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Created on Friday, 07 November 2008 23:02

Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 January 2015 10:01

Linking to Other Websites

You have a homepage and want to refer to other interesting sites? Generally, that is part of the idea of “www” – information. But know how to do it safely? Read in the following nutshell all you need to know.

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First thing is to take a look at the site you are planning to link. Does it contain anything supposedly illegal? If yes, do not link to it! Why you shouldn’t even though you yourself are not promoting anything wrong? In doing so, you would be supporting something illegal and that already makes you subject to punishment (Beihilfe or aiding and abetting) – like it or not.

So, your chosen site is absolutely straight with the law. Good. But for how long? Since you have no influence to that web presentation, you will have no idea. Do you want to protect yourself with a disclaimer? Good idea! Supposedly, you read a referral to a judgment of County Court Hamburg? Forget it. Yes, very many websites refer to this decision. However, nobody has really read this decision and it says quite the opposite of what it is supposed to say. AG Hamburg ruled that you are not free of admonishments by uniformly disclaiming any liability.

Very often attorneys suggest to regularly check the linked sites and see if there still is nothing illegal on that website. How often is “regularly”? Well, there no real rule yet but every three or four months should be sufficient. Else, you will be hard pressed to explain why you do not know what is going on with your references. Another, maybe more practical, idea would be that you write a disclaimer saying that you read and thoroughly studied the contents of a referred website and did not see or find anything illegal and you do not see a chance that this presentation will some time in future contain illegal contents and therefore trust them.