Karlsruhe – In the legal dispute over the use of pseudonyms on Facebook, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) wants to announce its judgment today.
As was shown at the hearing in December, the Karlsruhe judges are likely to consider the passage on the so-called real name obligation in the network’s terms of use to be invalid in the two cases in question. Because the legal situation has changed in the meantime, it should not be easy to generalize the judgment. (Az. III ZR 3/21 and others)
Terms of Use
The current Facebook Terms of Use state, among other things, that users should use the same name that they use in everyday life. The rule is intended to raise the inhibition threshold for hate speech and bullying. “When people stand behind their opinions and actions, our community is safer and more accountable.”
The plaintiff and the plaintiff, however, had used fantasy names. Facebook had unsuccessfully asked them to change their names. In 2008, the company blocked the accounts. The Munich Higher Regional Court, which last ruled on the lawsuits, agreed with Facebook.
background
The background is a new legal situation: the German Telemedia Act obliges providers to allow the use of their services “anonymously or under a pseudonym, insofar as this is technically possible and reasonable”. The old EU law did not stand in the way of this. But since May 2018, a new data protection law has been in force in the European Union that expressly does not contain such a provision.
The Munich Higher Regional Court had argued that Germany had tried in vain at the European level to negotiate a right to pseudonymous use into the EU regulation. The German paragraph is now to be interpreted in the sense of Union law.
The BGH judges want to decide the cases according to the old legal situation. The two plaintiffs’ accounts had been frozen prior to the change. So Facebook is threatened with defeat.
The parent company Meta regretted the preliminary opinion of the court at the time and said: “We are convinced that people take more responsibility for their statements and actions if they use their real name on Facebook.”
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