Frankfurt Regional Court imposes fine of €10,000 against ‘coaches’

The Regional Court of Frankfurt imposed a fine of € 10,000 on two ‘coaches’ by order of 26 January 2024 (Regional Court of Frankfurt, order of 26 January 2024, ref. 2-03 O 373/23, not final).

10,000 € or two days imprisonment

As the district court has ordered 2 days’ imprisonment (one day for every €5,000.00) in the event that the money cannot be recovered, there may soon be a publicised move to prison. Because those in the know know: Only no news is bad news.

Four injunctions and several fines

The background to this is a total of four preliminary injunction proceedings, which we have reported on here:

LHR obtains four interim injunctions and a fine of €12,000 against ‘coaching’ company and associated ‘specialised publisher’

In several cases, fines totalling around € 25,000 had already been imposed for non-compliance with the prohibition order due to disguised advertising. Although the defendants had repeatedly and cleverly ‘improved’ the situation, this was not enough for either the applicant or the district court.

YouTube video was not deleted, but only ‘blocked’

Now a further €10,000 will be added, as the defendants had never actually removed a YouTube video, but had merely ‘blocked’ it for Germany.

YouTube often responds to cancellation requests and bids with a ‘block’ for Germany. However, this is not a blocking of the video in question in the sense that the video cannot be viewed in Germany or via German websites. Server would no longer be accessible. This means that ‘blocked’ videos can still be accessed regularly without any problems by changing the specified ‘location’ via the website on the desktop and in the mobile version.

See exemplary screenshot:

 

The regional court had the following to say about this in the current ruling:

However, the mere blocking in the country version does not sufficiently fulfil the implementation of the ban on publishing certain content in Germany. This is because the user can change the location to any other country with just a few clicks in the settings on the debtor’s website. The debtor does not check the accuracy of the user’s location information. Contrary to the debtor’s submission, changing the country version also does not require any special prior knowledge; this is possible – as is known in court – with just a few clicks in the YouTube app or via the web browser.

We have already pointed out the inadequacy of such an approach here:

Frankfurt Regional Court: YouTube must delete influencer video with voice message

(Disclosure: LHR represented the applicants).