Liability for hyperlinks
At the beginning of January, the BGH published a judgment in full text on hyperlink liability, in which it slightly tightened link liability. Liability may exist - as before - if the link provider "adopts" the linked content. This can happen, for example, if the link setter endorses the opinion expressed on the linked page by writing their own text around the hyperlink. However, according to the current BGH ruling, liability can now also exist if the linked page contains legal violations and the link provider violates "reasonable obligations to check". The link provider should therefore be liable for recognizably illegal content on the linked page from the time the link is created. The link provider is to be liable for content that is not recognizably unlawful from the time it becomes known (e.g. due to a letter of complaint from a third party).