internet international legal-terms germany
Legal basis for distancing from internet services
<p>Our <strong>private</strong> team of gamers has a small gaming community. In order to increase our reach of people and to let our community grow, we do provide some users with free Minecraft servers, as well as hosting space for files on our servers.</p>

<p>As trusting people in the internet is a difficult topic, we want to be sure that if we do provide them with our services (Minecraft server, file hosting for server files and ressources, community forums), we are not responsible for the contents that the service user hosts on our servers.</p>

<p>It's not that we don't constantly check what's going on on our servers but we want to be on the lawful side and make sure we cannot be sued for helping others host their Minecraft servers and files on our servers.</p>

<p>Is it valid to let every upcoming server administrator that we donate some "hardware" sign a document that states that he is solely responsible for his server as well as he has to comply German laws and the Minecraft EULA?</p>

<p>This document will also include that it is prohibited to host illegal files (files one has no rights for, adult material, hate-motivated etc.).</p>

<p>We will still continue constantly monitoring what is going on and log every action on our sites.</p>

<p>Our servers are located in Germany so if I am not wrong, German right apply.</p>

<p>Is there any basis we can build such a document on, is such a document even allowed, what is such a document called (disclaimer?)?</p>

<p>In Germany the person who broke the law is the person to be liable to any juristic action. You as the service provider are liable if you cannot produce the identification of the original offender (read on the topic of <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__1004.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">§1004 BGB Störerhaftung</a>, more explanation on what that means is on <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B6rerhaftung" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the Wikipedia page of the same name</a>).</p>

<p>That means: If you allow people to host stuff on your servers you should be sure to have their Names and Addresses and comply with any law enforcement requests that might come to you to ask for this.</p>

<p>You must notify your users up front of this in a ToS style announcement that comes with the contract, because of German personal data protection law (read on <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informationelle_Selbstbestimmung" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Informationelle Selbstbestimmung</a> for more details).
If you can spare the 500€ you might want to have that ToS written by a proper layer that specializes in IT-Law to be on the save side.</p>

<p>Also, you have (most likely) bought storage in some datacenter. They have a contract with you that is very similar to what you have with your users. Look at what they do with you, hand that down to your userbase.</p>
