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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

And the ridiculous thing is that European* law mandates that you have an "impressum" on all but the most basic sites. You can hide your personal adress in the WHOIS info by putting a neutral third party. The registry I use, inwx.de, offers this service for a few euros. But you cannot (easily) hide your identity in the impressum - you might be able to use a shell company or find a natural person willing to put their name there, but it is much harder.

How can they claim "data protection" in one case and make it mandatory to put your name and phone number their in another?

It makes me very uncomfortable to host a website, when I know I will get spam, unwanted telefone calls, maybe even unwanted visits at my home, etc.. And it deters me from posting something even a bit controversial on my own domain - this is probably an intended side-effect of the "impressum" policy.

(* well, German law, but there is likely something similar in other countries)

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If I'm not mistaken, businesses are EU-wide required to have contact data on their pages. And German courts tend to use a very wide definition of commerce – the best compromise is probably to keep commerce and private opinion on strictly separated domains, even if that means no advertising income from the private page.

"contact data" is already a pretty nebulous term. If my experience with European business websites is anything to go by, this is not the sort of requirement that the GP is talking about.

I said "contact data" as shorthand for the specific requirements, since I would have to look them up. And yes, the "Impressumpflicht" the parent talks about is exactly that, in a very strict form.

EDIT: To elaborate, the EU e-commerce directive from 2000 requires all member states to have laws that require commercial sites to have at least name of the entity, physical mailing address, business registration IDs if applicable, e-mail and VAT ID published. Since it's only a directive, the details vary from country to country. E.g. France requires also listing a phone number and an actual person responsible for site content.

I'm not talking about the German laws. Germany is not the right example for how the EU works because in cases like this they are almost always much, much stricter than everyone else. The requirements you noted for a business in the more general case (EU-wide, in other words) are much more lax.

No, this is a DACH thing and certainly not a Europe-wide thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressum

It is for electoral publications in the UK you MUST include the publisher and the electoral agent

> (* well, German law, but there is likely something similar in other countries)

Why do you leave a lie at the top of your comment with an asterisk to clarify it's a lie at the bottom? It's NOT a European law. If other countries have similar laws, it's still not a European law. Please remove the lie.

Edit: you both are right

In this context, indeed it isn't. It would be just as wrong to write "US law mandates..." when the law in question is in fact only Texas state law. I.e. "European law" != "a law somewhere in Europe".

I'm saying that writing "European law mandates that you have an "impressum"" is a lie.

People can make mistakes without "lying", and it's perfectly fine to correct a mistake by adding a note at the bottom. Indeed it's arguably more helpful that way, since a new reader will better be able to understand the context of the replies.

To bombard someone with the word "lie" crosses into incivility (rather aggressively, as I read it), and also breaks the site guidelines by not giving the benefit of the doubt. Could you please not treat others like this here? Instead, assume good faith, as the guidelines ask.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I respectfully disagree. In cases like this, if the user made a honest mistake and then issues a correction, it should be in line, at the same level as the mistake - otherwise, it's exactly like when a newspaper spreads a false accusation in the first page, and then a retraction at page 7. What sticks in the mind of the casual reader is the first untruth, not the truth that follows.

By the way, even the correction below is a untruth, because only a few other EU countries have similar laws.

>(* well, German law, but there is likely something similar in other countries)

Nah there is not. Don't lie.

This breaks the site guidelines. Please assume good faith in others when posting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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