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Court outlaws German Weather Service's free weather app
WetterOnline has won its case against Germany's national weather service. The company sued the service over the anti-competitive nature of its free weather forecast app.
The German Weather Service (DWD) will no longer be allowed to provide general weather forecasts in a free mobile phone app after a federal court ruled in favor of a private firm on Thursday.
[...] the national meteorological service will only be permitted to offer extreme weather warnings for free and that a DWD app offering general weather forecasts must contain advertisements or be purchased by users.
<sarcasm>
No national weather service could ever make a profit by giving away weather information for free.
</sarcasm>
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Court Outlaws German Weather Service's Free Weather App
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Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Saturday March 14 2020, @04:36AM (2 children)
Also if you look at the ruling it was on a technicality, the DWS "exceeded their mandate" meaning that for some inexplicable reason the folks who wrote the basic German laws in 1949 forgot to mention Android apps. D'oh!
So all it needs as a fix is whatever the German equivalent of an Order in Council is to extend their mandate to cover Android apps.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @09:09AM
Exactly. Which means that the ruling is correct. What is needed is the government needs to pass a law that states that DWS can provide weather service for all Germany to all irrespective of the media, not just radio or TV forecast. Otherwise DWS could start doing other things, like providing weather education in childhood books (writing kid stories competing with others). The scope of public institutions need to be in-check as the feature creep is not always a good thing. (think, police "feature creep")
This is one of the main differences between Civil Law and Common Law courts. In Common Law, the judge would most likely "update" the interpretation of the law to include modern data services. In Civil Law, there is not much leeway on this.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @01:45PM
If I am not wrong, this ruling has come from the court of Karslruhe which is basically the SUPREME-SUPREME court. It was setup after WW2 to ensure the government doesn't overstep its bound (again). So I would say, this is a good ruling.