blinki bill

I am relocating to Germany at the moment and was looking into various legalities around porn and it seems that there is a very strict regulation in german law about protecting minors. According to their law all materials for over 16 or 18 (not just porn, games, movies etc) should be available to adults only, providers have the responsibility of blocking it for minors. If a provider fails to do so can face charges (fines and even jail time)! The authorities are also quite strict with what is considered sufficient age verification, according to the law simply using a credit card or id card number is not enough (forget about rta label or index page warning), face to face id verification is the only thing that is acceptable (good luck doing face-to-face via internet!)

I talked with a lawyer regarding this issue and it sees that there was a shift in public opinion in putting some of the responsibility on the parents and using parental control software, in 2012 two such programs were officially approved and technically if your site is enrolled with those it should be fine, however he told me that it is a bit of a grey area as the law still requires you to make the verification; it is not very likely to happen but you could still end up in court and using those programs "could" help you out but is not guarantee.

I looked those programs up and basically you have to install a xml label 'age-de' on the root of your server, this label is then read by the parental control soft to block/allow access to the whole site or individual pages.

What is your experience with this issue and how do you run your websites from germany, do you use this label?

I looked number of german sites and no one seems to be using this label, a bit confused. Game sites like steam and the nintendo shop however made the news papers last year because of restricting all access to game titles pg16 and pg18 in germany because they have no means of providing age verification (one that the gov will deem valid).

MrTrollkien

German law is very strict about hardcore pornography, especially when compared to very liberal laws about softcore pornography, prostitution and sex shops. Supplying hardcore pornography to a person under 18 is an offense, and shops selling it must keep people under the age of 18 from entering their premises. If only a part of the shop is dedicated to pornography, it must be completely closed off from the rest of the premises. Alternatively, shops may choose not to display their goods or advertise that they sell them, in which case minors may be admitted. Websites hosting pornographic material within Germany must comply with very strict rules about verifying that viewers are over 18.

Soft porn is less restricted, and may even be broadcast on TV at night. The age threshold is usually FSK-16. Note in contrast that many uncut action films or video games easily reach the FSK-18 rating.

Germany has a much more certain definition of (soft)porn than the USA, so much material that would be considered soft porn in the USA is harmless in Germany. In Germany it is porn, if it is intended to be porn, while it doesn't matter much what body parts are seen. The only content that is automatically porn, are images of an erection, an opened vagina or hardcore porn. Anatomical education material is generally not porn (which is important, because a girl might begin a nurse-apprenticeship before being adult). Nudity in German films or TV is generally no problem, thought nude women seen usually have natural pubic hair (as opposed to porn actresses, who usually shave them), so the opened-vagina-criterion doesn't matter anyway (note the harsh contrast to Japan). On the other hand, a telephone-sex advertisement showing completely dressed women (for example a domina) is considered porn and only broadcast at night, despite not showing any lewdness, because it is intended to be porn.

MrTrollkien

Can you sent me a private message and leave me an mail adress to you?

I have a few questions, but I would like to keep it private.

blinki bill

It seems that since 2001 online porn was pretty much no go because of that, they have a post verification but is completely impractical in any sense (imagine someone hits my website and there is age verification that is asking them to go to a post office with their id so that the person there can see their id in person then give them authentication so that they can go back home and access the website!!! bollocks!)

This development with the age xml label on the server is somewhat new, the parental control software was approved in 2012 and if you have it should be the same like restricting access by time (like only making your site available between 11pm and 3am local time, like on TV). However it seems is not bullet proof and you could still get in trouble...

German law in regards to this stuff seems pretty wired, an adult - "A" can have sex with a minor - "B" in some cases even if the minor is 14 years old! "A" can even film the act and is still fine and legal but then if they watch the tape together (ie "A" is showing the tape to "B" while the tape is "A" and "B" having sex) "A" can go in prison for showing the tape to "B" (but not for making in first place!!!) Wired stuff

blinki bill

I don't seem to be able to send you pm
u can mail me at "shi ma kao"
it's on yahoo com

MrTrollkien

Ok, thanks I will contact you soon.

blinki bill

Talked with another lawyer today and it cleared few things. The parental control software was deemed sufficient since jully 2013 but only in cases where the materials are restricted to children but not illegal for children (pornography is illegal for children while legal for adults) so if you deal with online porn distribution and want to be sure you are on the right side of the law you have to implement an age verification system...

MrTrollkien

Thanks, for the info...

MrTrollkien

I have sent you an mail.

jimmycastor

do host in holland and do not use .de domains, and do not use any german domain services,
problem solved
99,99 % of german porn traffic surely goes to some pirate , full lenght tubes that give a shit

why would you want to be the 00,1% taking care about that

MrTrollkien

Can you elaborate that?

What from you get that information?

I know legit sites which have some great amount of german's traffic.

blinki bill

Yeah, I figured that there are two options, either distance your websites and company from germany so you don't have to comply or use age verification for german traffic.

I am evaluating pros and cons of using age verification. they have a lot of systems, one that I am looking at is based on OAuth 2.0, so you can easy verify the person age and create an account for them automatically, just like using facebook sign-in.

In general It's been more than a decade since this requirements were enforced and not just for porn, game shops and all kinds of other businesses are also required to implement it, some perfectly normal shops use it before checkout to minimize fraud, so I guess the majority of adult germans use this systems already; if you implement it for german traffic you may be just filtering useless visitors which will never convert anyway (unless you are illegal tube selling ad spots). That being said I'm not sure I'm going to do it though

jimmycastor

do you want to setup a dating/paysite or your talking about tubes, blog etc ??

blinki bill

Both, free and pay sites, and I'm thinking that while age verification may not be that bad(for german traffic only) on a paysite or a community driven tube it's a bit of a show stopper on blogs, tgp's etc