Germany orders changes to Facebook real name policy | Hacker News Reader

Germany orders changes to Facebook real name policy

bbc.co.uk

83 pointsdenzil_correa115 comments

Those who reads German may be interested in reading the official press release (https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/presse/20121217-facebook-k...), including the decrees to Facebook Inc./USA and Facebook Ltd./Ireland.

Non-professional summary and translation:

I. Facebook is obligated by law to provide the following for the natural persons who want to use www.facebook.com in Schleswig-Holstein:

1. It must be possible to register with a pseudonym.

2. Accounts of registered users whose registration is blocked because of incomplete disclosure or non-disclosure of their real information must be reactivated.

3. Users are to be informed on www.facebook.com about the possibility to register with a pseudonym before the registration.

II. The immediate execution of the provision I. N°2 is decreed.

III. If Facebook does not implement the provisions of I. within two weeks after the delivery of this notice, it will be handed out a penalty of 20,000 EUR.

This is ridiculous. If you don't like services that require your full name, don't use them. It's clear people like those services. The biggest appeal of Facebook is that you can connect with people from your past by typing their names into search or being connected to them through your current FB friends. If half the people on FB have pseudonyms it will make the process of reconnecting with old friends and family frustrating to the point of uselessness.

>If you don't like services that require your full name, don't use them

Except Facebook has a monopoly, minors are using it, and so on. Face it, in Europe we have a different understanding of the role of the State and if you want to do business in here, you'll have to abide by our rules.

> Except Facebook has a monopoly

No they don't, especially not in Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StudiVZ

they do. studivz plays ther same role os/2 and or anything else played in the microsoft monopoly era. they are at this point a niche site that is almost dead.

And how about Russia with vkontakte (vk.com)?

Really? Seriously?

"StudiVZ" was a lame (and, if I remember correctly, bit-by-bit when they started) clone of FB, which won here for a while. Probably because they actually had a local interface and added local universities, schools and whatnot. Since then FB expanded to Germany, StudiVZ is for all purposes dead and obsolete.

I don't even know how you come up with that example. It's like pointing to Myspace or whatever came before that.

Both StudiVZ and MySpace are examples of how Facebook isn't a monopoly. So is Twitter and e-mail and Google Plus. And PHPBB and Diaspora.

Facebook has a monopoly on being Facebook. For everything else, there's ample competition. The fact that Facebook is more popular than the competition doesn't make it a monopoly.

I had the same argument over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4938204

Would you consider Windows as a monopoly? There are alternatives.. If your answer is 'No', the EU seems to disagree with you (and might on the FB case, we'll see). If your answer is 'Yes', where's the difference?

Windows is more of a monopoly in the sense that there is much heavier lock-in: It's not trivial to write an application in such a way that it works equally well under Windows and the alternatives. The lock-in to Facebook is much, much lighter.

But more importantly, being a monopoly (however such is defined) is not in itself illegal, and it's not a carte blanche for publicity-hungry politicians to hand-wavily demand to control random details of a company's operations.

What is illegal is monopolistic behaviour, to leverage your dominance in one market to unfairly gain an advantage in another. That is what Microsoft did and was punished for (rather than merely being a monopoly), and what Google might be getting in trouble for.

> The lock-in to Facebook is much, much lighter.

WHAT? Pardon, but I don't see at all how you could come to such a conclusion. The primary assets of Windows are: ease-of-use, ubiquity, hardware compatibility. But if you have an application you love that works on Windows, chances are (if it's not a game, but even then there are other games and entertainment software) that there is a port or clone for another system (like Linux or Mac OS X — I'm speaking consumer-grade stuff here, business is another matter entirely.)

Facebook on the other hand has these assets: your Mom's on Facebook, your dad's on Facebook, so is your neighbour, your aunt, all your friends, (ex-)class mates, acquaintances, that boy or girl you had a crush on in first grade…

Your social graph is much more difficult to migrate to a different social platform than it is to port an application from one OS to another (or to find it on the Net.) Because it is pretty much impossible. Mass-migrations sort-of happen (like StudiVZ → Facebook a while back in Germany, or Digg → reddit, but there the social cohesion was rather low,) but only in high pressure situations. You can't easily bring about such a situation without the point of origin of said migration fucking up in a major way.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr — they're all sitting on social gold, and they're keeping it for now.

Easy on the drama, please.

Monopoly means that there is only a single seller of a given commodity.

Windows was a monopoly in the 1990s and until I guess around when OS X came out - these alternative applications you mention didn't exist yet. Today I wouldn't say Windows is a monopoly, partly because good-enough alternative applications exists, partly because many (most) new, fancy applications are web-based and not limited to IE (as they once were). Today, really, there is really only one reason to run Windows, and it's Office - and that's going away fast, especially as users dawn on the fact that they can communicate without e-mailing Word documents around.

Another important component of Windows monopoly is exclusivity. Today I can trivially run Windows in a VM for that fraction of my workflow that isn't properly supported on Mac or Linux - 10 years ago, the best you could do was dual booting, which was painful and tricky for non-technical users.

Which brings me to Facebook: No, you can't port your social network lock, stock and barrel to a competing service. But you can trivially, with very little friction, maintain your presence on multiple networks - all you need is another tab in your browser, or a client app that supports each. You can even use the APIs of the respective services to integrate them with each other - you can automatically post Tweets to Facebook and vise versa. Plenty of people I know use both Facebook and Twitter in parallel with various degrees of automated integration. That's not the face of a monopoly.

The fact that other people don't want to stop using Facebook does not make Facebook a monopoly. They have strong network effects, yes, but that's not the same.

Your definition of a monopoly in Europe must be very different than ours.

Monopoly is reached, when there is a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service and a lack of viable substitute goods.

If the service facebook provides is access and contact between people, any substitute (ie, proof that there is no monopoly) would have to be near the size of facebook to qualify. How many other viable substitutes are there that reach 30% of the population? Any at 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%?

face it, facebook has a monopoly right now in regard to a service proving access and contact between people.

uh.. skype? twitter? reddit? aim? gmail? google plus?

You're ignoring the root cause of this discussions. Which service that you're listing has a 'real name' policy?

  Skype: Pseudonym (this one)
  Twitter: Pseudonym (the same)
  Reddit: Pseudonym (the same)
  AIM: Uhm.. Nope. Guess allows pseudonyms? Not sure
  GMail: No restrictions either
  G+: Same as FB, hopefully the next target on the list of this group.

So - most of your list aren't playing that 'give us your real name and be prepared to hand over your ID to prove that fact' game with their users. Which is what the discussion is about. Of the services that do this, FB clearly is the leader. Or in a monopoly-esque situation.

You're shifting the issue. We're not debating which large service is requiring real names (btw, G+ has the same requirement), we're debating whether or not Facebook is a monopoly. By your logic, I could make the argument for any service being a monopoly by being specific about the type of service they are supposedly monopolizing. For instance, Twitter has a monopoly on microblogging services that use birds in their marketing.

It's interesting to exchange these retorts with you.

We really have completely different views and probably (and 50% is certainly on me) trouble understanding each other.

Microsoft was (is!) a monopoly. Although you can buy OS X, get Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Nexenta, SmartOS, Solaris, Haiku-OS or whatever floats your boat. [1]

Facebook is a monopoly, even if there are products/services available that provide something kind-of, sort-of similar.

1: Apologies for missing someone's favorite alternative OS in the list

I think the point is that it's very difficult to define exactly what a monopoly is. There's a lot of disagreement on that topic.

Comparing Skype with Facebook is comparing apples with oranges.

Google plus and Twitter are closer, but a Twitter handle is not drop in replacement for Facebook group. That just leaves Google plus.

And Google plus has around 0.5% of the German population as users.

0.5% vs 30%... not a replacement exactly. almost like saying that AOL search is a replacement for Google search. However, I think the ad networks do not agree with that.

If you dig into definition of monopoly, you'll be surprised that everybody has a monopoly on themselves. Important thing is that Facebook does not have monopoly on you, but your government does. If monopoly is evil, then deal with your government first. If it is not, then why worry about Facebook?

It might have escaped your notice, but a lot of people over the past few thousand years have worried about the power of governments, and a lot of effort has been expended in trying to limit this power through laws.

Any time you have an uneven distribution of power, be it a government or a corporate monopoly, you need to have some safeguards in place to ensure that power is not abused.

I deal with my government every time I vote.

Plus the comparison is wrong IMHO. Governmental power is a resource over which a party can have a monopoly. But currently no party has.

I admit that I fail to see the point of your post. Might be just me.

The state has monopoly on the use of violence, among other things. Just because leadership may change does not alter this fact. Would you deny the fact of a corporate monopoly simply because their leadership may change?

@RickHull Please don't confuse a state with its government. Ignoring the military, only 1 of the 3 separated powers is allowed to use violence.

That aside.

There's a huge difference between a company and a government. Because I only get to decide on the politics of the latter. But luckily my government has jurisdiction over companies operating in the country in question, giving me also some power over them.

So. To make this clear: A government having control over people without the people having control over it: A potential problem. A company having a monopoly and therefore control over people without the people having control over it: A potential problem.

Luckily the people get to control the first, which in turn has control over the latter.

But people always have control over a company, even if that company has a monopoly. They can simply not buy the company's product or service, or use an alternate product or service. It may not be as good as the one offered by the monopoly, but no company is forcing people to pay them for their goods and services. In fact, the only entity that is forcing people to pay them for the goods and services they provide is the government.

The very definition of monopoly is that there is no alternative. I can't just go to another company because they, for instance, do not have the people I'd like to connect with in their network.

You can choose not to social network if Facebook is the only social network. That is clearly an "alternative".

So monopolies don't exist and are a lie made up by economists because I can always choose not to consume at all?

Sorry, but this is getting ridiculous.

There is no consensus in Europe that the role of government includes protecting us against our own deliberate choices. Particularly not against choices that we can reverse any time we want. And the law we're talking about is not a European law. It's a German law.

I'm glad we do have a European law that mandates websites to delete personal data at the request of users. That gives us the freedom to leave if we no longer agree with the rules a website makes.

I actually deleted my Facebook account partly because they asked "friends" to report "friends" who didn't use their real name. I also don't like to be mislead and spied upon in the most egregious ways possible.

Facebook is only a monopoly if all my friends decide to enforce it by keeping me out of the loop if I'm not on Facebook. Real friends don't do that.

I'm glad we do have a European law that mandates websites to delete personal data at the request of users.

No, that law hasn't come in yet. It's planned to come in. Current EU data protection law requires that companies delete/correct data that's incorrect, and they can only store information if it's proportionate to what they're doing, and if you've consented at the start. But as ar as I know, EU law/directives does not allow you (yet!) to be "forgotten".

Principle 5 of the UK Data Protection Act says:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_...

Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_...

It's not the same as a right to be forgotten, but it does say companies need to think about (and presumably be prepared to argue in court) their need for data.

> In some cases, you may need to keep personal data so you can defend possible future legal claims. However, you could still delete information that could not possibly be relevant to such a claim. Unless there is some other reason for keeping it, personal data should be deleted when such a claim could no longer arise.

I don't think monopoly or not status matters to data protection law, which this might fall under. Sure, the USA (say) with anti-monopoly law but no data protection law, this might be an important point, but in EU we have monopoly law and data protection law.

Half the people I know on Facebook have changed their displayed name to some combination of their first, last, middle, or other name. They still appear to be 'valid' names, but I reckon they'd get asked to change them if Facebook ever demanded they provide proof of identification.

Not sure what to make of your claim that it's "clear" people "like" Facebook because of this requirement. People put up with it, perhaps, but I know plenty of normal everyday people on FB who aren't really playing by the rules.

If people going through the hassle of signing up for your service isn't an indication that they like your service, we're all in a lot of trouble here at HN.

Signups are no indication of actual usage http://allthingsd.com/20121217/andreessen-and-mixpanel-call-...

They are for sure an indication of initial interest. And given Facebook's retention and engagement rates, I think it's fairly obvious that most people like the service. That's not to say they like the company Facebook, but they obviously like keeping in touch with their friends and family using Facebook's service.

The fact that it's clearly possible to use a pseudonym on Facebook makes the German complaint even more silly. But the fact remains that Facebook has decided to have this rule because they believe it makes the product better. That decision is theirs to make, and people can flaunt it (as many do) or decide not to join.

"If half the people on FB have pseudonyms it will make the process of reconnecting with old friends and family frustrating"

Why? How so? And - why do we care? If users want to choose their name, how is it relevant if it's frustrating for _other_ people to be unable to locate them?

How many people are searching the ex-gf/-bf by name to stalk and see what they're up to?

Isn't it very frustrating as well if people got married and - whoa - just give Facebook their _current_ 'real name'. You wouldn't be able to find them. Maybe the service should require you to list the maiden name, blocking you for failing to do so?

And - frankly: I know more people on FB with 'fake' names than with 'real' ones. Family, friends, random acquaintances, 70% don't use their real name. The range is from fantasy names (like, obviously invalid/~random~), to play on words/phrases (localized variants of 'Some Dude' or similar) to the braindead exercise of writing your name backwards (you'd be there as "Kram Rettun").

Against the TOS? Yeah, sure. Impossible to enforce for localized jokes or seemingly valid names anyway. And quite frankly, if it's 'frustrating' for people that want to search for old contacts is really, really not interesting _for those users_.

> Why? How so? And - why do we care? If users want to choose their name, how is it relevant if it's frustrating for _other_ people to be unable to locate them?

Well, because that's the way Facebook works. They made a decision early on to require real names because most of the value of Facebook hinged upon the ease of finding friends and family. Imagine if the white pages allowed people to use pseudonyms. It wouldn't be worth much, would it?

> How many people are searching the ex-gf/-bf by name to stalk and see what they're up to?

Dunno, lots? Who cares?

> And - frankly: I know more people on FB with 'fake' names than with 'real' ones. Family, friends, random acquaintances, 70% don't use their real name. The range is from fantasy names (like, obviously invalid/~random~), to play on words/phrases (localized variants of 'Some Dude' or similar) to the braindead exercise of writing your name backwards (you'd be there as "Kram Rettun").

This is purely anecdotal but I would put the rate of actual names used among my friends at around 99%. Now, granted, that may because I haven't found the acquaintances from my past who do use fake names, but that only bolsters my point. If most people used fake names then a large part of the appeal of Facebook would dissipate.

> Isn't it very frustrating as well if people got married and - whoa - just give Facebook their _current_ 'real name'. You wouldn't be able to find them. Maybe the service should require you to list the maiden name, blocking you for failing to do so?

Facebook has a solution for the maiden name problem, btw, (by allowing users to enter an "alternate name")[https://www.facebook.com/help/131728300237162/], and again, this is purely anecdotal, but I see a very high percentage of people in my network taking advantage of this feature. I would wager it's because most people want to be found by their friends and family.

> Against the TOS? Yeah, sure. Impossible to enforce for localized jokes or seemingly valid names anyway. And quite frankly, if it's 'frustrating' for people that want to search for old contacts is really, really not interesting _for those users_.

I don't personally have a problem with people circumventing Facebook's TOS and I'd gather that Facebook probably doesn't care all that much either. What I do have a problem with is a government arbitrarily setting a TOS for a website that people can choose whether or not to use.

The government isn't. It's not _limiting_ anyone (except FB, and even there we seem to agree that enforcing that particular rule isn't happening/hard/no priority).

It just requires FB to allow pseudonyms, officially. People still _can_ register with their 'real name', so your use case wouldn't be broken. Unless the people around you would prefer to use another name.. Which is, frankly, their choice to make (and in practice _is_ already happening today).

Right, but you're missing the point. If Facebook had prominently allowed pseudonyms in the first place it likely wouldn't have become as popular as it is today. It's the White Pages of the 21st century, and as I stated above, the White Pages would have been practically worthless had it allowed people to use pseudonyms.

You listed twitter as a "proof" that you have alternatives, as an example that FB is no monopoly.

I agree that Twitter is quite successful and big. In spite of allowing pseudonyms?

White pages don't apply. No idea how these work over there, but here they are a service to find a phone number - and sell a couple ads. You don't communicate via White Pages. In fact, you'd only use those to find people _that you usually don't communicate with_. And then _move the conversation to a different medium (phone)_.

Facebook is not related. It's not a simple register. It is not the same thing.

It's like comparing the hand-selected early Yahoo! link collection with the current Google, including Search, GMail, GTalk, G+.

However if the law says that you must be able to use them without giving your full name then the service must abide by that.

|If you don't like services that require your full name, don't use them.

Similarly, if you don't like to provide pseudonyms, don't do business in Germany. Power always does what it wants, this time it is the German government with the upper hand.

So how exactly do you not do business in Germany if you're a website like Facebook? Do you just cancel all the accounts of people who listed their home country as Germany? What about people who were born in Germany but don't live there anymore? If I'm visiting Germany, will Facebook not work for me? And how exactly will Germany's public respond if they simply block them from using their service? I would wager people would be fairly upset.

One thing you can do is not starting a German subsidiary like Facebook has done. That removes any excuse of being a foreign internet based company.

Content sites like Hulu, Netflix, Youtube seem to have no problem restricting access based on ip.

This isn't 100%, but it would effectively block everyone in my family except me.

Your point could be equally made about the real name policy.

How exactly do you enforce this policy? Do you just delete all people with 'wrong' names? What about people that changed their name (marriage, legal change of name) and didn't update the site?

If you'd block Germany, I'd guess there'd be a quick replacement ready (we had FB clones in the past. They are barren and empty because FB won, but I'm pretty sure that most people would Just Move On (TM). I don't expect riots over Facebook and Farmville).

But Facebook doesn't enforce their real name policy. And I don't think they need to. Most people willingly give their real names if you make that the only option for signing up for the service.

If you block Germany it's tantamount to censorship. Perhaps people in Germany are less concerned about censorship than we are here in the States, but I'd have to imagine it would roughly at least some feathers.

I - fail to follow.

You don't see a reason to enforce the real name policy, but are opposed to a ruling/request to be explicit about that?

Censorship is always a tough subject. For one, because I actually think that 'free speech' in the US sense doesn't apply locally (there are quite some things you cannot state/show/do and I tend to like that. But I wouldn't consider myself pro-censorship. On the contrary, even).

Ignoring that: Why is 'blocking German users from using the service' censorship and evil, but 'blocking everyone from using a name that they'd like to use, potentially locking/deleting their account after requesting people to hand out official, government provided IDs to a random company on the internet' not censorship?

For me? Same thing. In both cases it's the company that acts and blocks/"censors" a number of potential users.

It's interesting because there are several German social networks (XING, StudiVZ, wer-kennt-wen, ...) that also do not allow their users to use pseudonyms. As far as I know, none of them have been ordered to change their policies.

Yepp. As good, as one might find this move from the German regulators, one must wonder, why only one network is targeted. But that is nothing new here in Germany. Most often it is one symbolic network (often times Google), that is the target. So one might suspect, that this is nothing more than symbolic policy.

The data-protecting people in our government are toothless kittens, they have no real influence and these moves seem to me only to be made, to show, that they are still there and to justify their existence.

Sad to see, but there does not seem to be any real chance, that this will change.

So, this "decree" has no meaning even if fought in a German legal court?

Depends. Some countries empower the local data protection commission to make binding injunctions forcing a company/person to do/not do a thing. I know Ireland has this. No idea of Germany, but presume it's similar.

They might force FB to do this. But having seen what happens here with Google or all the other cases, I really doubt their "power" or will to do much more, than symbolic policy.

You know the Irish Data Protection Commissioner force Facebook to make some privacy related changes, right?

You sure about this? My interpretation is that they chose one site to test the case in court and will then if successful go after the others.

the VZs are dead, wer-kennt-wen is also dying and not using real names on XING does not make much sense IMO. I guess, they only care about the real big fish in the pond for now.

I would presume that they will have to change their policies soon if this is the new interpretation of the law.

For the folks questioning jurisdiction, that's moot on several counts, most notably since Facebook has had a German daughter company ("Facebook Germany GmbH") since 2009.

So suppose Facebook dissolves that daughter company. What then?

Maybe not that big of a deal. If Facebook doesn't comply, they only have to pay 20000€: http://translate.google.de/translate?twu=1?sl=de&tl=en&#...

Maybe more of a deal is that this is the first step in the legal battle. Now Facebook can appeal or ignore but that opens up to get a court injunction all the way up to the european courts until you get a decision on the highest level. Without a first injunction, none of that would be possible.

That is only their first fine. If German law is similar to Swedish law here nothing prevents future fines if FB just chose to ignore the ruling and pay the fine.

The change in policy is demanded by the "Independent State Centre for Data Protection, Schleswig-Holstein", a public institution of a constituent state, but not a court of law.

It will probably go through all the court instances, before a conclusion is reached. So let's talk about it next year.

I am pretty sure it might take more than one year since this should end up in the European Court.

this should end up in the European Court

Eh? I'm not sure such a thing called "the European Court" exists...

That may be an incorrect name, but it such courts do exist.

Yes, it does and is more formally called the European Court of Justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Justice

It only handles union law and not national law but I bet FB will try to get the ECJ to review the case as a free movement of goods issue.

Unlikely. Considering how the new Data Protection Directive being written goes further than the current one, and seems to be targetting various things Facebook does (like having all it's EU stuff in Ireland). It seems like a lot of EU law is on the side of privacy and data protection.

I am pretty sure Facebook will try to appeal. Does not mean they will get the appeal though.

So, yes, this might have the same legal force as a court injunction.

Interesting.

That _might_ (if enforced and extended) make G+ useable for me again. I understand that the controversy around the decision, but I've to admit that I'm very happy about this move.

Me too. I'm a big fan of pseudonyms, and G+'s real name policy is the only reason I'm not using it.

Comments like this: "It is unacceptable that a US portal like Facebook violates German data protection law unopposed and with no prospect of an end"

Make me realize that there are still people who do not understand how the Internet works. There are no boarders on the Internet. German people are under no obligation whatsoever to use "a US portal".

I'd argue that we should listen very carefully to what Germany has to say on the matter, historically, they know and have learned from past mistakes.

Also, Facebook has a data center in Finland, which is under EU-jurisdiction. Germany has a lot of say internally in EU, so Facebook could very quickly be subject to such laws - as they should!

Facebook has quite a few offices in Europe. However most are probably just selling ads and doing localization.

Dublin, Ireland; Hamburg, Germany; London, UK; Madrid, Spain; Milan, Italy; Paris, France; Stockholm, Sweden

"just selling ads"

"Just?" That's their whole business. If they're selling ads in a country, then they're "doing business" in that country.

Sure, but I am not quite sure how they are structuring this from a legal perspective. Wouldn't be surprised if this were in fact some pseudo-independently operating branches for both tax reasons as well as the protection of their US assets.

At that point they are required to follow German laws. Don't like it, remove your offices from Germany :P

Facebook operates in Germany, therefore it is bound by the regulations of that country. In the same manner that it would break German law if it openly promoted antisemitism.

Facebook can chose not to operate and offer services to German customers within Germany if it doesn't like the laws of that country.

Every country has the right to define its own laws that (in general) are there to protect its citizens. Companies who operate in a country are bound by those laws, whether they like them or not.

Privacy is very important to Germans. They have learnt from experience that it is very dangerous to centralize identifying information within the hands of a single ruling entity.

Does Facebook actually have offices in Germany? If not does Germany really have jurisdiction.

As far as I am aware they operate out of Ireland, that means they need to follow EU laws.

I am not aware if that gives Germany any power over them or not, but if Germany can prove that the same laws they are referencing (and the data protection laws are the same across the EU, so I am making a big assumption here that it is the case) they could make Facebook follow the EU laws.

I am not aware if that gives Germany any power over them or not

Not really, it is Irish law that applies.

the data protection laws are the same across the EU, so I am making a big assumption here that it is the case

Yes and no. EU Directives set out a lot details (and usually minimum levels) for various things, but countries implement & transpose them into national law (i.e. actual law) themselves and there can be differences. Remember not all countries in EU speak same language, have same legal systems (civil law vs. common law) or use the same currency so there will be some some superficial differences. Sometimes countries get a opt-out of certain EU directives. Sometimes countries will go above and beyond the EU directives. (e.g. in UK it's possible to opt out of the 48 hr maximum working week, whereas France has no opt out and sets the maximum working week at 35 hrs.) Broadly speaking EU law will be the same across the EU.

However the next EU Data Protection / Privacy directive will allow one country to act against a company/person if they are active in that country, rather than it having to be based on where that company's headquarters are.

facebook has an office in hamburg and iirc it is in the same building as qype(recently aquired by yelp)

What does it mean to operate in a country? I don't think running a website that doesn't block access from a particular country can be interpreted as operating in that country. Maybe Facebook does more than that, e.g. sell advertising in Germany.

It does. Facebook is a company operating in Europe as well.

Hint for Americans -- Europe is not a country and while Facebook does operate in Ireland, that means they are subject to Irish, not German, laws.

> Privacy is very important to Germans. They have learnt from experience that it is very dangerous to centralize identifying information within the hands of a single ruling entity.

Never mind that this is very close to Godwining the discussion: There is a world and then some of difference to telling a private company your real name and being physically forced to detail the ethnicity of your entire family to the government.

It's also rampant survivor-bias (although the name of that bias is awfully inappropriate in this context). Plenty of countries did (and still do) plenty of registration of citizen's private data without subsequently mass murdering them.

The comment you replied to was certainly not a reference to Nazi Germany at all. Germans understand that a privacy-related reference to german history is usually a reference to the former state of East Germany which was famous for massive surveillance.

True, but it can make it a lot harder for facebook to sell ads in Germany. While the userbase is international and can move between borders at will, the same is not true of the monetization flows.

I think Germany understands full well how the internet works:

Nations all over the world block content that violates their laws... from the Tiananmen Square Wikipedia page being blocked by China to megaupload.com being blocked by the U.S.

Certainly Germany cannot prevent you from running a server in India and publishing to Indians, but they certainly can prevent you from broadcasting to Germans, and if you want to do so, you have to play by their laws.

No,because technically if I run a server in the US, and a german user connects to my website, I should not be bothered by the german laws,and there is nothing the German government can make me do with my website. If they don't like their citizens accessing my server,they can block it inside their national network, but saying that I should conform to their laws is preposterous. I imagine that everyone happily complies with Saudi Arabia's requests to remove pictures of women driving, from every single website on the Internet, because that violates their laws. Internet does not know boarders - I run a server, if you want to access it from within your country - cool,but I am not going to bother with your country's laws,because it wouldn't make any sense to do so.

Tell that to the people that take down .com domains for violating US rules.

Luckily the thing that all websites are missing when they ask you to fill in a name field is the ability to verify whether or not it is actually your name.

Shouldn't Facebook be allowed to do what it likes? Regulating how an internet company chooses to run its product is very worrying.

Law is law. If there can be laws against sharing copyrighted works or child porn why not the law against soliciting from people their real names?

Because you're not forcing people to register for the service.

"Law is Law" - my point is that this shouldn't be the law.

If you operate in a country you still have to follow that countries laws. Being an 'internet company' doesn't change that.

Now for this specific case, whether Facebook has offices in Germany or if they sell to Germans, I don't know but if any of those are true they may have to abide by by these laws.

Also, no, no company should be allowed to do what it likes.

They have offices in Germany (albeit not in Schleswig-Holstein, as far as I know, though close to it, in Hamburg).

I have been curious about these things for a while. When is an internet company considered breaking the law, if all they do is put their product online and make it accessible on the internet (i.e. from everywhere)?

Say, a web app X that shows a collections of cat pictures uploaded by the users, and country Y where cat pictures are banned in every media. How does this work?

I can't answer your question completely and I'm by no means a legal expert, but I know that German law states that you have to abide by German laws if you website is targeting visitors/customers living in Germany, even if you aren't German yourself.

Short example: An American hosting a personal WW2 website in the US with a huge German user-base has a good chance of getting in trouble in Germany if he denies the existence of the holocaust on it.

It took quite a while to dig up some facts about this topic, but take a look at http://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/doc... (in German, but can be translated with Google translate). According to that article our BGH thinks that the New York Times has to take down defamatory statements about a German/Spanish resident that went to court in Germany if they don't want to break German law. Further down they even add the fact that the NYT had ~15,000 registered German users back then to solidify the claim that the NYT is targeted at a German audience. IMO this shows that some connection to German residents has to exist for German law to be concerned. From what I know, a German telephone number or offering a German translation of a website might suffice for this connection to be made, too.

On another note: I have not found any case where an extradition to Germany took place, but I have heard of non-internet-cases where people got into trouble when they traveled to Germany.

You mean should we abolish all laws? No, no we shouldn't.

No of course not. But regulating such a ridiculous issue is a waste of money and anti-competitive.

Regulating privacy is not a "ridiculous issue" in my opinion. Many countries have laws regulating privacy.

@rmc - not what I said. Regulating privacy, as in ensuring a company doesn't illegally share your personal information after you register, is perfectly fine. But regulating how a user registers up for an opt-in service is completely different. If you don't want to use your real name, choose another social network, that doesn't have this policy.

It sounded in your original comment like you objected to all kinds of regulation of internet companies.

I personally have no strong opinion either way about if there should be a law banning real name policies. Such a law seems a bit silly, but I also see a bit of the point of having it.

Most people will respond with "law is law". The more interesting question in my opinion is "should there be laws regulating voluntary agreements". If somebody has a problem with Facebook, they can just not register. Some claim "everybody else has Facebook so I have to use it as well", but if you equate societal pressure to involuntary action, you are opening a can of worms.

> The more interesting question in my opinion is "should there be laws regulating voluntary agreements".

Yes, and they serve important function -- leveling the playing field in case of strong imbalance between the parties.

Consider for example employment -- in many cases, employers have stronger bargaining position against singular employees or candidates, and could strong-arm individuals into one-sided deals. Thus most countries have certain degree of regulation of employment, providing some basic standard for the employment deals.

Having said that, I still can't reconcile with the idea of every website being subject to local laws of every country it is accessed from, merely by the fact that somebody visited the site from within this particular country.

In case of using a website, the active party is the user, and the website operator is the passive party. If anything, local law should bind the users, not the operators.

How about the German government went instead, ``Under penalty of XYZ, citizens ((of Germany)) may not use social networking website which require disclosure of real names as a precondition''? While this apparently puts pressure on users alone, Facebook would have to weight the real-name policy vs. losing a large, country-wide market.

But Facebook is not a passive party here. They are actively using your information to market products towards you and your friends, much more so than most sites.

I just don't see the imbalance. There are many happy people out there who don't have Facebook and live a happy, fulfilled life.

The argument in this instance is "many people like your free product and don't agree with the way you make money".

The landlord and tenant relationship is another example, where courts in many jurisdictions will simply strike out many types of clause, whether they were entered into knowingly/willing or not.

The more interesting question in my opinion is "should there be laws regulating voluntary agreements".

This is the core of the libertarian stance, that there should be no laws that can override voluntary agreements. However this means no minimum wage laws, no employee protection laws, no anti-discrimination laws etc. The outcome of "law can never override contracts" is untenable to me, so yes, I think there should be laws regulating voluntary agreements.

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