If an IP address is a personal date, then a mailbox company is a single merchant
With the Breyer decision (C-582/14), the European Court of Justice decided that the IP address of the Internet connection, from which a user accesses a provider's website, is a personal date. The Federal Court of Justice follows this assessment (VI ZR 135/13).
The current Google Fonts custody wave shows that this assessment is wrong.
Let's put the case at the level of the shipment with the mouse.
The following has happened. With a server - a service provider - a letter comes to: "Here house 157! Please, very great website server, send the blueprint for the website full -follewebsite.de to house 157." The server then sends the blueprint for the great website to house 157. And because the window is open at the house 157 from which the requirement was sent, the server can take the blueprint there. The construction plan says: "In order for the website to look really chic, you still have to ask Google's server to send you beautiful letters." And in the construction plan there is also the address of Google's server.
Now you can think about whether it is nasty from the very great website server to tell people in house 157, where there are the beautiful letters. But that doesn't matter to them anyway. You ask, without any further thinking, to send the server from Google to the beautiful letters into the house 157: "Dear Google, here house 157. Please send us the beautiful letters into the house 157." That's how it happens.
Afterwards, people in house 157 can use the construction plan to recreate the website.
Now the surprised question: Why is the information "House 157", which was only sent to the very great website server and then to Google's server, according to the verdict of the European Court of Justice as a personal date?
"House 157" initially only refers to the place where the great server should deliver the blueprint and Google the beautiful letters. House 157: A property designation. No personal name.
Well. The servers could ask the land registry who belongs to the property with the address "Haus 157". However, you do not receive any information from the land registry. Because a legitimate interest of the two servers is not apparent. The land registry knows who the house belongs. But this information is irrelevant for the server. You don't want to know who belongs to the house. You want to know who is interested in the construction plan and the beautiful letters in the house 157. But of course the land registry doesn't know that.
The servers also do not receive any information from the residents' registration office, because there they would have to give the name of the person that they desire information and then learn their address - but not the other way around.
Now the European Court of Justice's beginners' error comes into play: The European Court of Justice - edge number 47 of its judgment - is thinking of a events that have actually not taken place: a cyber attack.
So: if within a very short time from the house 157 Drölfig Fantastagelliarden, inquiries about the construction plan of the website or the beautiful letters had been sent to the servers, so that they would have collapsed under the load of inquiries, then one could consider that the servers would have a legitimate interest in finding out who the owner of the house 157. You could then ask this who is up to mischief in house 157.
But - at least in the case that was presented to the European Court of Justice - no cyber attack took place. According to the rule of law, there was no way for the servers to bring the address "Haus 157" together with a clearly identifiable person who asked about the blueprint or the beautiful letters.
But even if the cyber attack had taken place, and the servers rightly found out that the clearly identifiable person XY is owner of house 157, information "Haus 157" would not be a personal date. A personal date would be that person XY the owner of house 157. But "House 157" is and remains the address of a property. And if you are up to mischief in house 157, who wanted to have the blueprint and the beautiful letters, the two servers still don't know.
Conclusio:
An IP address is nothing more than an "address", namely the address of an internet connection.
If you see it differently, you must not complain about mailbox companies. Because Mossack Fonseca knows which person uses the respective mailbox in a concrete manner. Just like the land registry knows the property owner and the Internet access provider the connecting holder.
But the postman only sees what the mailbox is called.
