The German registry DENIC is not responsible for the content of websites and other content associated with .DE domain names was the general thrust of a presentation by Jörg Heidrich, a specialist lawyer for IT Law in Germany, told the Domain Pulse conference in Hamburg last month.

However service providers are responsible under general German law for information stored on their servers but not obliged to monitor the data transmitted or stored or to search for any illegal activity. If they are made aware of illegal content though, they are then required to act and to make it inaccessible to the public.

The general principle, outlined in a number of court cases outlined by Heidrich, is that once DENIC and other parties become aware of illegal content, then they are obliged to take action. But until then, the courts have ruled they cannot be aware of all the content involved.

In his presentation, Heidrich noted that DENIC though does have some liability, which has been determined in the German courts.

When they are made available of illegal content using a .DE domain name, German courts have found that DENIC has an obligation to act, to in the first instance advise the registrant of the illegal content, and if the content is clearly illegal, taking into account that DENIC is not able to always make decisions on if some content is illegal, DENIC must immediately delete the domain name.

In the case involving oberfranken.de, Heidrich explained the Bavarian government complained to DENIC that a company headquartered in Panama had registered the domain name. The plaintiff, the Bavarian government, demanded the registration be cancelled, and a court case to decide ensued.

The court ruled DENIC procedures were done in an automated process and so its liability to act at time of registration was limited, using the precedence of an earlier case involving the domain name ambiente.de.

Then in a second case involving oberfranken.de, Heidrich explained the court ruled that if the infringement is obvious and noticeable to DENIC, then they must act immediately to delete the domain name. In the case of oberfranken.de the court ruled that even a clerk working for DENIC, who has no name legal knowledge, can see easily that these domain names are a public body and not a Panama-based private company.

hosting providers also have a limited but similar duty when it comes to illegal content. There have been a number of cases involving webhosts in Germany, but Heidrich explained that they are not obliged to check the contributions made by the users in the case of blogs, but once they are aware of any infringement that is easily identifiable, they must then act.

The presentation notes are available in German here [PDF] while a video of the presentation, also in German, is available here [228MB].