From: "Stephan Kämper" <Stephan.Kaemper@...>
Date: 2004-10-07T18:19:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Editors of the ruby webpages

Phil Tomson wrote:
> In article <4164579E.3070106@brian-schroeder.de>,
> Brian Schr�der  <ruby@brian-schroeder.de> wrote:
> 
>>I searched on the pages but they have no impressum. 
> 
> What's an 'impressum'?  

'impress', 'masthead', 'flag' (from dict.leo.org)

 > I'm assuming from the context that it's the name
> of the page editor.

More or less. It's a set of information that German websites (whatever 
that means: text in German? Web server located in Germany? Company/Web 
master located in Germany?) have to place at an easy-to-find place on 
the web site.
It has to contain the name and postal address, a phone number and a way 
to 'easily communicate electronically' (read: e-mail) as well as some 
other Germany-specific stuff.
This is due to our laws and other regulation we Germany apparently love 
so much (which means that I'm rather untypical BTW)...


> So you're saying that the lawsuit situation is even worse in Germany than 
> in the US?  That's pretty hard to do.

It's worse in the sense the we have way to many laws, by-laws, decrees, 
regulations and what not. But I'm getting slightly off-topic, sorry. ;-)

> Why would lawyers sue if you don't list the page editor (and how do they 
> find you in that case)?

Just because there's a law that demands putting that very information on 
your web site. In a place that's easy to find.
And we have the 'law against unfair competition'. Which might (or might 
not, the lawyers and courts are still dealing with this) mean that you 
act unfair if you don't make that piece of information public in the 
'correct' way. :-/

That reminds me of the song I heard this morning: "It's a mad world." :-)

Anyway, back to that Good Things in life, which in this case means: 
Ruby. :-D

Happy rubying

Stephan