German privacy regulator orders Facebook to end its real name policy
Found on IT World on Tuesday, 18 December 2012
"This decree is binding," said Weichert, who added that it is unacceptable that a U.S. portal like Facebook keeps violating German data protection law. To ensure users' rights and comply with data protection law in general, the real name obligation must be immediately abandoned by Facebook, the ULD said.
"We believe the orders are without merit, a waste of German taxpayers' money and we will fight it vigorously," a Facebook spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. It is the role of individual services to determine their own policies about anonymity within the governing law, she added.
Sorry FB, I don't think it works this way. A company cannot decide what it wants to have when those demands are illegal. Using this reasoning, one could offer professional assassination services and argue that the laws stopping them from killing people do not apply because they are against their own policies. FB simply is against this demand because nicknames would mess up their data mining and selling of personal information.