Have you ever considered at what point a blog stops being a personal one and starts being a business?  Or at which point the blogger becomes a writer, or even a journalist?

Quite apart from any internet marketing advice telling you to “treat your blog like a business”, in Germany the differences can have knock-on effects such as how much tax you pay.

Obviously, the first difference between a personal blog and a business site is the need for the Impressum, but a simple way of looking at it is that a personal blog does not make any money.  A business site does, regardless of whether the blog directly sells products, contains advertising or is simply connected to an existing business. (more…)

It’s quite amazing now to think that this post almost didn’t get written, and it’s all down to something called the Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag, or “JMStV” for short.  Another crazy piece of German legislation that, thankfully, didn’t quite make it into law.  Well, not yet at least.

Had it done so, you might well have seen a blank page here by now.  Indeed, it might have meant the end of most blogs in Germany.

But how can a law be that powerful, without banning blogs completely? (more…)

There are many blogs on the internet where the blogger prefers to remain anonymous, at the very least he or she prefers not to tell the World exactly where they live.

For what ever reason that may be, they use an anonymizer service to register their domain, or rent themselves a post office box and use that for anything where they have to give a real address.

Considering Germany’s attitude to privacy and especially to services like Street View, you would think that it would be possible here as well, wouldn’t you?

Of course not. (more…)