Media News - Monday, August 31, 2009

German court disciplines Google

A Hamburg court has ruled that Google must remove 10 offending clauses from out of it's terms of service agreements on its web services in Germany. The case against the international Internet giant had been brought by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV), a consumer rights organization, which said that Google had contravened German federal law by luring users into giving up their rights to certain kinds of data. Google, which provides online search facilities, e-mail and social networking among other things, would have been able to publish the material it had gathered without concerns about copyright, the VZBV argued. The offending clauses gave the California-based corporation the right to access users' private online accounts, read personal e-mails and delete contents. It also gave them the right to pass data onto partner companies and compare customers' details for marketing and advertising purposes. The court stated that users were often completely unaware of the rights that they were giving Google over their personal data. The result of the court's decision is that, from now on in Germany, Google will need to obtain users' explicit consent before using their data. In addition, the company must install an online complaint box for customer criticism, and it must provide confirmation of receipt for each complaint. (Spiegel )

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