Meta-tag Spam Declared Illegal in Germany 192
Philipp Lenssen writes "According to Heise.de, a German court ruled excessive use of meta-keywords in HTML unlawful. Meta-tag keywords may still be used if they are in strong relation to the page. The decision does not address more popular search engine spamming methods of today (as meta-keywords are ignored by Google, they are rarely used as core strategy for Search Engine Optimization)." <update> Thanks to Michael Mol for the translation to English pointer.
How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Who is going to search every web page to find incorrect meta tags
2) Who is going to decide that a given page has incorrect meta-keyword information
3) Define strong relation to a web page
4) Define Excessive use of meta-keywords in HTML
5) What about servers across national lines
6) Does anyone really use meta-keywords other than spammers
And no I couldn't RTFM in German - as you can see, the babelfish translation is so eloquent and can someone translate the keyword information in the linked page to determine if it's using excessive meta information:
meta NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Gericht: Suchmaschinen-Spamming per HTML-Metatags wettbewerbswidrig"
Court: Search machine Spamming by HTML Metatags competition-adversely
Manual-like listing of many hundred HTML Metatags without each contentwise connection to an InterNet side f?e to a manipulation of search machines and is competition adverse after. 1 of the law against the mean competition (UWG). That decided the regional court meal in a judgement from 26 May 2004 (Az. 44 0 166/03), ver?entlichten now. Kl?rin of the procedure was a rechtsf?ger trade association.
After the Ausf?ungen of the court f?t a such use from search words to the fact that the InterNet sides of the deplored ones when using search machines at one of the front places designated and accordingly by the users more h?iger frequented w?en. When using hundreds encyclopedia-like together to gereihten terms, which do not exhibit also by far Verst?nis connection to the goods and services offered on the sides, k?e it the operator any longer around do not go pr?ntieren its offer optimally. Rather lie? this only the conclusion too that thereby the technical Schw?en should be used by search machines, in order to provide with the search results a competition advantage.
This does not apply in opinion of the judges from meals however f?jede use of HTML Metatags. So m?e it a competitor accept, if a Website with search words am gef?t, in the broadest sense still in a connection for the performance of the operator stand. Same applies f?die use of names to erm?ichen Gesch?sbezeichnungen or marks, if this "component from on the InterNet side switched are advertising on the left of", in order the operator Gesch?e with advertising partner.
The decision of the LG meal extends the anyway v?ig non-uniform iurisdiction of German courts about HTML Metatags, with which it went so far particularly around the use of strange characteristics into the Metas, by a further problem field. A?liche decision for the use of irrelevant terms in Metatage had in the M? 2002 the LG D?eldorf met. The judgement had been waived however sp?r by the OLG D?eldorf. Whether against the decision from meals redresses are inserted, is not yet admits (Joerg Heidrich)/(tol/c't)
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:4, Interesting)
There will be enough people.
I don't know if this is a specialty of German law, but competitors (and special societies ? - but I think that got nuked) can "admonish" the violating party. The interesting thing is that they can demand the cost for this from the violating party.
There is quite a number of laywers making money with this and it can be e.g. pretty expensive for a German not to put his contact information on a (even partially) commercial website. And in one click range please !
No, this is not a joke.
This stuff will be enforced.
5) What about servers across national lines
From legal rulings it does only matter if you reside in Germany and /or have a business residing in Germany. I think your website must be (partially ?) directed to Germans, too, but I'm not sure about this.
So, if you have a foot in Germany and make business with Germans then you have to obey this ruling.
And, yes, such stuff IS enforced when you have your webservers outside Germany etc.
You will be sued by the aforcementioned laywers or competitors.
As a rather funny sidenote it is illegal for German businesses to use to .ag domain unless they are stock compenies (AG = Aktiengesellschaft = stock company).
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:3, Interesting)
And just cos your country dont recognise that countries rules, doesnt mean that you aint gunna find your bank balance empty one day.
Welcome to legal hell.
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:4, Interesting)
2) The bot can search the page content and compare the keywords in the meta tag to the words in the page. One would think that a page with "watermelon" in the meta tag would at least mention it in the page itself...
3) Use statistical analysis on the page content. The more often the keyword appears in the page the stronger it's relation probably is.
4) Some pages have dozens and dozens of keywords in the meta tag. That's probably excessive... though to be fair you could adjust the allowed number of keywords based on the amount of content (within reason)
5) It's possible, within reason, to determine the physical location of a server if it's DNS information is properly maintained... and I think there are already laws about that.
6) Damned if I know, but all of this is strictly academic anyway, because you're assuming the police will be proactive in enforcing this law. As wikdwarlock said, it's just an extra "gotcha" when they catch you for something else.
=Smidge=
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a safe assumption. Let's say you write a page about Fermat's theorem... You might include the phrase "number theory" in the meta tags, but not mention it anywhere on the page itself. That would not count as either an oversight in the page text, nor a misuse of meta tags.
However, I have a somewhat strange thought on ways around the court's ruling... They only said that the meta tags need t
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:5, Interesting)
Since we are talking about Germany here, I have a good idea how this is actually going to "work". Does anyone remember the whole Adobe Illustrator / KIllustrator trademark fiasco? Germany has an odd system of trademark enforcement whereby lawfirms look for trademark infringements and bring suits, telling the entity whose trademark was infringed is optional - as happened with Adobe. Naturally the real winners are the lawfirms, many of whom are bottom feeders with dubious case selection and billing practices.
You could quite easily employ the same scheme here; the lawfirms "police" the sites and bring suits against those they believe infringe. If the court decides that they are right or the defendent settles before trial, then they make money. The problem is obviously that you are going to attract the same type of ambulance chasing lawyers to the business as the trademark example, but modern legislation hardly has a good track record for being sensible, does it?
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:2)
My understanding of the law from the KIllustrator thing was that there is indeed a client, which in that particular case was Adobe. However, there is a quirk in German trademark law that allows lawyers to initiate a case on behalf of a client without that client being aware of the fact. So, technically there is a "client", and I assume that at some point in the proceedings that they would have to be informed of the fact.
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose if they do a search on hotbot (or whatever still uses meta-tags) for "Immanuel Kant" and get in response pages with Cartman's mom getting pooed on, they will have found one to report. As meta tag abuse is only a problem if it is visible (meaning it makes it to the first few pages of search results), it doesn't really matter if some are hidden away and get missed.
" 2) Who is going to decide that a given page has incorrect me
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How can a court enforce the ruling (Score:2, Insightful)
2) A court, on a case-by-case base using common sense. Actually, they way it works is that company B can send company A a letter (abmahnung, dissuasion) requesting them to stop their wrong-doing. If this letter costs company B some lawyers
Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:5, Insightful)
While HTML has been around for 10 years or so, I would still consider it a technology that hasn't settled yet. The whole web is still undergoing changes - shortcomings are (partially) being addressed, new things get added.
Getting the courts in at this stage can only stifle further innovation in this sector, because if it continues as it is, in the future we might have to consult legal departments to see whether any changes we might propose will find their acceptance in the ears of judges.
I would hope that the losing side will go into revision and get this whole thing overturned before HTML officially becomes the "HyperText Markup Law".
German judges need a life. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't expect google to drop the golden egg in my lap, and I do expect more than just turkey recipies when I search for the word breast, a little bit of spam never hurt me enough to even consider banning extream metta-tagging, it did teach me to use junk email addresses for public info and real ones for private email.
Re:German judges need a life. (Score:2)
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:5, Interesting)
just that it is wrong/unlawful to lie in them to gain visitors.
a resteurant can't put fake stuff on it's adverts to get customers into the resteurant...
would you be very pleased to buy a newspaper that's first page indexed something that intrests you, but when you open it you only notice that it's full of adverts for xxx lines and nothing else? would you think that such fraud would be legal?
how about starting to read even the blurb.. "Meta-tag keywords may still be used if they are in strong relation to the page"
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:2)
Also, there is the matter of whom does this apply to?
a) German's websites hosted in Germany?
b) Websites hosted in Germany, whose owner is not
located in Germany?
c) German's Websites hosted abroad?
I happen to be German, and ONE of my two colocation sites is in Germany (the master is in Switzerland, where I lived up until recently), but I do not live in Germany. Am I still bound by this law? (Especially
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:4, Interesting)
besides, it would only apply in the obvious situations where you're for example claiming that you're a windows helping site or something when all that you were trying to do would be to put some pr0n advertising spyware on the visitors computer, it's a no brainer that such activity should indeed be illeagal(luring 'customers' with false promises).
just carry on as usual
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:2)
would you be very pleased to buy a newspaper that's first page indexed something that intrests you, but when you open it you only notice that it's full of adverts for xxx lines and nothing else? would you think that such fraud would be legal?
IANAL, but I think that such would be illegal in the US as well. Free speech does not protect commercial speech in the same way it does non-commercial speech. Indeed, it is only the expressive aspects which are protected.
In other words, if someone did this as a jo
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:2)
That analogy sealed it for me. This kind of thing gets me a lot on the net. You google for some information, say "free motherboard bios", then the top five links don't provide anything without some sort of fee. They lied to get me there. As a rule I never deal with them, even if I have to go without whatever I was looking for.
Of course, meta-tags are a little old hat. I'd like to see the law encompass any method t
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:2)
Bzzzzt! Does not follow. A web-page does not charge you for entering. Leave if you're miffed. "would you be very pleased to buy a newspaper...adverts for xxx lines and nothing else?
Bzzzzt! Same error.
Cost
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:2)
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:2)
Re:Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE! (Score:2)
usage of meta tags? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:usage of meta tags? (Score:2)
Not in isolation, but playing with the rankings suggests that keywords help to 'weight' other words on a given page although a lot more credence has always been given 'relevance' and incoming links.
Re:usage of meta tags? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:usage of meta tags? (Score:2)
In case of slashdotting... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In case of slashdotting... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In case of slashdotting... (Score:2)
Re:In case of slashdotting... (Score:1)
Why funny?! (Score:1)
Re:Why funny?! (Score:2)
The original, of course, should be marked informative. What, is text in a language other than English automatically funny? Very parochial.
Meta tags can be very effective (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I don't really consider it spamming to include variations, common misspellings, etc. etc., and any search engine worth its salt will ignore repeated words in a single meta tag.
As for Google - who knows how they do their rankings nowadays...
Re:Meta tags can be very effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meta tags can be very effective (Score:2)
Seriously, I don't understand how retarded those hundreds of PhDs must be to not fix such a blatant abuse in nearly a year. More than half Google queries now bring a few spam results on the first/second pages, most of which use the URL spamming.
What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Second: Meta tag illegal
Next: HTML tag declared unconstutional
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Second: Meta tag illegal
Next: HTML tag declared unconstutional
How about a ruling against Flash? Now there's something I could get behind.
Re:What's next? (Score:1)
Re:What's next? (Score:2)
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Informative)
FYI, that "license required to link" story was yet another example of an illiterate submitter and a lazy editor generating a fraudulent controversy. (And, in this case, also blaming it on the wrong company.)
Re:What's next? (Score:2)
it's FALSE CONTENT in those meta tags that's the target.
Translation (Score:2)
I can hardly understand German anymore, but it's still easier to understand the German site than that computer generated "translation."
Can anybody take a crack at a decent translation?
Re:Translation (Score:1)
Like banning 5.25" disk notchers (Score:5, Interesting)
Man (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Man (Score:2)
Methinks Google has a looping web page or two indexed...
Re:Man (Score:2)
Re:Man (Score:2)
Re:Man (Score:2)
While we are at it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:While we are at it (Score:2)
Of course, we can always use Mozilla, Firefox, or another decent browser at home, which will allow the text to be made legible, but at work many of us have to use Incompetent Exploder, which says a lot about our IT staff.
The bottom line (Score:1)
No it is for throwing the book against someone (Score:2)
It is pretty simple. Say some site is a problem the german court wants to tackle. Perhaps it is luring kids into giving their email address in order to then spam them. Now what are the cops going to do. Well search through the law books for any tiny little thing done wrong and then stack it all up and present it to a judge. He will then have a whole lot of things he can find guilty or not guilty on and slap a sentence.
Law sadly works this way, Al Capone was gotten on tax evasion, Ted Bundy was arrested for
Vague (Score:4, Funny)
While we're at it, I think it should be illegal to cook your eggs on your tinfoil hat.
Re:Vague (Score:2)
Thank you, I'll be here all week, try the veal.
Freedom of speech? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also: With regular email spam, the unwanted message is PUSHED to the victim, eating the victims bandwidth. Here, the victim (search engine spider) is pulling data from the server. If they don't want spam, don't use the meta tags.
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the court ruling has nothing to do with spam. The court ruling is based on the German 'law against dishonest competition' ('Gesetz gegen unlauteren Wettbewerb'). So basically it means that the court decided that if a company is trying to lure people to their website by extensively using meta tags which have absolutely nothing to do with their business, they are in violation of this law. IANAL, but I think among other things this law says that a company is not allowed to make false statements in advertisement etc. So saying (eg in an advertisement) that a product has some special property while it hasn't is not protected by free speech. Is it in the US?
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:2)
Apparently so, as evidenced by the fact that every other advertisement on television is for a "natural" product to help you sleep, make your breath fresh, or give you an erection. Of course, they all carry a standard "These claims have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration..." disclaimer in a 2-point font, so maybe that's what makes it acceptable.
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:4, Insightful)
The same with metatag spamming: Its lying in order to make profit, someting most contries have a law against.
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:3, Insightful)
The law invoked was the "Wettbewerbsrecht", meaning this is about an issue between two commercial entities. On a private (i.e. non-profit) homepage these laws wouldn't apply.
The only thing that is forbidden after this decision is to put irrelevant keywords into the meta tag. (such as "SEX SEX SEX BRITNEY SPEARS NAKED" into a the meta tag of a cell phone fraud site such as these [google.de]).
There have already been several decisions on the topic wether it is allowed to use your c
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:2)
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to lie without consequences.
Can the german government tell you how to answer to a http request?
Yet again someone who can't distinguish between government and courts.
Also: With regular email spam, the unwanted message is PUSHED to the victim, eating the victims bandwidth. Here, the victim (search engine spider) is pulling data from the server
Why and how? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is absolutely retarded. The solution against "keyword spammers" is better search engines obviously. If your search engine is going to be so simple and flawed so as to rely strictly on prevalence of a keyword (rather than say, also ranking by link popularity as does Google) then your search engine deserves to be exploited by the "spammers". I don't see why the courts need to get involved at all in such matters.
Perhaps it was the use of the word "spammers" that made the non-techs in the legal system think this had to do with EMAIL spam...???
Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded... OOPS! Watch out Slashdot. The german HTML police will come after you now!
Why not solve technically, rather than legally? (Score:2)
meta tags are ignored. Just another casualty (Score:2)
Current dictonary dumpters put their spam in the normal text and try to make simple sentences out of it.
I am personally getting tired of it. Perhaps it is time for a .checked domain where only resp
Freedom of Speech? (Score:2)
Not that I would ever advocate people using deceptive META tagging, but as someone previously stated, wouldn't this close to impossible to police?
Re:Freedom of Speech? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not about Freedom of Speech (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of Speech? (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of Speech? (Score:2)
I guess the problem I see with it is that it would appear to be way too subjective in many cases. It would be one thing if people with a porn site used META keywords like "free children's games", but what about some of the more gray areas?
Uhh... (Score:2)
The mind boggles when you concider that a search engine could have used in-accurate headers to lower a pages ranking.
Bless Goethe's mother tongue (Score:2)
"When using hundreds encyclopedia-like together it cannot concern to gereihten terms,..."
I don't know why, though i've never heard the word before, gereihten sounds a 100 times more expressive than any English word.
just goes to show... (Score:2)
Re:just goes to show... (Score:2)
It's not a special law about meta-tags, they have just applied general laws about advertizing. So, there is no reason why this couldn't be applied to other deceptive technique to boost the ranking of a commercial website.
Right place for this judgement. (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupid stupid stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when are Internet users under an obligation to be relevant or consistent in anything they write? Sure, we can't infringe copyrights and we can't be libellous, but those are general laws that happen to apply to the Internet as well.
And when were search engines granted protections for their technical operational model, anyway? What's next? All pages must be valid HTML4.01 STRICT so that crawler parsers can run faster? Stupid stupid stupid.
As disappointed as I sometimes get about the USA being out of control in the world, "enlightened" governments like Germany or France or Canada seem to go out of their way to prove that if they had the global resources, they'd be just as bad or worse as the lone superpower.
Re:Stupid stupid stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stupid stupid stupid. (Score:2)
Yes it would be stupid to do that, but deep inside im thinking that would be an excellent way to get web developers to produce compliant websites. It might even force Microsoft to make IE compliant.
But then
Re:Stupid stupid stupid. (Score:2)
No it's not. It may not be a logically necessary argument, but in practice it is completely reasonable to ask. Attempts at using logical rigor to set your expectations in arenas of social policy, even when it defies all experience and common sense strikes me as being significantly more bogus.
More unenforceable legislation... (Score:2, Interesting)
is written by the original document author. Meta data, ultimately, is only useful to the person who one who authors it. No one should be regulating such data, because it shouldn't really be trusted in the first place. Search engines should, and many do
Re:More unenforceable legislation... (Score:2)
Re:More unenforceable legislation... (Score:2)
Google could eradicate metaspam easily by... (Score:5, Interesting)
(2) publishing that they will only process the first, say, ten metatag keywords in a document.
(3) acting accordingly
A healthy competition would evolve. Other engines would follow suit. Problem solved. No lawyers needed.
What next? (Score:2, Funny)
Question about public non-Internet networks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Question about public non-Internet networks (Score:2)
One difference between the Internet in the "good ol' days" and today's Internet is that it used to be less commercialized, and such regulations about business practices ("unfairer Wettbewerb") are irrelevant for non-commercial websites.
This is how stupid laws are made. (Score:2, Interesting)
There is one state in the US (I can't remember which) where if your car unsettles a horse, you have to pull over to the side of the road and stop you engine. If the horse is still alarmed by your car, you have to dismantle it and hide it in the bushes.
This is exactly the same class of law. Stupid, stupid, and stupid. It's already out of date, because so few search e
This is what laws are supposed to do (Score:2)
Thank God! (Score:3, Funny)
my translation attempt (Score:3, Informative)
Court: Spamming via HTML-Metatags is anti-competitive.
The all encompossing listing of several hundred of HTML-Metatags which have no relation to the content of the web page leads to the manipulation of Web Search Engines and is therefore anti-competitive as defined in 1 of the Fair Trade Law.
The district court of Essen, whose proceedings have now been published, arrived at this decision in a public trial on 24th of May 2004(Case Nr. 44 0 166/03.) The plaintiff in this case was a legally entitled buisness organization. According to the findings of the court such a use of search keywords lead to search engines placing webpages of the accused in the first positions and correspondingly causing these sites to be more frequented by users. The operaters by using hundreds of keywords, as found in a lexicon, grouped together, which even taken broadly, are without discernable relationship to the services and products being offered on the webpages and therefore could not be being used for the optimal presentation of their offerings. Rather the only conclusion to be drawn is that the use of such techniques only served to take advantage of technical weaknesses of the search engines in order to give the operators competitive advantage.
This, according the Essen Jugde, does not apply to all uses of HTML-metatags. Acccordingly a competitor must accept when a webpage(internet site) is full of such keywords when these are related to the service offerings of the operator. The same applies to the use of names, company names and logos, in as far as these are "constitutive of the internet sites' embedded advertising links", in order to enable the operator to do buisness with advertising partners.
The decision of the district court of Essen expands the otherwise totally non-uniform juristic findings of german courts conerning HTML-Metatags, which up to now have been concerned with the use of others' propietary('fremder') keywords in the Metatags, which is a different field of problems. A similiar decision was reached by the district court of Düsseldorf in March 2002 concerning the use of unrelated keywords in Metatags. This decision was however later revised by the superiror district cour of Düsseldorf. Whether or not the decision of Essen is to be appealed has not yet known.
Passing laws isn't free (Score:2)
This is no law. (Score:2)
The court (Landgericht Essen) decided that it is indeed anticompetitive practice.
Re:Finally (Score:2)
Nonsense, deceptive advertisement is not a criminal offense. The ruling described in the article was in a lawsuit in a civil court. Unless a competitor (or perhaps a consumer organization if that's possible in this case) sues, nothing is done.
Re:This is why Europe is old and tired (Score:2)
If your conception about free speech is putting deceptive meta-tags that don't have anything to do with the content on commercial websites, you probably haven't understood this principle.
By the way, this doesn't have anything to do with differences between Europe, America and other continents (are you allowed to sell products with deceptive labels, e.g. water labeled as vodka, or to lure people to your store by wrongly claiming in advertisements that you sell a cer
Re:... will they ever learn? (Score:2)
This is insightful?? It has been pointed out in countless other threads that this is not about legislation, but the about the application of existing laws. The laws that had been applied in this case are from 1909, when Germany still had an emperor - certainly not a good occasion for complaining about "more layers of legislation" being added.