As a German this rather doesn't make any sense to me. ICANN is not allowed to offer the whois service, but I have to publish my full address on my website according to German law.
How can this be?
How can this be?
The E-mail address does not need to be your personal address, Lufthansa uses impressum_de@lufthansa.com and I don't see a reason why this would not be acceptable.
The postal address does not need to be your personal address, a business address is fine. Well, if you are a 1 person business run from home I am not sure. Go to court and have it tested up to the constitutional court, why Carsten Spohr (CEO of Lufthansa) gets better data protection than you do.
Yes, your real name has to be on a business web site. That's obviously the price to pay to run a business. As a potential customer wasting my money on fake service or otherwise suffering from a breach of contract, I think this is a good thing.
ICANN is illegally collecting protected data when requiring personal data for WHOIS without having any reason to do so, and that's the problem here, the conflict. But in the impressum, it is you that is releasing data, not someone collecting, and that is not conflicting with the DSGVO.
Maybe it would be possible to argue that Germany is collection that data de facto, or that it is illegally enabling illegal data collection by third parties, and suing the country for that in an EU court. But that is not a winnable fight, they'd argue that they are not collecting the data, and that there is a valid reason to force the release of the data.
Edit: actually after a bit more thought, it’s more nuanced than my somewhat glib response lets on (since there’s also an exemption for contractual obligations).
The answer is likely that a) the law hasn’t been tested in the courts under GDPR and/or b) the Government requirement has the additional test of providing a service, which may alleviate the privacy cost sufficiently.
You don't have to publish any contact information on non-commercial websites.
Get a Postfach for a few euros a year, put it on there, and be done.
The imprint requires an address that permits receiving legal notices (ladungsfähig), ie, an Address where you as a person can be found.
In that case, shouldn't the trick via a UG (Haftungsbeschränkt) still work?