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