[Mailman-Developers] Legal trouble in Germany

Stonewall Ballard sb.list at sb.org
Fri Dec 6 14:14:58 2002


Sometimes law gets away from reality.

So how would someone confirm a subscription if it's illegal to email them
before they confirm it?

 - Stoney

On 12/6/02 3:29 AM, "Michael Kallas" <michael.kallas@web.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> This has been considered illegal by the Landgericht Berlin:
>> Mailing list subscription confirmation notice for mailing list
>> Mailman-Users
>> 
>> We have received a request from [IP address] for subscription of your
>> email address, "michael.kallas@web.de", to the
>> mailman-users@python.org mailing list.
> [...]
> This court decided (search Google for "16 O 515/02") that it is considered
> to be "unwanted advertisement" (UCE, SPAM) if a businessman gets a mail
> in which he is asked whether he wants to be subscribed to a newsletter.
> It would be the task of the newsletter administrator to prove that the
> other person really _wanted_ to subscribe.
> Similar rights could be used for private persons, so this affects indeed all
> mailing lists / newsletters.
> 
> Should this judgement be shared by other german courts, newsletter admins
> using mailman or any similar software would have to fear a wave of
> dissuasions.
> 
> Best regards
> Michael Kallas




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