GERMANY Law and Practice Contributed by: Thomas Nägele, Steffen Henn, Anke Hofmann and Serpil Dilbaz, SZA Schilling, Zutt & Anschütz
12. Additional Considerations 12.1 Emerging Issues See the Germany Trends and Developments article in this guide. 12.2 Trade Mark and Copyright Use on the Internet The EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which has imme - diate effect within Germany, contains fundamental regulations for intermediary services, online platforms, search engines and host providers with respect to illegal content. Copyright infringements can be such illegal content within the meaning of the DSA. The German Telemedia Act (TMG) also contains rules for service providers. The exceptions to the DSA and TMG are very detailed. However, service providers have no general obligation to monitor the information that they transmit or store, nor a general obligation to actively seek facts or cir - cumstances indicating illegal activity. Host providers are privileged if they have no knowledge of the illegal act or information and, in the case of claims for dam - ages, if that content is not obviously illegal. Those pro - viders have to take action to remove the information or block access immediately after becoming aware of it (Notice and Take Down; see Section 10 TMG and Article 6 paragraph 1 lit. b DSA).
Certain service providers within the meaning of Sec - tion 2 UrhDaG, in particular social media platforms and video platforms with user-generated content, can no longer rely on the exception in Section 10 TMG but are exclusively bound by the obligations under the UrhDaG. In order to meet these requirements, plat - forms tend to implement so-called upload filters.
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