As the Berlin Court of Appeal found in an interim injunction (decision of 4 October 2016, case reference: 27 O 513/16), counterstatement claims can also be obtained against conventional private blogs.
With this decision, the Court of Appeal has made it almost absolutely clear that blogs can in principle be subject to press law requirements.
Counterstatement also affects private blogs
In December 2016, former Pirate politician Christopher Lauer (who has since joined the SPD) asserted a claim for a counterstatement against his former party colleague Simon Langer.
Simon Langer had previously published an incorrect factual claim concerning Lauer on his private online blog.
It is interesting to note that Langer’s blog is run purely privately.
He only publishes posts at irregular intervals.
In some cases, Langer did not write a single post for a period of six months.
Online blogs are journalistic-editorial providers
The right of reply arises from Section 56 of the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty (RStV).
However, this provision presupposes a provider of telemedia with journalistic-editorial content in which, in particular, the content of periodical print products is reproduced in full or in part in text or images.
The Berlin Court of Appeal has affirmed the existence of “journalistic-editorial content” for online blogs.
But only insofar as the blog deals with current topics of the day and aims to form an opinion.
It is therefore not necessarily the regularity of the published articles that is important, but rather the opinion-forming effect and the topicality of the topics.
This means that not only blogs that deal with political, social and ideological topics are affected.
It is sufficient that posts on a blog aim to form an opinion and comment on current topics.
This may also include blogs that deal with cultural and sports topics, for example.
Blogs fall under the extended imprint obligation of § 55 para.
2 RStV
The decision of the Court of Appeal in Berlin means that even private occasional bloggers can be considered journalistic-editorial providers.
This means that they can not only be obliged to publish a counterstatement on their blog, but also fall under the extended imprint obligation of Section 55 para.
2 RStV.
It remains to be seen to what extent the decision can also be applied to the writing of posts on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc.