The Independent Center for Data Protection (ULD) is not entitled to demand that the operators of Facebook fan pages deactivate these pages due to possible violations of data protection law.
This is the conclusion reached by the Schleswig-Holstein Administrative Court following oral proceedings. Three companies from Schleswig-Holstein that operate a Facebook fan page had filed a lawsuit against the ULD's order to deactivate them.
The ULD had justified this order by stating that the collection of data from visitors to the site by Facebook violated data protection regulations because Facebook did not provide sufficient information about this data collection and therefore there was no effective consent. In addition, there was no provision for an objection. The plaintiffs, as operators of a Facebook fan page, were jointly responsible for this.
The court did not follow this line of argument. It left open whether and to what extent the collection of data from the users of the fan page leads to a violation of data protection rights. In any case, the operator of a fan page was not responsible for this under data protection law. The responsibility was derived from the Federal Data Protection Act and the European Data Protection Directive (of 1995). According to these, a person who has neither actual nor legal influence on the data processing is not responsible. Accordingly, the fan page operators were not responsible. Facebook provided the technical infrastructure. The page operator could only post its content, but had no influence on the data traffic between the user and Facebook.
The court therefore annulled the disputed orders of the ULD. Due to the fundamental importance of the case, the appeal has been allowed (case number of the Administrative Court of Schleswig-Holstein - 8 A 218/11, 8 A 14/12, 8 A 37/12).
Source: Press release of the Administrative Court of Schleswig-Holstein
Goldberg Attorneys at Law 2013
Attorney at Law Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
Specialist lawyer for information technology law
E-mail: info@goldberg.de
