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blinki bill · 10-17-2014, 07:01 PM

I am relocating to Germany at the moment and was looking into various legalities around porn and it seems that there is a very strict regulation in german law about protecting minors. According to their law all materials for over 16 or 18 (not just porn, games, movies etc) should be available to adults only, providers have the responsibility of blocking it for minors. If a provider fails to do so can face charges (fines and even jail time)! The authorities are also quite strict with what is considered sufficient age verification, according to the law simply using a credit card or id card number is not enough (forget about rta label or index page warning), face to face id verification is the only thing that is acceptable (good luck doing face-to-face via internet!)

I talked with a lawyer regarding this issue and it sees that there was a shift in public opinion in putting some of the responsibility on the parents and using parental control software, in 2012 two such programs were officially approved and technically if your site is enrolled with those it should be fine, however he told me that it is a bit of a grey area as the law still requires you to make the verification; it is not very likely to happen but you could still end up in court and using those programs "could" help you out but is not guarantee.

I looked those programs up and basically you have to install a xml label 'age-de' on the root of your server, this label is then read by the parental control soft to block/allow access to the whole site or individual pages.

What is your experience with this issue and how do you run your websites from germany, do you use this label?

I looked number of german sites and no one seems to be using this label, a bit confused. Game sites like steam and the nintendo shop however made the news papers last year because of restricting all access to game titles pg16 and pg18 in germany because they have no means of providing age verification (one that the gov will deem valid).

10-17-2014, 07:01 PM
blinki bill Confirmed User Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: solar system, earth Posts: 123	German webmaster - parental control question I am relocating to Germany at the moment and was looking into various legalities around porn and it seems that there is a very strict regulation in german law about protecting minors. According to their law all materials for over 16 or 18 (not just porn, games, movies etc) should be available to adults only, providers have the responsibility of blocking it for minors. If a provider fails to do so can face charges (fines and even jail time)! The authorities are also quite strict with what is considered sufficient age verification, according to the law simply using a credit card or id card number is not enough (forget about rta label or index page warning), face to face id verification is the only thing that is acceptable (good luck doing face-to-face via internet!) I talked with a lawyer regarding this issue and it sees that there was a shift in public opinion in putting some of the responsibility on the parents and using parental control software, in 2012 two such programs were officially approved and technically if your site is enrolled with those it should be fine, however he told me that it is a bit of a grey area as the law still requires you to make the verification; it is not very likely to happen but you could still end up in court and using those programs "could" help you out but is not guarantee. I looked those programs up and basically you have to install a xml label 'age-de' on the root of your server, this label is then read by the parental control soft to block/allow access to the whole site or individual pages. What is your experience with this issue and how do you run your websites from germany, do you use this label? I looked number of german sites and no one seems to be using this label, a bit confused. Game sites like steam and the nintendo shop however made the news papers last year because of restricting all access to game titles pg16 and pg18 in germany because they have no means of providing age verification (one that the gov will deem valid).