Against Disclaimers and Other Legal Crap in the Internet

Law and the internet. What a unpleasant combination! There are way too many unnecessary laws and rules internet users have to abide by. Or do they have? Who really knows? Law plus internet equals confusion. And confusion bugs me. That’s the short chain of annoying internet legality.

And if you don’t mind all that crap and ignore it you might end up sitting in front of an angry judge who’s just waiting to bang his wooden hammer on the table, screaming: “Guilty! This man is guilty!” No, the man is not guilty! He didn’t stick to the rules, yes. But only because the rules are stupid!

Take disclaimers for example. Who the hell would create such a dumb piece of uninteresting text if it would not decrease the risk of facing serious legal issues? Yeah, some folks would probably still create it because they find it cool. Or because they don’t got enough real content for their website. I don’t know.

Whatever, disclaimers stink! It’s always the same trash, webmasters are telling people that they’re not responsible for anything and can’t be charged in case of trouble.

Lots of those disclaimers ain’t even legally valid. But why should one be concerned by the law as long as he got a fat disclaimer protecting him from all the world’s evil? I mean those evil users that tend to asperse innocent webmasters would be alienated by the disclaimer, wouldn’t they? The truth is that this protection sucks.

But disclaimers are not even the worst part. The German internet legality is a way bigger bitch. As a German webmaster, you have to place a legal notice on your website, telling everyone about your real name, address and contact information! Great! Love it! … Not!

Yeah, all this crap is annoying me so much that I just decided to take this very article as my disclaimer. So my disclaimer is special at least…

Of course, it’s no real protection, but why should I care? It’s the internet.