Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Blogger Threatened to be Sued by Sozialgericht Bremen for Appearing in Google

Bjoern Harste is a well-known German blogger – he owns a supermarket and writes about his daily experiences at work in his Shopblogger blog. Now, he received a Cease & Desist by the Sozialgericht Bremen (I’m not sure, but I think they’re a government law institution I’m paying with my taxes a court of law for dealing with cases in the area of German social services) for having one of his blog posts appear in the Google results top ten for “Sozialgericht Bremen” Welcome to the world wide web, Sozialgericht, and welcome to Google.

Now the Sozialgericht Bremen wants Bjoern to stop using the words “Sozialgericht Bremen” in his archive. Apparently, the Sozialgericht Bremen thinks the result they dislike will stop appearing in Google, not knowing that it’s actually link text that is more important for such a position... and that it’s not easy to silence a blogger because other bloggers will jump in to help. Bjoern complied by removing the unwanted words, but is publishing the Sozialgericht’s full C&D, asking for help from lawyers.

So, everyone, if you want to help out the Sozialgericht Bremen, stop linking to the Shopblogger using these words.

[Thanks Markus Renschler.]

Blogger Threatened to be ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (16)

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