[Mailman-Developers] Re: Legal trouble in Germany

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "MK" == Michael Kallas <michael.kallas@web.de> writes:

    MK> According to this court, you would have to write an email
    MK> instead of being able to sign up via web.  But we all know
    MK> that it's no problem to fake email addresses.  Therefore this
    MK> is a "chicken and egg" situation that could only be solved by
    MK> reliable identification of the subscriber :-( I don't have any
    MK> solution at hand but just wanted to inform so that maybe
    MK> something can be done about it.

I'll refrain from making an ass out of myself by trying to make sense
of German law or its legislature's intent.  I'm decidedly donkey-shaped
<wink> for trying that in my own country. ;)

In any event, don't forget that you have an audit trail in
logs/subscribe, of all pending subscriptions and subscriptions.  So
you're not completely hosed, assuming you have some way of legally
vouching for the veracity of that file (not Mailman's responsibility).
At least you can point to the file and say "see, soandso@example.com
requested subscription to my mailing list."  That's about the best
Mailman can do I think.

-Barry