Meta-tag Spam Declared Illegal in Germany

Philipp Lenssen writes "According to Heise.de, a German court ruled excessive use of meta-keywords in HTML unlawful. Meta-tag keywords may still be used if they are in strong relation to the page. The decision does not address more popular search engine spamming methods of today (as meta-keywords are ignored by Google, they are rarely used as core strategy for Search Engine Optimization)." <update> Thanks to Michael Mol for the translation to English pointer.

Comments

How can a court enforce the ruling

[stecoop]

Just because a court rules it's illegal doesn't mean the court will/can enforce the ruling. Case in point:
1) Who is going to search every web page to find incorrect meta tags
2) Who is going to decide that a given page has incorrect meta-keyword information
3) Define strong relation to a web page
4) Define Excessive use of meta-keywords in HTML
5) What about servers across national lines
6) Does anyone really use meta-keywords other than spammers

And no I couldn't RTFM in German - as you can see, the babelfish translation is so eloquent and can someone translate the keyword information in the linked page to determine if it's using excessive meta information:

meta NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Gericht: Suchmaschinen-Spamming per HTML-Metatags wettbewerbswidrig"

Court: Search machine Spamming by HTML Metatags competition-adversely

Manual-like listing of many hundred HTML Metatags without each contentwise connection to an InterNet side f?e to a manipulation of search machines and is competition adverse after. 1 of the law against the mean competition (UWG). That decided the regional court meal in a judgement from 26 May 2004 (Az. 44 0 166/03), ver?entlichten now. Kl?rin of the procedure was a rechtsf?ger trade association.

After the Ausf?ungen of the court f?t a such use from search words to the fact that the InterNet sides of the deplored ones when using search machines at one of the front places designated and accordingly by the users more h?iger frequented w?en. When using hundreds encyclopedia-like together to gereihten terms, which do not exhibit also by far Verst?nis connection to the goods and services offered on the sides, k?e it the operator any longer around do not go pr?ntieren its offer optimally. Rather lie? this only the conclusion too that thereby the technical Schw?en should be used by search machines, in order to provide with the search results a competition advantage.

This does not apply in opinion of the judges from meals however f?jede use of HTML Metatags. So m?e it a competitor accept, if a Website with search words am gef?t, in the broadest sense still in a connection for the performance of the operator stand. Same applies f?die use of names to erm?ichen Gesch?sbezeichnungen or marks, if this "component from on the InterNet side switched are advertising on the left of", in order the operator Gesch?e with advertising partner.

The decision of the LG meal extends the anyway v?ig non-uniform iurisdiction of German courts about HTML Metatags, with which it went so far particularly around the use of strange characteristics into the Metas, by a further problem field. A?liche decision for the use of irrelevant terms in Metatage had in the M? 2002 the LG D?eldorf met. The judgement had been waived however sp?r by the OLG D?eldorf. Whether against the decision from meals redresses are inserted, is not yet admits (Joerg Heidrich)/(tol/c't)

Re:How can a court enforce the ruling

[Bingo Foo]

Courts can set precedents. However, by making references to clauses, whether real or imagined, in our state and federal constitutions, they do effectively write new laws.

Re:How can a court enforce the ruling

[bgackle]

I didn't RTFA either for the same reason as the parent, but I'm going to comment anyway (perhaps we need a system of human translation by bi-lingual slashdotters in exchange for karma, mod-points, or free subscription page views). What we have here is a great example of a clumsy law being passed to solve a problem that the free market has already solved for itself. Most search engines ignore meta-tags already, presumably as a result of people abusing them to artifically boost their page ranking. The search engines themselves have a vested interest in defeating scams like this. People want relevant results from a search engine, so spamming of this sort reduces the value of those results. We don't need a clueless government trying to help solve the problem months or years after the fact. The time it takes for spammers to discover an exploit like this, abuse it, and have the search engines adjust their procedures to compensate is probably an order of magnitude less than the time it takes a piece of corrective legislation to be passed in pretty much any democratic system. Governments are by their very nature too slow and clumsy to solve problems of this nature.

Re:How can a court enforce the ruling

[hendrik42]

1) The competitors of the Meta-Tag Spammer. Note that using false Meta-Tags is not illegal. Only if they are deliberately used by company A to gain an unfair advantage over company B, company B can sue company A into changing that meta-tag. Sounds like a good idea to me.

2) A court, on a case-by-case base using common sense. Actually, they way it works is that company B can send company A a letter (abmahnung, dissuasion) requesting them to stop their wrong-doing. If this letter costs company B some lawyers costs they can also demand reimbursement of about $1000. Afterwards company A can decide to remove their Meta-Tags and sign a paper that they will not reinstate them again or go into court with company B.

3-4) Common sense, it is really not hard to decide whether "Sex, P0rn, V1agra, MP3" are relevant for a dentist or not :-)

5) My guess is that it applies to all companies serving German customers.
6) Yes, me :-)

Please get this whole thing overturned! PLEASE!

[beh]

I've been dreading this for a loooooong time. The web can hardly improve, if we're starting to get the courts to police what can and can't be put inside HTML tags. I mean, I'm as pissed off as the next guy, when someone abuses meta-tags or any other mechanism in a way just to make them appear higher up in a search engine. But this is NOT the way to deal with it. Forcing people out of using Meta-Tags (and that in ONE country alone), will only make the whole issue of abusing the system move to something new - while the old issue doesn't improve (since it's still perfectly legal to screw up those tags in other countries; or do you think, a search engine would then start handling those tags differently depending on whether they're on a German webpage where they must not be abused, or whether there on a Chinese one, where they can be screwed around with at will?)

While HTML has been around for 10 years or so, I would still consider it a technology that hasn't settled yet. The whole web is still undergoing changes - shortcomings are (partially) being addressed, new things get added.

Getting the courts in at this stage can only stifle further innovation in this sector, because if it continues as it is, in the future we might have to consult legal departments to see whether any changes we might propose will find their acceptance in the ears of judges. :-(

I would hope that the losing side will go into revision and get this whole thing overturned before HTML officially becomes the "HyperText Markup Law".

usage of meta tags?

[Anonymous Coward]

how many search engines actually use meta tags? altavista, google, teoma, yahoo and msn don't support it

Re:Meta tags can be very effective

[wikdwarlock]

The point that once other engines like your site, Google starts to take notice is a good one. You don't need the credentials as the authority on the subject, so long as you can get some street cred w/ other, less discerning engines first.

Freedom of speech?

[fearlezz]

However I absolutely hate spam in every way, I think this ruling is rediculous. It's even restricting freedom of speech. Can the german government tell you how to answer to a http request?

Also: With regular email spam, the unwanted message is PUSHED to the victim, eating the victims bandwidth. Here, the victim (search engine spider) is pulling data from the server. If they don't want spam, don't use the meta tags.

Re:Freedom of speech?

[Anita Coney]

The last time I checked Germany never signed the Bill of Rights.

Re:Freedom of Speech?

[radja]

to me, it sounds more like deceptive advertising.

Re:Freedom of speech?

[imsabbel]

Is it freedom of speech if you set up a supermarket front (complete with walmart sign, shopping cars,ect), so that people only notice you are running a brothel when they are inside?

The same with metatag spamming: Its lying in order to make profit, someting most contries have a law against.

Re:Freedom of speech?

[Pius II.]

This is about fraudulent advertising.
The law invoked was the "Wettbewerbsrecht", meaning this is about an issue between two commercial entities. On a private (i.e. non-profit) homepage these laws wouldn't apply.

The only thing that is forbidden after this decision is to put irrelevant keywords into the meta tag. (such as "SEX SEX SEX BRITNEY SPEARS NAKED" into a the meta tag of a cell phone fraud site such as these).

There have already been several decisions on the topic wether it is allowed to use your competitors trademarks in meta tags (like MS putting "WordPerfect" in the Office site meta tags); there's a new one every six months :-).

Why and how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this brought up into the courts anyways?

This is absolutely retarded. The solution against "keyword spammers" is better search engines obviously. If your search engine is going to be so simple and flawed so as to rely strictly on prevalence of a keyword (rather than say, also ranking by link popularity as does Google) then your search engine deserves to be exploited by the "spammers". I don't see why the courts need to get involved at all in such matters.

Perhaps it was the use of the word "spammers" that made the non-techs in the legal system think this had to do with EMAIL spam...???

Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded Retarded... OOPS! Watch out Slashdot. The german HTML police will come after you now!

Right place for this judgement.

[lysium]

It has been my observation that German sites are the worst offenders of meta tag spam. Many a Google search is ruined by pages upon pages of their scripty garbage. I often resort to blocking .de from search results, just to maintain some sanity.

Stupid stupid stupid.

[reynhout]

It doesn't even matter whether meta tag spamming works, or whether the laws are enforceable. The idea that a government would try to regulate it is insane.

Since when are Internet users under an obligation to be relevant or consistent in anything they write? Sure, we can't infringe copyrights and we can't be libellous, but those are general laws that happen to apply to the Internet as well.

And when were search engines granted protections for their technical operational model, anyway? What's next? All pages must be valid HTML4.01 STRICT so that crawler parsers can run faster? Stupid stupid stupid.

As disappointed as I sometimes get about the USA being out of control in the world, "enlightened" governments like Germany or France or Canada seem to go out of their way to prove that if they had the global resources, they'd be just as bad or worse as the lone superpower.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no law in Germany which specifically forbids HTML meta tags. This ruling is due to an "offline" law which happens to apply to the online world too. Just like you must not infringe on copyrights online because the law doesn't exclude the internet, you are not allowed to pretend you're your competitor in order to fool customers, neither offline nor online.

German judges need a life.

[oliverthered]

Ahh.. the poor germans must be having problems searching for there home page and not being top of the list....

I don't expect google to drop the golden egg in my lap, and I do expect more than just turkey recipies when I search for the word breast, a little bit of spam never hurt me enough to even consider banning extream metta-tagging, it did teach me to use junk email addresses for public info and real ones for private email.

Not only meta-tags

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case in question the defendant used meta-tags to place all kinds of words on his website that had no relation to his business. So on first glance the ruling is about meta-tags only. But in fact, the plaintiff requested a restaining order, and what he got is this:

Dem Beklagten wird [...] untersagt, im geschäftlichen Verkehr zu Wettbewerbszwecken auf kommerziellen Webseiten [...] fremde Namen, Geschäftsbezeichnungen, Marken oder sonstige Begriffe zu verwenden, wenn die Webseiten keinen inhaltlichen Bezug zu den verwendeten Namen, Geschäftsbezeichnungen, Marken oder Begriffen aufweisen, auch wenn die Verwendung dergestalt erfolgt, dass die Begriffe für den Internet-Nutzer nicht bei Aufrufen der Domain unmittelbar sichtbar sind, sondern nur von Suchmaschinen ausgewertet werden oder im Quelltext ersichtlich sind.

In English:

The defendant is enjoined from using, for commercial purposes on his website, names and trademarks that do not belong to him, or other words, if these names, trademarks, or words have no relation to the websites they're on, even when they are used in such a way that they are invisible to a casual visitor and are only interpreted by search engines or visible in the source code.

So this means that you may not place an entire dictionary in black-on-black on your website, where only Google will see it, but you may use words that somehow relate to your business, even if the sole purpose is to advance your Google rank. (Or at least this ruling doesn't prevent you from doing that.)

It should be noted that the caption "declared illegal in Germany" is a little bit misleading. No court is bound by this ruling. What's more, as Heise rightly notes, the German courts have yet to find a clear position on what you can and cannot do in meta-tags. For example, in February the OLG Düsseldorf ruled that it is o.k. to use someone else's trademark in your meta-tags to attract visitors. But other courts have ruled the same thing illegal (e.g. LG München I very recently). http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/49232 has some details.

... will they ever learn?

[Lorean]

When will they learn that you can't solve everyone problem by adding more layers of legislation.

Looks like another job for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't Google and other search engines rank pages higher when :

1) Metadata tag words are actually also found in the body, lower when they are not.

2) There is a reasonable (going to take some tests & tweaking) ratio of metadata tag count to html body word count, lower when there is not.

Google could provide a toggle to turn this feature on-off in their advanced search.

Posted here as AC as I found no quick way to find an email address owned by google.com where users can suggest ideas!