Under European law it is reasonably impossible for an individual to run a forum or blog which is open to comments:
> The EU just passed TERREG yesterday without a vote that requires anyone running a website with user generated content (a blog with comments, a forum etc.) and if they have significant EU user base to establish legal presence in the EU and have an officer responsible for deleting content with 1 hr SLA. That's out of reach for most of people. You cannot even block your site for EU traffic, because EU users can use VPN.
[…]
> On 12 September 2018, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online, which included:
>The one-hour rule: a legally binding one-hour deadline for content to be removed following a removal order from national competent authorities;
Not to mention restrictions on "hate speech", NetzDG, impressums...
If they are operating this datacenter under their German company, wouldn't all clients have to comply with this?
"Geldstrafen für Anbieter, die aus technischen oder betrieblichen Gründen einer Löschanordnung nicht innerhalb einer Stunde nachkommen können (z.B. private Webseitenbetreiber zur Nachtzeit), sind ausgeschlossen."
In english: "Fines for providers who cannot comply with a deletion order within one hour for technical or operational reasons (e.g. private website operators at night time) are excluded."
>"Fines for providers who cannot comply with a deletion order within one hour for technical or operational reasons (e.g. private website operators at night time) are excluded."
>So... you're wrong.
Whether he's actually wrong hinges on what counts as "operational reasons". If it's during business hours and I'm out for lunch, does that count? What if I'm in the office/home but I left DnD mode on?
I don't think the location of the company matters. As far as the EU is concerned if you are serving an audience in the EU you have to comply even if you are hosting on AWS or any other hosting provider regardless of where you are in the world.
IANAL, but I don't think this law is a relevant factor when picking your hosting provider.
Does the law specifically carve out exceptions for hosting companies? If there isn’t an explicit exception, then the cloud hosting company could also be subjected to the same requirements to remove censored content from their platform within 1 hour of receiving the notice.
A hosting platform hosting user-provided code and content isn’t that much different than a forum platform hosting user-provided comments in the eyes of the law.
And the cloud hosting platform would have to react within one hour (at least usually). An autoreply saying "no" isn't a reaction, but a human answering is a reaction.
> Does the law specifically carve out exceptions for hosting companies?
Does this law even apply to hosting companies? The description mentions people running websites, which in this case refers to customers of hosting companies such as AWS, Hetzner, and others. Expecting hosting companies such as Hetzner to be responsible or liable for content that a client posts on a service running on one of their vCPU would make as much sense as going after AWS just because a conspiracy nut posted a tweet.
As your comment states you already technically have to comply with this if you have a significant EU user base, regardless of your provider.
Non-EU sites like twitter for example comply - I get the netzdg options when I click report from Germany, they have legal presence etc. despite not being hosted here.
Apart from the obvious restrictions on holocaust denial and related socially incendiary language, there have been laws passed criminalizing hate speech.
Hate speech is defined pretty broadly so something as harmless as - free translation - "man, what a schlong!" directed against a state-level politician caused a small media storm and included the police raiding the house (well... they didnt' even manage to raid the correct house) of the person who typed out that tweet. (#pimmelgate if you want to look it up)
That's not to say that there aren't more vile comments and death-threats that maybe deserve to be looked at a little closer to protect the victims, that are also the focus of these legal tools. But in general it seems something prone to abuse of power, and hosting providers can, to varying degrees, be coerced into aiding the state agents in enforcing these laws.
The raid was the result of the politician (the Innensenator of Hamburg, responsible for the city police) reporting the post to the police. From there they had to investigate (regardless of the NetzDG or any other law governing social media). I agree that the raid was way our of proportion and probably a result of the police trying to please their boss.
