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Comment by seviu | Hacker News Reader

I was sued in Germany by Axel Springer due to an ad blocker I wrote. The lower court of Hamburg ruled against me. They openly admitted they did not know what they were doing because the case was too technical for them. They were just happy to please the big corporation.

Hamburg is a favourite for such cases because they just have no clue about technology. They are just old fashioned.

As a small indie developer, I could not afford to keep on fighting. I gave up. I was a psychological wreck. And since it is not binding, big entities can afford to sue you non-stop.

Hamburg was the second time I was in a court. I got sued by the same big corporation. I won the first one.

Despite not being binding Sony will use this as a precedent and they will start going against the bigger DNS players, till all of them have to comply with their demands.

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>They were just happy to please the big corporation

In Germany?! Never! /s

This reminds me how the gyms in Germany were told by the government they were not allowed to collect membership fees during the lockdown but the big chains did it anyway on the basis of "what are you gonna do about it?". So if you wanted gyms to comply, each customer had to take their gym to court on an individual basis but most never bothered.

It's crazy, from a foreigner's perspective, with how much shenanigans big business in Germany can get away with legally, considering how strict and bureaucratic Germany is. And don't get me started on customer service.

Thus the saying: "More laws, less justice"

get your bank to charge back the card for fraudulent charges to your account

Nope, most banks(specially online-only) will decline your charge back citing some super complex directive that is totally unrelated & you can't appeal. Charge backs will work for no name small merchants mostly.

That's really strange logic. It's the government which block the people to use the gym service, not the gym. The damage was caused by the government and if somebody to compensate the damage, it should be the government.

The gyms got paid compensation by the government.

The problem is that this precedent applies not just to DNS operators, but to literally _any_ unrelated bystander. Sony make very clear in their complaint that Quad9 has no relationship with any party to the alleged infringement. That's why their so excited about this, it's a step further than they've ever taken before.

Are you a German resident or otherwise subject to their jurisdiction? What would happen if you just ignored the lawsuit, and/or ignored the final judgment?

seems to be a German company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11584052

Eventually they'll sue you for damages, the court will rule that you have to stop what you are doing (as they already did so, and violating a court order seems like a surefire way to escalate the situation), plus the monetary compensation for the damages. And at that point it's just easy-peasy call the collections agency, and they'll just make your life more and more miserable by taking your stuff/car/home/etc. (Similarly if "you are" a company.)

As a company, they can only take what belongs to the company. Even if you're selfemployed they should only be able (IIRC, IANAL) to take things that are 100% part of the business.

This is definitely not true for German law.

For a mbH-type it is.

Right, but the vast majority of self-employed people are going to be "Einzelunternehmer" or maybe in a GbR

That's because in that case the legal entity of the company and the natural entity behind it are the same. A GmbH and similar are not directly associated with that. The quick way to prevent issues is to quickly register private insolvency if the money of your corporation is not enough to cover your bills. That means you get to keep a profit of 1.178,59€ monthly plus any necessities like rent and gas/power bills. At most this takes five years and you're free.

This reminds me of hearing about a surge of tech patent cases being litigated in the Eastern District of Texas, though according to this paper, there were perhaps reasons other than selecting a jurisdiction based on purported lack of the locals’ familiarity with technology: https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1146&con...

Which first or second world country doesn't abide by big corporations? Is there a useful ranking that would measure it? I'm really curious.

Or third or any-th world country. Big corps are big business, big money, big power. Germany is 6th on this list, Norway is 1st. Japan is 15th [0] and Hong Kong is 16th [1] the US is not in the top 20.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Justice_Project#WJP_Rule...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRn4xzaugbk [1] nor for long :(

This is why we picked Switzerland as our domicile.

https://www.reuters.com/article/swisscom-court-idUSFWN20M0KT

The problem is that we're the only ones with standing to challenge the Hamburg injunction, so if we don't, they can use it against anyone in the EU.

Switzerland is a third world country. This classification is outdated.

Why are you asserting that Switzerland is a third world country? If that's true, it's a fact that I'm unaware of. Could you specify what your definition of third world is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

> As a small indie developer, I could not afford to keep on fighting. I gave up.

You probably could ask EFF for help in this case.

Why did you put your name under that ad blocker?

I remember "the good old web" (tm) where people did stuff anonymosly. In this way people can stay safe and continue publishing stuff.

The moral solution is to fix justice, the pragmatic solution is to not use your real name. In that light, I also have to ask, why did you use your real name?

I forgot that HN is a place for pure ideology.

Honestly, if the world was run by such people, we would be still in discussions and evaluations.

Sometimes you just have to accept facts and move on.

In Germany, if you run a website of any kind, it has to include an imprint, which is required to list a legal entity which usually is a person.

See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressumspflicht#Telemedienge...

Source: I'm a German, I publish websites.

Then run a .com address and you do not need an Impressum. Problem solved. LOL.

Source: I am also a German, I publish .com websites.

nope. it's not solved. If anybody knows who you are, if you still live in germany, you will be fined. the law has nothing to do with an ending of the dns or some stupid shit. it only applies to juridical persons in germany.

> If anybody knows who you are

I think the point here is to not disclose your identity online as a defense against bullshit lawsuits. Whether you agree with the approach itself is one thing, but if it works at protecting against lawsuits it'll definitely work at protecting against enforcement of this law.

it won't work at protecting against law enforcement. if they want you, they will find a way.

It will kind of. Law enforcement does not have unlimited resources, and its limited resources have to be prioritized based on the severity of the infringement. Lack of an "impressum" by itself would be quite tame unless there has been some other crime committed (or at the very least a credible tip or complaint) that would justify law enforcement looking into it in the first place.

Furthermore, when it comes to the lack of "impressum", merely determining whether the law has been broken would be difficult with proper anonymity. Let's say he's based in Germany but anonymously purchases hosting in the US or another country and never discloses his German residency on the website - in this case it's impossible from the outside to even determine whether he is actually breaking this law, removing the probable cause for an investigation in the first place. As far as I'm aware, Germany does not - and wouldn't have the resources anyway - to thoroughly investigate every foreign-hosted website to determine whether its owner is actually based in Germany and is thus breaking the law by not publishing an "impressum".

It's not solved. If you're based in Germany, as soon as you are doing any business and collect information from people, or better - money, you gotta do it.

Interestingly, you only have to do it IF you have an online presence. As in, you don't have to have an online presence when running a business.

Right, but you don't need an impressum for a GitHub repo or a browser extension, right? I guess the GP probably did run a website.

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