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Comment by WhatsName | Hacker News Reader

Given you are operating in Germany, where sending people cease-and-desist letters (Abmahnungen) purely for monetary gain, I would highly reccomend you to take good care of compliance topics like having a proper Impressum (mandatory contact page).

Unless of course if you plan on never ever growing it into a business, then you might get away with Njalla and cloudflare as invisibility cloak...

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The irony is… if you don’t have an impressum, where should they send their abmahnung? :) In 2008, they could still look up your WHOIS. But this doesn’t work anymore since GDPR.

I can’t positively claim that’s the case but I wouldn’t be surprised if your registrar has to give out your information if a valid legal claim comes in.

How can your registrar confirm that it is a valid legal claim?

Authorities have ways to mark their letters. And one usually ignores them at own risk and cost.

The problem is that an Abmahnung doesn’t really come from some state authority but just a lawyer. Maybe confirming that it’s from a real lawyer would be enough though.

I think you’d need to get a court order. You may be able to get that if you are a direct competitor. Essentially, unless you have a competitor who has a keen interest in making your life miserable, nothing will happen. The days were lawyers themselves could send you ceise and desist letters just to earn some money are long gone.

"The days were lawyers themselves could send you ceise and desist letters just to earn some money are long gone."

I don't think so, just their peak is gone. Lawyers still send letters - but they never had legal weight. It is basically a deal(or exortion), just pay this small sum now, or I have to go to court and then you will have to pay a lot.

How does a website determine if a copyright claim for some user-generated content is valid? I think they just look if it’s roughly plausible and then give out your data and let you fight it out.

Yes, of course, but at the moment the site is only there to try out my idea and evaluate its potential.

Likely nothing will happen, but the way it looks, it is not obvious it is only for testing and you now posted it in the open and there seems a comercial intent. The law is quite clear there last time I checked, it needs an adress. (Even for uncomercial projects it seems advisable).

That doesn't matter. Impressumspflicht means it's your pflicht to have an Impressum. You can also get an Abmahnung as an individual.

That is in principle correct, but since OP is using a throwaway and a know anonymous domain service. As long as he burns bridges after himself (eg. not making it into a adressable business later), there is not individual to deliver a letter to.

Might work for a while, but a dangerous game to play...

It’s a bit more nuanced, you don’t need a Impressum for purely personal websites without financial background. Evaluating a business idea would probably count as financial motive though, even if it isn’t currently monetized.

The economics don't matter, everything that is regularly updated or offers a service needs an Impressum. The exception for "purely personal or familial" use clearly doesn't apply here because a service is being provided actively.

Here’s the law: https://dejure.org/gesetze/TMG/5.html

It mandates a Impressum for „ geschäftsmäßige, in der Regel gegen Entgelt angebotene Telemedien“. If it’s not geschäftsmäßig (Business-Like?), you don’t need an Impressum. If you do it for free without any intention to make money now or later, it’s not geschäftsmäßig.

If I have a blog that I update regularly but don’t have any ads from or take donations for, I don’t need an Impressum.

Impressumspflicht only applies for commercial interests. If you are a company informing or even selling something, if you are an influencer making money of yourself, or even if you just have ads on your Pokemon-fanpage, then it counts as commercial interest.

But I don't see any direct monetary value on this site at the moment. There is not even a reputation-gain, as there is no personal information. So Impressumspflicht would not apply.

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