Stricter German Rules for Online Sales of Games, DVDs Expected
Online shopping portals selling movies and computer games in Germany must adhere to a set of strict regulatory provisions aimed at protecting minors from harmful content, under new rules to be published soon. In a document agreed upon by German authorities for the protection of minors in the 16 German states, online mail order sellers must verify the age of online customers ordering movies or computer games rated “over eighteen” by a face-to-face-check before accepting the order and a 2nd time for delivery.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
An official of the state govt. of Rheinland-Pfalz told us the finalized common position that will be published shortly was confirmed by a ruling of the Munich Appeals Court last year. But the agreement takes one step further, asking also for age verification for movies and games available for minors, and rated “over six,” “over 12” and “over 16” by the Voluntary Self-Regulation of the Film Industry (FSK) and the Entertainment Software Self- Regulation (USK).
Industry representatives of several online shopping sites and market places said they've just begun evaluating the agreement but were worried about ever-tightening rules raising the barriers for online sales of DVDs. Said Volker Kitz, spokesman for the German Assn. for Information Technology, Telecom & New Media (Bitkom): “We have to wait and see how strictly authorities will enforce this.”
German online sellers already must implement the double age verification not only for content that’s rated over-18 but also for content that’s not submitted to FSK and USK, Kitz said: “But certainly there is a danger that additional requirements -- even if they are meant only as quantitative add-ons -- might lead to certain products being primarily sold from foreign online portals.” While Amazon.co.uk already advertises, for example, the movie Sin City, it’s not found on Amazon.de.
“Naturally the common position is directed to mail order sellers in Germany in the first place,” said the MBFJ-official: “But in principle these rules should be also applied to sales directed to German customers from abroad.” That means foreign movies and games would need to be submitted to the rating boards before entering the German market, said Munich lawyer Marc Liesching: “Ratings done in the respective countries would not be valid here.” But these kind of requirements might violate EU law, warned a representative of eBay, and the policing of distant sales without age verification would at least be very complicated. The ever-tightening rules to protect minors would certainly send “shock waves to the online shopping industry,” said Liesching, who said there was no consensus by legal experts whether the double face-to-face age verification was the correct interpretation of existing law. Liesching also warned that those providers that act only as a marketplace for 3rd parties shouldn’t be sure they're exempt from liability for offers of the 3rd parties that violate the protection of minors law.
Another strict agreement has been published by the German authorities regarding minors playing computer games in commercial Internet cafes. Internet cafe owners either have to make sure minors don’t play games harmful to them or surf harmful Internet content, or they have to ban minors from the Internet cafe completely.
Germany’s aggressive approach to protecting minors from harmful media and Internet content has received much attention from other European countries, said a German govt. official last week at the Munich Media days. The EU Commission already had asked the German govt. to organize a seminar on its regulatory approach for member states during the German presidency in 2007.