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German Court Holds ISP Must Erase IP Logs within Reasonable Time
The German Federal Court of Justice (Germany’s highest appellate court) recently refused to hear the appeal of a lower court decision which found a German Internet service provider had saved the Internet Protocol address logs for one of its users longer than was necessary. The case involved a German Internet user, Holger Voss, who, in June of 2002, made a sarcastic comment about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on a public Internet forum. Mr. Voss was charged and then acquitted of approving of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Subsequently, Mr. Voss brought a civil suit against his ISP, T-Online, which had turned over his IP address logs to German police. The lower court found that T-Online had violated German law which required T-Online to hold such logs only as long as necessary for billing purposes.
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