might run headlong into the GDPR's restriction on the collection and use of data. This kinda feels like something that should have been thought out way earlier, but seems consistent with the slapdash manner in which the EU is regulating the internet these days: with little to no understanding of how the internet actually works, demands to do the impossible, and threats of massive fines for any company that then fails to do the impossible. This is no way to actually regulate, but apparently it's par for the course in the EU right now.

Filed Under: article 13, copyright, data protection, eu, eu copyright directive, gdpr, germany, monopoly, upload filters
Companies: audible magic

Article 13 Supporters Find Smoking Gun That Isn't: Majority Of Tweets Criticizing Copyright Directive Are Not Coming From DC

from the flop dept

Volker Rieck runs a German anti-piracy operation, and over the last year or so has been an increasingly vocal -- if somewhat unhinged -- supporter of Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive. I won't link, but a few quick Google searches will find some examples of Rieck trying to build out conspiracy theories of big giant American internet companies secretly running the entirety of the anti-Article 13 push in Europe. You could say that some of them dip into red yarn on a corkboard territory. Of course, as we've discussed before, the idea that any attacks on Article 13 are all really because of Google has been a key part of the pro-Article 13 lobbying strategy from the beginning. Of course, as we've highlighted, if you look at the actual lobbying, it's been almost entirely from legacy copyright organizations, with very little coming from the internet industry. This has created all sorts of conspiracy theories, including the crazy claim by a German MEP that he knew the emails he was getting against Article 13 were really astroturf from Google... because many of the senders had Gmail accounts.

Rieck's latest move, however, goes into really nutty territory. In a now deleted story, Rieck claimed to have found something of a smoking gun, proving that Article 13 criticism was really being driven by US corporate interests: in a "study" that he helped "conduct," and resulted in him sending an explosive "warning" letter to Members of the EU Parliament, he claimed to have uncovered that "more tweets (88,000) came from Washington (DC) alone than from the entire EU (71,000)." That would certainly be interesting if it were true.

The problem with that claim? It's not even close to true. It is based on Rieck not fully understanding the software they used to do this analysis, called Talkwalker. Luca Hammer initially called into question the use of Talkwalker (while our own Glyn Moody had called out another big problem with the data used in the study months ago). But the biggest issue was this: Talkwalker itself admits that if users haven't turned on location tracking on Twitter, then it just "guesses" their location based on a few factors -- with a fallback being language. And, if there are no other indicators of location, Talkwalker will associate all English tweets with being in Washington DC, i.e., the capital of the largest country where English is the primary language.

In other words, what looks like a grand conspiracy of a bot sending tweets about EU copyright policy out of the lobbying den of Washington DC, actually appears to be some pro-copyright maximalists completely misunderstanding the tool they were using to do an analysis. Not a good look.

Of course, some of the supporters of Article 13, like IMPALA Music have continued tweeting this "study" despite it being totally debunked, but I guess that's to be expected.

In the meantime, as law professor Annemarie Bridy correctly points out, even if this is about legislation for the EU, it's crazy to think that people in the US have no stake in the outcome. First off, EU legislation can reach well beyond the borders of the EU and into the US: witness GDPR and the Right to be Forgotten (remember, in France, they've been arguing that the RTBF, as applied in the EU, must be global in nature). Second, as we've seen for decades, copyright maximalists push ever more crazy copyright policies in one region of the world, and then demand "harmonization" elsewhere, pushing that the same rules be applied in other places. Going to Europe to get a crazy copyright law put in place, and then rushing back to the US to demand matching laws is not a new idea. It's literally how we got the DMCA in the first place.

So, no, the criticism of Article 13 is not being driven by some sneaky campaign out of Washington DC, but that also doesn't mean that American voices shouldn't be able to participate in a debate that will undoubtedly impact us and the internet we use.

Filed Under: article 13, eu, eu copyright directive, germany, lobbying, talkwalker, tweets, volker rieck

German Data Protection Authority Says GDPR Requires Email To Use At Least Transport Layer Encryption

from the but-why,-is-not-entirely-clear dept

As Techdirt has reported, the EU's GDPR legislation certainly has its problems. But whatever you think of it as a privacy framework, there's no denying its importance and global reach. That makes a recent ruling by a data protection authority in Germany of wider interest than the local nature of the decision might suggest. As Carlo Pilz reports in his post examining the case in detail, the Data Protection Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen -- LfDI NRW for short) looked at what the GDPR might mean for email -- in particular, whether it implied that email should be encrypted in order to protect personal information, and if so, how.

The LfDI NRW made a fundamental distinction between encryption at the content level and encryption at the transport level for the transmission of emails. The former encrypts content and attachments, using technology such as S/MIME and OpenPGP. However, the metadata associated with an email is not encrypted. With transport layer encryption, both the content and the metadata is encrypted. Pilz explains:

LfDI NRW therefore assumes that without exception at least transport encryption must always be implemented. As mentioned above, such a mandatory encryption obligation does not result from the GDPR. One could therefore argue that this view goes beyond the requirements of the GDPR. In its assessment, the authority may assume that transport encryption is now the "state of the art" mentioned in Art. 32 para 1 GDPR. This could be supported by the reference to the European providers. Nevertheless, Art. 32 para 1 GDPR provides, in addition to the feature "state of the art", for further criteria which must be taken into account for the measures to be implemented, such as in particular the risk of varying likelihood and severity for the rights and freedoms of natural persons. Thus, under the GDPR, controllers and processors should still be able to assess whether encryption of the data is absolutely necessary on the basis of these characteristics. Unfortunately, the opinion of the authority does not go into the individual criteria mentioned in Art. 32 para 1 GDPR in detail and does not justify its opinion.

So the newly-published position of the German data protection authority is not exactly clear as to why it thinks transport layer encryption must be used, although it does specify which standard must be followed: BSI TR-03108-1: Secure E-Mail Transport (pdf). It also mentions that transport layer encryption may not be enough when dealing with particularly sensitive personal information. This includes "account transaction data, financing data, health status data, client data from lawyers and tax consultants, employee data". The problem here is that even though encrypted in transit, the emails are stored in cleartext on the servers. To address this, LfDI NRW says that additional security measures are required, for example using end-to-end encryption, or even falling back to physical postal delivery of highly-sensitive documents.

Because of the way GDPR is enforced, it's worth noting that the opinion of the LfDI NRW does not automatically determine the policies everywhere in the EU. It may influence the thinking elsewhere, but it's possible that other data protection authorities in the EU might disagree with this interpretation -- in which case the Court of Justice of the European Union would be called upon to adjudicate and offer a definitive interpretation. However, at the very least, the LfDI NRW's position indicates that the GDPR is likely to impact when and how email encryption is deployed by companies operating in the EU, along with all the other areas it touches upon.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: email, encryption, gdpr, germany, transport layer encryption

Article 13 Is Back On: Germany Caves To France As EU Pushes Forward On Ruining The Internet

from the bad-news-for-memes dept

When last we checked in on the EU Copyright Directive it had been put on hold when the European Council (with representatives from all the member states) didn't have enough votes to move forward on a so-called "compromise" draft. Most of the council rejected it for the right reasons -- though a few (including France) were holding out to make the law worse. Since then there has been an ongoing back channel negotiation between France and Germany over whose vision would win out. Both of them support very problematic versions of the Directive, though France's is worse. Specifically, France doesn't want any exemptions for smaller internet websites in Article 13 (which will effectively make internet filters mandatory), while Germany wanted to include at least some safe harbors for smaller sites. After a bunch of back and forth, it's now being reported that Germany has caved to France and will now support the Directive, with very little in the way of protections for smaller sites. This is on top of all the other awful stuff in the Directive, including mandatory filtering (that they pretend is not mandatory filtering), huge fines, and liability for any site allowing infringement. The draft apparently still includes a weird and mostly useless safe harbor for sites hosting user-generated content -- which is what made the legacy entertainment industry bail out on its support of the Directive.

So, to be clear, there is now a draft that is worse than the draft that couldn't get the Council's approval a few weeks ago, and that will have an even bigger impact on the internet by sweeping up tons of smaller sites as well as the larger ones, which will do serious harm to any sites that host user-generated content. And you can't find anyone -- outside of the company selling internet filters -- who supports this. The internet companies are all still against the bill. The legacy entertainment companies are whining that it doesn't go far enough.

And, yet, this draft is likely to be added back on the schedule for a meeting this Friday.

There is nothing good about this. The EU bureaucrats negotiating this get really, really annoyed by anyone suggesting that this bill will kill off "memes," but that's not an exaggeration. The bill is literally designed to make it impossible for a site that has not purchased licenses from everyone to allow users to post new content. Meme culture was built almost entirely on free and open message boards and social media, without licenses. But hosting such a site in the EU will now be effectively impossible -- or very, very expensive, with massive restrictions, filters and lockdowns. In such a world, it is difficult to see how new memes can take off, outside of a narrowly prescribed set of "officially sanctioned/licensed" memes -- and we all know what kind of quality that will bring.

This whole thing is an exercise in stupidity, brought about by a cynical legacy entertainment industry that made up a fake concept called "the value gap" that they insisted needed to be closed. And the only way to "close" it, according to the very same lobbyists, was to effectively turn off what made the internet great: the fact that it is, and has always been, an open medium for communication and sharing.

This can still be stopped, but it's going to rely on the EU Parliament actually having a backbone and saying that this is not acceptable. And that is going to require people in Europe to contact their MEPs and telling them not to wreck the internet.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, eu council, filters, france, germany, intermediary liability, mandatory filters, memes, safe harbors, trilogue negotiations

Amazon Dash Buttons Ruled Illegal In Germany For... Making It Too Easy To Buy Stuff

from the can't-have-any-of-that-now dept

You can count me among those who don't see the value in those Amazon Dash buttons that got plenty of attention a few years back, allowing those who had the little single-button devices to re-order some consumable product with the push of a single button. Even if lots of people made fun of them at launch, Amazon has expanded them to many more brands. So, even if I don't see the value, it appears plenty of people do. Except, in Germany, they're now illegal, because apparently some people are upset that they make things too easy to order.

The ruling came after a regional consumer protection watchdog brought a case against Amazon, arguing that the Dash buttons violate laws that say shoppers should know what they are paying at the time of any transaction.

“We are always open to innovation. But if innovation means that the consumer is put at a disadvantage and price comparisons are made difficult then we fight that,” Wolfgang Schuldzinski, head of the consumer body, said in a statement.

Huh? If users decide to buy a button that lets them reorder, then... what's the problem here. Yes, they may end up paying more than other retailers, but it's the consumers who are making that decision, suggesting that they value the convenience more than the ability to hunt for the best deal.

This fits with other European legal trends, in which courts and regulators really don't seem to think the public ought to be able to make any decisions themselves about what they prefer online, and must be "protected" from their own decisions. What, exactly, is the benefit here? How are consumers better off if the solution they appear to want, which they had to pay for, is no longer considered legal?

I could (maybe?) understand if the argument was that Amazon was somehow leveraging its market position to push people into using these things, but I've seen no evidence that that's true at all. Indeed, I basically forgot these little buttons existed after hearing about them at launch. I get that European courts (and German ones, in particular) like to think they're protecting consumers more than the US, but in this case it makes no sense. If consumers feel ripped off by the buttons, they won't buy them (or they'll stop using them). Why do we need a court to make them illegal?

Filed Under: convenience, dash, dash button, germany, purchasing, transparency
Companies: amazon

It Is Both Ridiculous And Dangerous To Make Domain Registrars Liable For Content On Domains

from the terrible-terrible-ruling dept

Going back more than five years, we've been warning about the dangers of moving copyright enforcement down the stack, away from the actual hosting companies deeper and deeper into infrastructure. This was, of course, part of the goal of SOPA -- to make infrastructure companies liable for infringement, and to force them to shut down entire sites. But that's exactly a key part of our concern. Infrastructure players have only a single remedy: shut down an entire site, including anything that's not infringing, to deal with claims (never adjudications) of infringing content. And yet, legacy copyright companies have been going after domain registrars for years.

We were particularly troubled by a ruling in Germany back in 2014 saying that a registrar could be liable for infringement on a site using a domain from that registrar. And while it's taken years, it appears that that ruling has now been upheld by a higher court.

The quick details: Universal Music went after a domain registrar, Key-Systems, in Germany because it had registered the domain name for a torrent site H33t.com. The court forced the registrar to kill the domain, and on appeal that ruling has been upheld, with a specific ruling that a domain registrar can be liable for infringement on a site:

The Higher Regional Court of Saarbrücken concluded Key-Systems can be held secondarily liable for the infringing actions of a customer if it fails to take action if rightsholders point out “obvious” copyright infringing activity online.

This means that, if a site owner is unresponsive to takedown requests, Key-Systems and other registrars can be required to take a domain name offline, even when the infringing activity is limited to a single page.

Some may argue that the impact of this is limited, as the ruling notes two things: first, that liability only applies to a registrar that does nothing in response to notices of infringement, and second, that it applies to "obvious" copyright infringing activity. And that may limit some of the damage of such a ruling, but it opens up a ton of other questions. Are domain registrars now expected to police the content on domains they register? Because that's often way outside of their areas of expertise, and like most such companies when put in that position, they will default to shutting down (or threatening to shut down) websites, rather than actually taking the time to understand the details and nuances (is it fair use? is most activity on the site non-infringing? etc).

Second, while many people seem to think that copyright infringement is always "obvious," it is rarely the case. Yes, there are some cases where it could be described as "obvious," but copyright is very specific and often very much dependent on context. And given how frequently we see people claim copyright infringement where none actually exists, you have to worry about what happens when copyright holders start claiming "obvious" infringement over things that are anything but obvious.

There are two key points here. Somehow, we went from a world in which copyright infringement was something that could only be determined by a court reviewing all of the facts (also known as due process) to one in which all that matters are mere accusations. And, second, by passing off the policing function to infrastructure players rather than the actual (potential) infringers and their hosts, all they have is the nuclear option of completely removing sites from the internet. That's a dangerous combination and one that will undoubtedly lead to significant levels of censorship.

It's pretty incredible that two industries -- the film and recording industries -- who used to pride themselves on their support of free speech, are now two of the leading industries pushing for vast censorship regimes of one of the best engines of free speech ever created.

Filed Under: copyright, domain registrars, germany, infrastructure, intermediary liability, internet
Companies: h33t, key-systems, universal music

How The GDPR Nearly Ruined Christmas

from the this-is-getting-silly dept

While the thinking behind the GDPR may seem sensible, time and time again we hear stories about how, in practice, it's a complete disaster. Some of that may be because of people misinterpreting the law. Some of it may be because the law is being abused. And some of it may be because the law is too vague. But some of it is just because the law tries to do way too much. So, today, we have a little story of how the GDPR nearly ruined Christmas for a small town in Germany.

The town of Roth has a long-standing tradition where children would write down their Christmas wishes, which would then be placed on a tree in the market. The city council would read the wishes and try to get the children what they wanted. Nice, wholesome, holiday good deeds and all. But... it became tricky under various privacy regulations, starting with Germany's own data privacy law and, later, the GDPR, because in order to get your wishes fulfilled, children had to provide their names and identifying information... and that's a big no-no under the law:

That legislation states that parents of minors have to provide consent to the use of their kids' data. Organizations that fail to comply face big financial penalties.

Providing proof of this was deemed too onerous by the council and the city decided against festive wish lists for 2018.

"The yearly trips to the fire brigade unit and the mayor were especially popular with children" Melanie Hanker, who works on events and public relations in the town's administration, told Die Welt last week. "Without the wishing lists, both these events will not take place this year," she added. Hanker refused CNN's request for an interview.

After initially cancelling this traditional wish-making and wish-granting, thankfully, a local radio station worked out a solution:

It created a wish list, which included a parental consent disclaimer, which can be printed from their website and put in the wishing box at the Christmas market, which opens on Thursday.

"This way, the wishes can be submitted and collected from Father Christmas also this year," the city said in a statement on Tuesday.

So... at least Christmas wasn't totally ruined, but now the simple process of making a wish involves a silly unnecessary extra tradition: having parents sign legal consent disclaimers to allow their children to make wishes that they hope the city council will fulfill. It's a Christmas miracle bureaucracy!

Filed Under: bureaucracy, christmas, data protection, eu, gdpr, germany, parental consent, privacy, regulations, roth, wishes

German City Wants Names And Addresses Of Airbnb Hosts; Chinese Province Demands Full Details Of Every Guest Too

from the sharing,-but-not-like-that dept

Online services like Airbnb and Uber like to style themselves as part of the "sharing economy". In truth, they are just new twists on the rental sector, taking advantage of the Internet's widespread availability to broaden participation and ease negotiation. This has led to a tension between the online services and traditional local regulators, something Techdirt noted in the US, back in 2016. Similar battles are still being fought around the world. Here's what is happening in Germany, as reported by Out-Law.com:

The City of Munich asked Airbnb to provide it with all advertisements for rooms in the city which exceeded the permissible maximum lease period [of eight weeks in a calendar year]. Specifically, for the period from January 2017 to July 2018, it wanted Airbnb to disclose the addresses of the apartments offered as well as the names and addresses of the hosts.

Airbnb challenged the request before the administrative court in Munich, which has just ruled that the US company must comply with German laws, even though its European office is based in Ireland. It said that the request was lawful, and did not conflict with the EU's privacy regulations. Finally, it ruled that the City of Munich's threat to impose a €300,000 fine on Airbnb if it did not comply with its information request was also perfectly OK. Presumably Airbnb will appeal against the decision, but if it is confirmed it could encourage other cities in Germany to make similar requests. At least things there aren't as bad as in China. According to a post from TechNode:

The eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang will require online home-sharing platforms, including Airbnb, to report owner and guest information to the province's Public Security Department. The platforms will need to check, register, and report the identity of both parties, including the time the guest plans to arrive and leave the property.

That information provides a very handy way of keeping tabs on people travelling around the province who stay in Airbnb properties and the like. It's yet another example of how the Chinese authorities are forcing digital services to help keep an eye on every aspect of citizens' lives.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: china, germany, home rentals, home sharing, privacy, rentals
Companies: airbnb