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- Title
The New German Hate Speech Law – Introduction and Frequently Asked Questions.
- Authors
Lutz, Holger; Schwiddessen, Sebastian
- Abstract
Only on March 14, 2017 Germany’s Federal Minister of Justice, Heiko Maas, presented a draft law to combat hate speech and fake news – the so called Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz – “NetzDG”). The NetzDG imposes extensive reporting and review obligations combined with fines of up to the stunning sum of € 50 million on in-scope companies. Despite a rarely seen level of criticism and legal experts almost unanimously considering the law to be violating several fundamental constitutional rights and European laws, already on June 30, 2017, after a rushed legislative process, the NetzDG passed the German Parliament, literally catching social networks and parts of the IT industry off guard. Neither the European Commission, nor the Federal Council of Germany or any other party involved in the legislative process raised any major concerns. Only minor amendments were made to the draft law during the legislative process. The NetzDG will now enter into force on October 1, 2017, leaving the industry only with few months to prepare. It is almost certain that the NetzDG will end up being challenged in front of the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany and/or the European Court of Justice. Nevertheless, a few years might pass until a final ruling of these courts, and even with many legal experts claiming that the NetzDG would violate several national constitutional and European rights, it is by far not guaranteed that either of these courts will indeed annul the NetzDG. In light of fines of up to € 50 million, in-scope companies therefore barely have any other choice than to deal with the NetzDG at least for some time and to comply with the restrictive obligations imposed on them by the NetzDG. This first half of this article summarizes the most important requirements of the NetzDG by first outlining its scope (I.) followed by a description of the reporting obligations (II.) and the obligation to establish an effective complaint scheme (III.). Next, the article moves on to shortly listing all acts which are subject to the mandatory complaint scheme that companies must establish (IV.) and to the obligation to appoint an authorized recipient and an authorized contact person in Germany (V.). The summary of the NetzDG requirements concludes with a short description of the fines and enforcement scheme (VI.). The second half of the article provides a frequently asked questions section (VII.) which tries to give answers to selected questions the authors encountered while advising several social networks and other IT companies on the NetzDG since the law was first announced.
- Subjects
HATE speech; FAKE news; SPEECH -- Law &; legislation; SOCIAL networks; INFORMATION technology
- Publication
Computer Law Review International, 2017, Vol 18, Issue 4, p103
- ISSN
1610-7608
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.9785/cri-2017-0403