SPIEGEL Group General terms and conditions
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Dear reader,
Welcome to the digital services of the SPIEGEL Group. Here you will find the General Terms of Use of our website. These are updated regularly and apply in their current version as soon as you use our services, even without express acceptance.
If you wish to use services that require registration, you may have to agree to further conditions, which you will then be informed of.
- These include, for example, the special terms of use for our debate area and other general terms and conditions of business and delivery (SPIEGEL), general terms and conditions of business and delivery (manager magazin) and general terms and conditions of business and delivery (11Freunde) for fee-based content.
- For special offers such as media, reprint rights and syndication, there are also separate general terms and conditions, to which you will also be referred separately. Conditions of participation apply to events.
- Profile and usage data is also collected, analyzed and used in our offers - we explain how we protect your rights here in our privacy policy.
What we offer you and how you can use our services
We provide you with journalistic content that has been researched and deemed relevant by our editorial team on an ongoing basis. We offer you free and paid-for, so-called + articles, for which you must take out a digital subscription. You can also use the content on a monthly basis without advertising or advertising tracking against payment of a (surcharge) price. You can find more information on your possible consent to the storage and processing of data for personalized advertising with profiling etc. in our privacy policy (SPIEGEL), privacy policy (manager magazin) and privacy policy (11Freunde).
However you use our offer: There is no entitlement to specific content, topics, periodicity and/or quantities - all of this is at the discretion of the editorial team, which always aims to provide you with the best and most comprehensive information possible.
We make our content available to you via the World Wide Web so that you can access it using the latest versions of common Internet browsers. On a voluntary basis and without there being any entitlement to this, we also endeavor to make them accessible to you for as many other browsers, configurations, apps and platforms as possible. Here, too, the choice is at our discretion. Before concluding a contract, please check whether the hardware and software you are using allows you to use the services provided here.
We endeavor to ensure continuous availability of the content. However, for technical reasons and due to the dependence on external influences, e.g. in the context of telecommunications networks, uninterrupted availability of the platform cannot be realized. In particular, we occasionally carry out maintenance work on the systems we use to ensure operation and for the purpose of expanding our offer, which can lead to a temporary impairment of usability. As far as possible, we will carry out the maintenance work during periods of low usage.
In any case, you may not use technologies that enable the blocking and use of certain contractual, editorial or advertising content and services provided by us (cookie banner blockers, blocking of opinion polls, ad blockers). We also reserve the right to prevent automated use by bots, crawlers and mining.
What you should know about copyrights and intellectual property
All content on our website is the intellectual property of the SPIEGEL Group, protected by copyright and trademark law, unless it has been uploaded by third parties. Content posted by third parties is also not freely usable, but is protected as intellectual property for the respective user or rights holder.
You may use our content and that of third parties for private and educational purposes, but not publish it yourself or use it commercially. Even in the case of permitted private and educational use, the content may not be altered, in particular copyright notices or other references to third-party rights and/or property may not be removed.
Our prior consent is required for all other uses. As a rule, you will find information on how extended usage options can be licensed in the footer of our offers.
Would you like to acquire rights of use? Please contact our Syndication department. By telephone on +49 40 3007-3540, or by e-mail to syndication@spiegel.de . Further information and offers for the entire SPIEGEL Group can be found here .
When we assume liability and warranty
We are liable for damages arising from the use of the offers - also for the conduct of our legal representatives, executives and vicarious agents - in accordance with the statutory provisions, insofar as these were caused intentionally or through gross negligence, they are the result of the non-existence of a guaranteed quality of the service, they are based on a culpable breach of essential contractual obligations, they are the result of culpable injury to health, body or life, or for which liability is provided for under the Product Liability Act. Essential contractual obligations are those obligations whose fulfillment is essential for the proper execution of the contract and on whose compliance the user may regularly rely, and whose breach jeopardizes the achievement of the purpose of the contract. In the event of a merely negligent breach of a material contractual obligation, however, our liability shall be limited to such damages as are typically and foreseeably to be expected in the context of the provision of the agreed services. This limitation shall not apply if damages are the result of injury to health, body or life.
We expressly assume no liability for the accuracy, completeness, reliability, suitability, up-to-dateness or usefulness of the content. They are provided for general information purposes only. References, recommendations and information are non-binding. Any use of the content provided is at the user's own risk.
In principle, we are not liable for third-party content that can be accessed via the website - such as content from third-party websites to which links are provided or content published by users on our website. It is neither possible nor intended to constantly check such third-party content; however, it goes without saying that we distance ourselves from all content that is relevant under criminal or liability law or offends common decency. We will remove such content from our website immediately upon notification at the latest.
How we handle your registration
When you register with our digital services, we store personal data such as your name, address, e-mail address, chosen user name and password in a user account. This enables us to log you in and provide you with the offers for which you register in the first place. You can use a pseudonym as your user name so that other readers do not know your name.
Your user authorization after registration is only valid for you personally and only for non-automated use. It is not transferable. We have the right to technically secure personal use. This is done, for example, by limiting time-shifted use to a certain number of end devices (e.g. five) and simultaneous use to one end device. In these cases, a message is displayed and the first open session is automatically closed. Regional restriction of access (geo-blocking) and the use of other technologies are also possible. When registering, you must be at least 14 years old; in some cases you will be informed if you are older. You must provide true, accurate and complete information and keep it up to date. You are responsible for choosing a suitable secure password and keeping it confidential - please do everything possible and necessary to prevent misuse of your personal access to our services. If this does occur, please inform us immediately so that we can block your user account or solve the problem in another way.
In some legally defined cases (from the purposes of criminal prosecution and the enforcement of intellectual property rights to the fight against terrorism) and in the case of individual claims under civil law (for example in the case of insults, see Section 21 et seq. of the Act on Data Protection and the Protection of Privacy in Telecommunications and Telemedia (Telecommunications-Telemedia Data Protection Act - TDDDG)), we may disclose your personal data, for example your name and address, in response to a corresponding request for information. In absolutely exceptional cases, even access data, i.e. passwords, may be covered by such a request (see Section 23 TDDDG). In order to safeguard rights and provide effective access protection, we may also store usage data, such as the IP addresses of our users, and may have to disclose this data - if it is still available - as part of such a request (see Section 24 TDDDG).
How long these conditions apply
Our terms of use are updated regularly and apply in their current version as soon as you use our services, even without express consent. The place of performance and jurisdiction is Hamburg.
Version 2.1.0 [30.05.2024]
