A private project under German rules

When the journal was almost ready, we looked at it through the eyes of German law. It turned out that a few things were needed before publishing it.

Impressum

In Germany, websites must carry an “Impressum” — a legal notice with the owner’s name, postal address and email. It is required by the German Digital Services Act (DDG), and sites with journalistic content must additionally name the person responsible for the content under the Interstate Media Treaty. A missing Impressum is one of the most common reasons for paid cease-and-desist letters (“Abmahnungen”).

Privacy notice

The privacy notice (“Datenschutzerklärung”) under the GDPR — known in German as DSGVO — describes what data a site processes. We built the site so that there is almost nothing to describe: no accounts, forms, comments, cookies, tracking or analytics. What remains are the hosting provider’s technical logs, and that processing is described.

The font story

Many websites load fonts from Google’s servers. In January 2022 the Munich Regional Court (LG München I, case 3 O 17493/20) ruled that doing so without the visitor’s consent violates the GDPR, because the browser transmits the visitor’s IP address to Google. A wave of claims against website owners followed across Germany. Later the same court held that mass, automated sending of such claims was an abuse of rights (judgment of 30 March 2023, case 4 O 13063/22), but that did not overturn the finding about transmitting IP addresses without consent.

That is why katlog.org hosts its fonts on its own server. One line of configuration — one risk removed.

A private project and the employer

• Every page states that this is a private, non-commercial project and not an official project of the Max Planck Society or any institute.
• Only publicly available data from the open catalogue is used.
• No reader personal data is used; the names in the screenshots are fictitious.
• Assessments of systems and decisions are presented as the author’s personal opinion.

A note on AI

The terms of use state explicitly that the texts are prepared with the help of an AI assistant and reviewed by the author. The law doesn’t yet require this for a blog, but being honest with readers seems right to us.