I've talked with someone on IRC about this, and apparently they do give out the email rather easily (without being law enforcement, abuse stuff, etc), so there's still some possibility to contact the domain owner even if there's no website running.
Re:WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free
by hartator on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @02:01PM
(#17181517)
It's also worth noting .de don't allow foreigners to own their domains, in opposition of most other nation tdls. I won't considered them as an example.
Re:WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free
by weinzierl on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @02:17PM
(#17181678)
That‘s interesting, I didn‘t know that. Fully agree that they are not a good example. My last paragraph was to explain how pointless this privacy theater is anyway, considering that every website owner is required to give out much more info in the imprint.
Re:WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free
by hartator on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @02:25PM
(#17181740)
Yes, you need to submit German driver license, German utility bills, and things in the like. We were working on localizing one French website to a German version, and just ended using .eu as the German site.
Re:WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free
by weinzierl on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @03:26PM
(#17182212)
This makes me sad. I don‘t think I had ever had to do this but I always used a German postal address and German bank account. Also my last .de domain registration is a few years ago, so maybe they handle this stricter now.
Anyway, if you have any questions regarding domain registration in Germany or which registrars worked well for me, feel free to contact me, my details are in my profile.
Re:WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free
by hartator on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @04:03PM
(#17182489)
Sure, thanks for your proposal, appreciate it, we won't probably do business in Germany anytime soon though.
Re:WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free
by ptman on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @07:28AM
(#17186785)
I have registered a .de for a Finnish company. No problem at all via gandi.net. It would be weird if an EU country could limit registration like that. .no I believe is restricted, but not an EU country.
Currently you can query for generic data and an abuse email address but the contact details are only revealed if you are the domain holder or have a solid reason[1].
> In all other cases, DENIC will generally not provide information. Instead, if you think that the contents of a website that can be accessed via a domain may be illegal, you should send an e-mail reporting the matter to the e-mail address for abuse reports (Abuse). You find the e-mail address on the domain query page. Moreover, the imprint, if any, of the website concerned will inform you who is the operator of the website.
To add some additional context, a proper, up-to-date imprint, including a postal address (no P.O.) and in most cases a phone number, is legally required for practically every website in Germany
[1] https://www.denic.de/en/service/whois-service/third-party-re...