With fines of up to 40 million euro, large social networks can be prosecuted for systemic violations of so-called Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG). This comes from draft of federal justice for a fine catalogue, which is Golem.de. The height depends greatly on number of users and severity of infringement. Individual managers can be penalized at a maximum of 400,000 euros.

The controversial law entered into force on 1 October 2017. After transitional period of three months, large social networks with more than two million registered users must, among or things, "obviously illegal content" such as sedition, threat, insult or libel within 24 hours after Remove receipt of a complaint.

Three categories for networks

The law provides for maximum penalties of 50 million euros for companies and five million euros for individual employees. This framework is not exhausted in fine catalogue. The draft also divides companies into three categories: Category A refore comprises large networks with more than 20 million registered users. This currently only includes Facebook with currently 31 million users in Germany.

In category B networks with 4 to 20 million register users, for example Instagram or YouTube. In category C (two to four million registered users), for example, Twitter should be included, which should have three million accounts in this country.

While maximum penalty of 40 million euro is only levied in category A, it is in category B at 25 million euros and in category C at 15 million euros. Even for slight mispasses, a million euros are due in category A, in category B 750,000 and in category C 500,000.

The federal designated Heiko Maas (SPD) had threatened at presentation of law that maximum fine of 50 million euros could be exploited against Twitter in full. This will no longer be possible.

Preliminary rulings on illegality required

But how should employees of Federal Office of Justice determine when a social network has violated reporting and deletion obligations? For example, it is said in draft: "In case of a one-off violation, it is not possible to assume that re is no effective procedure for dealing with complaints about illegal content." A systemic failure, however, is in case of organisational guidelines which, in event of an individual investigation, regularly lead to deletion of illegal content. "For example, in accordance with internal guidelines of a social network, which contain instructions for complaints teams, allow content on platforms to be blocked or deleted after NetzDG, se guidelines may provide an indicator for a Systemic failure, "it says.

The problem: The Federal Office of Justice must, in advance, have legality of content attested to by a court in any remaining deletion, as is stated in paragraph 4 of NetzDG. "This is an absolutely bureaucratic procedure, which in practice is likely to lead to fact that re will be virtually no fines due to a systemic breach of obligations," said Ulf Buermeyer, judge at Berlin District Court, Handelsblatt.

Guidelines have not yet been decided

Or violations are likely to be noted with less effort. These include, for example, omissions in reporting obligations or an inadequate reporting system for illegal content. With penalties of up to 25 million euros, social networks must count if y do not regularly train ir employees to deal with illegal content. In ory, fines can be added to certain violations, so that significantly higher amounts than above mentioned ceilings would be possible. However, prosecution of individual acts may be waived if, in case of several fines, "undue hardship could threaten".

A spokesman for federal Justice said that guidelines have not yet been adopted. However, re may already be violations, since, with entry into force of law, all social networks, irrespective of ir size, have to provide a domestic delivery proxy. The fine for smaller networks is not included in guidelines so far.

Date Of Update: 18 October 2017, 12:03