Publishes adult content, in Germany

JMStV Sec. 4(2), consolidated text in force 1 December 2025 · Read the law's page

• Applies to providers of telemedia (internet) services distributing pornographic content to users in Germany.
• Do not offer pornographic content unless you ensure it is accessible only to adults through a closed user group (geschlossene Benutzergruppe), typically verified by an age verification system (Altersverifikationssystem) assessed against KJM criteria.

JMStV Sec. 5 · Read the law's page

• Applies to the provider of a broadcasting or telemedia offer that is suited to impair the development of children or adolescents.
• Ensure that children or adolescents of the age groups concerned (without restriction, from 6, from 12, from 16, from 18 years) do not usually perceive the offer.
• Meet that duty by technical or other means that make it impossible or substantially harder for the age group concerned to perceive the offer, or by labeling the offer with an age rating that suitable youth protection programs (Jugendschutzprogramme) can read, or by choosing a time of distribution at which the age group concerned does not usually perceive it.

JMStV Sec. 5a · Read the law's page

• Applies to the provider of a video-sharing service established in Germany.
• Take appropriate measures to protect children and adolescents from offers that impair their development.
• Consider setting up and operating systems for age verification, and systems through which parents can control access to such offers.
• Set up systems with which users can rate the offers they upload, readable by the age verification and parental control systems.

Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Modernisierung des Produkthaftungsrechts · Read the law's page

• If you develop or make software, or have it designed or made, you answer as its manufacturer; free and open-source software developed or supplied outside a business activity is outside the definition of a product (§§ 2(1) No. 3 and 3).
• Keep supplying the software updates and upgrades needed to keep the product safe while the product is within your control: if you are able to provide them yourself or through a third party you keep control, and a defect caused by software, by an update or upgrade, or by a missing necessary update is not excused because it arose after you put the product into circulation (§§ 8(2) and 9(2)).
• Meet the product-safety requirements that apply to your product, safety-relevant cybersecurity requirements included: they count in judging whether it is defective (§ 7 No. 5), and failing a binding product-safety requirement that protects against the injury presumes it defective (§ 20(1) No. 2).
• Account for what your product learns or acquires after it is put into circulation: the effect of that ability is weighed in judging whether it is defective (§ 7 No. 3).
• Keep records you could produce if a court orders disclosure on a claimant's plausible claim; failing to disclose despite the order presumes the product defective (§§ 19(1) and 20(1) No. 1).
• If you hold relevant evidence for a product liability claim against someone else, the court can, on the claimant's application, order you as a third party to disclose it, limited to what is necessary and proportionate, except to the extent you may refuse to testify under sections 383 to 385 of the Code of Civil Procedure (§ 19(1) and (3)).
• If you are a manufacturer outside the EU, your importer into the EU market and your representative appointed in writing and established in the EU are liable as the manufacturer is, and where there is neither, the fulfilment service provider is liable too (§§ 10 and 11).
• If you make a product available in the supply chain without being its manufacturer or importer, or run an online platform that lets consumers conclude distance contracts with traders where the conditions of Article 6(3) of the Digital Services Act are met, you are liable as the manufacturer is when no manufacturer, importer, representative or fulfilment service provider established in the EU can be identified, unless within one month of receiving the injured person's request you name one of them or your own supplier of the product (§§ 12 and 13).
• If you substantially modify a product without the manufacturer's consent and then make it available on the market or put it into operation, you are the manufacturer of the modified product (§ 5(1)).
• Do not rely on a contract term to limit or exclude your liability to an injured person; departing from the Act to their disadvantage is not allowed (§ 18).
• You are excused if you did not put the product into circulation, if the defect results from the product meeting legal requirements, or if the defect could not be recognized according to the objective state of science and technology at the relevant time (§ 9(1)).
• Claims lapse three years after the creditor learned, or should have learned, of the defect, the damage and the identity of the debtor, and expire ten years after the product was put into circulation or into operation, or 25 years for a latent personal injury (§§ 16 and 17).