DENIC eG understands itself als central registry for DE-domains and thus as a neutral institution. We
consider us neither authorized nor competent to decide which domain names are morally acceptable for our
society. As long as a term in itself is not indictable, we do register it as a domain name. Responsible
for the domain name is the domain owner (see also the DENIC registration guidelines, which every
customer accepts as part of his domain ordering process).
Also, an important distinction has to be made between domain names and the content of web sites, which
are connected to this domain. The responsibility here lies primarily with the owner of the domain
and/or the provider of the content, too. In addition the law has provided for a certain amount of
accountability on the part of the ISP as well. DENIC is not responsible for the content of web sites and
can therefore not act in any way in this respect.
All attempts to remove certain extremistic or pornographic content from the net by using filters or
lists have failed. ISPs can only act upon them, when they are notified of their existence. Therefore, if
you find any questionable or possibly illegal content on a web site, please contact the domain owner
(via our whois query), the responsible Internet provider or a rating agency such as the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia FSM (E-Mail: hotline@fsm.de). DENIC and many of DENIC's members are members of the
FSM and live up to their social responsibility in this way.
Additionally DENIC eG is a founding member of "N@IIN - No abuse in
Internet", an initiative against abuse in the Internet.
DENIC eG is only responsible for registering and maintaining domains below the top level domain .de. IP networks,
sub-domains and hosts (e.g. www.domain.de, mail.domain.de, dialin.frankfurt.domain.de usw.) fall into the
responsibility of other organisations or the respective access providers. Thus DENIC eG can in no event directly
identify persons initiating spam-mails or hacker attacks or even block them or perform other actions.
We propose the following procedures for your research:
If you know the domain name oder sub-domain (below ".de"):
Identify owner or administrative contact (admin-c) in our whois-query.
Contact the owner or admin-c via email, fax or letter. In order to find out more on the basis of logfiles and
initiate the appropriate measures, they will need exact data (mail header, exact time/timezone, domain etc.).
Due to privacy considerations or other justified interests it is at first the provider's or domain owner's
decision, whether he gives you the actual personal data or initiates appropriate measures directly. If you have
incurred damages it would be advisable to get legal help.
If you know the IP address (e.g. 192.168.111.80):
With the command "nslookup 'IP address'", (e.g. nslookup 192.168.111.80) you can in many operating
systems find the respective domain, if reverse IP lookup has been configured. In this case you can continue according to
the above description.
The IP address space is currently administered by three different organisations. You can identify the owner or
administrative contact of a network with one of the following whois-queries:
Please contact the owner of the IP network or the admin-c via email, fax or letter. In order to find out more
on the basis of logfiles and initiate the appropriate measures, they will need exact data (mail header, exact
time/timezone, domain etc.).
Due to privacy considerations or other justified interests it is at first the provider's or domain owner's
decision, whether he gives you the actual personal data or initiates appropriate measures directly. If you have
incurred damages it would be advisable to get legal help.
Should you experience problems with a domain owner of a DE-domain during your research, you can contact us again and we
will try to moderate between you and the domain owner. If it is another top level domain than .de, then you can get the
information from the appropriate registry's whois-query interfaces. CENTR can tell you which registries
are responsible for which top level domains.
Before you pay anything you should check what service the fee applies to. Invoices for domain registrations and other
services related to your domain name are only sent by the provider you have mandated. DENIC will only send you
invoices if you are a customer of our service DENICdirect. Authentic DENIC invoices can be identified by examining
the letter-head. Furthermore all our letters include links to pages on our website, where more comprehensive or
additional information is located. Domain owners can use these links to find out in detail what the issue mentioned in
the letter is about.
There have been cases where domain owner were sent invoices from other companies. If this happens to you then you can
ignore such requests without any consequences for your domain. If you do not pay nothing will change with respect to
technical connectivity of your domain. Please consult your provider if you have doubts that an invoice you are sent
is justified.
Whois 
