> And as a reminder, the German rule only applies to commercial sites — a site with no ads and no way to pay such as quasseldroid.info does not need an Imprint.

I wouldn't be too sure. There is, unfortunately, a lot of room for interpretation with this law. Rather cautious adviser urge you to have one as long as your website isn't private in the sense that can't be accessed by the public (i.e. a website for family members that can only be accessed with a password).

This law (IANAL) is just horrible.

How is it horrible?

The law just requires a way to contact a person within of a few days, and a way to be able to get the person behind a site to be able to sue them.

The alternative is sites that you can't do anything against if they act illegally against you, e.g. through libel and slander.

I agree that you should be able to get in contact with the website owner. However, I believe it'd be better if a person had to at least query denic to get your address. That's easy enough if you have to resolve a serious matter and the website owner is also a bit more protected against abuse of their data.

To get whois info for .de you already have to solve a captcha and write a paragraph about who you are and why you need it.

Email address is enough for that.

An email address is no Vorladungsfähige Adresse. You can't sue that, you can't send a Gerichtsvollzieher to it, and you can't seize the owners assets with it.

If I want to send an Abmahnung to a website owner, because they publicly defame me — as has happened before — then I need something stronger than an email address. Or I need to invoke the right to be forgotten, but I don't want to do so, I prefer having a way to eliminate the source.

You are talking about an Impressum. No need for that info in the whois.

The topic was Impressum. The user starting this subthread complained about Impressum.

Unless you provide journalistic content. Then you could be required to have an imprint as well.

I was always wondering if they overturn this at some point. I don't know of any other country requiring it and I doubt that it helps taking down illicit content. If anything, it helps consultants for offshore companies.

I hate this law with a passion. It doesn't seem proportionate to me at all. The main beneficiaries are folks who want to sell addresses in bulk and dodgy lawyers ("Abmahnanwälte").

I'd be fine with depositing my personal date somewhere so that people with legitimate concerns can contact me but it should require some effort so that the function can't be abused.