Do I need an imprint on my Website?

As soon as you create your own homepage, you always have to observe certain legally prescribed information about provider identification. The layman will certainly come up against his limits with the question "when do I need an imprint on my website", because sometimes legal regulations change faster than you can put a legally valid imprint online. And since ignorance does not protect you from punishment, you should generally consider whether it is not easier to always have an imprint on your website.

The imprint obligation (provider identification) is regulated in §5 of the German Telemedia Act (TMG) "General information obligations" and §55 of the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty (RStV) "Information obligations and information rights".

For informational reasons alone, you should put an imprint on your page, because a visitor to a page might like to know who is behind the page. In addition, if it should come to any legal disputes, a summonable address must be present.

Jurisprudence is not really unanimous on the question "when can a missing imprint be warned". In the past, there were many letters from lawyers who saw a missing or incomplete imprint as a reason to send a warning with costs. There were different rulings in this regard before the various courts, sometimes a violation of the law was present, other courts saw certain violations of the imprint obligation as not worthy of a warning.

Precisely because of the different legal rulings, it is obvious to consider placing a valid imprint on the website.

According to §5 of the German Telemedia Act (TMG), business-like online services need an imprint. To what extent and from when a website is operated "business-like", there is also more than one dispute about this.

Section 55 of the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty (RstV) regulates the imprint obligation for website content. Thus, anyone who operates a website that does not serve exclusively personal or family purposes must keep the following information easily recognizable, directly accessible and permanently available: 1. name and address, and 2. in the case of legal entities, also the name and address of the authorized representative.

If you regularly publish news with "journalistic-editorial offers" then, in addition to the above-mentioned things, information must be provided, among other things, about who is responsible for the content and who may have written the content.

First of all, a purely private homepage does not require an imprint according to § 5 TMG, because here a business-like online service is assumed, which then, however, requires a legally valid imprint. Even § 55 RStV does not require an imprint for websites that serve purely personal or family purposes.

But ...

the jurisprudence does not make it quite so simple again, in the classification of a website in relation to business or entrepreneurial activity. Just a single, self-installed advertising banner can appear sufficient that your private homepage is no longer a private homepage.

Basically, it can only be stated that an own homepage does not need a legally valid imprint only if it really only has purely private and family contents, such as a page about the own pet, the own family or similar and does not have any self-installed advertising banners.

*The content of this article does not constitute legal advice and cannot replace legal advice in individual cases.