Moodle illegal in Germany

Moodle illegal in Germany

by Richard Williamson -
Number of replies: 9

Hi

I have recently moved to teach at a school in Germany and have installed moodle internally in the school. I am in the process of arranging external access, but I have been told to put this on hold as Moodle may be illegal in Germany due to data protection laws. I think that this may be something to do with Moodle 2.0, as there are many current installations of Moodle 1.x in Germany.

I find this very difficult to believe, and I wondered if anyone else had come up against something similar.

Regards
Richard

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In reply to Richard Williamson

Re: Moodle illegal in Germany

by Mary Cooch -
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I've never heard of this and  I know lots of German Moodlers  involved in 2.0 and earlier! Hopefully some of them will come along shortly to respondsmile

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In reply to Richard Williamson

Re: Moodle illegal in Germany

by Jon Fila -

Is it because of the ability to make your site a hub? Couldn't that be turned off?

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In reply to Richard Williamson

Re: Moodle illegal in Germany

by Petr Skoda -
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Hello,

if you take a default installation it may not be compliant with some local regulations or data protection laws. You can however customise the settings or disable some functionalities, you may also have to change the server configuration. Each country is different and the laws are constantly changing.

You can find a lot more information in MDL-17205 , hopefully some other ppl involved in this project can explain the details and maybe help us again a bit with 2.0.x

Petr

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In reply to Richard Williamson

Re: Moodle legal in Germany

by Ralf Hilgenstock -
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Hi Richard,

as German Moodle partner I can say that this is not correct.  Data protection law in germany is complex. There is a federal law (for companies) and a state law for schools and universities.  Additional lots of datat protection officers create individual interpretation. Actually Moodle is the most used LMS in Germany specially in schools. There are more than 5.000 schools using moodle. Moodle is officially supported by several states. To say Moodle usage in Germany is illegal is wrong.

Contact me directly to analyse your problems and to find solutions.

Ralf Hilgenstock

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In reply to Richard Williamson

Re: Moodle illegal in Germany

by Henry Freye -

The Problem are the E-Mail-Adresses. It is forced, that for pupils under 18 you need a understatement from the parets.

(Sorry for terrible English)

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In reply to Henry Freye

Re: Moodle illegal in Germany

by Marc Grober -

This can be easily resolved by using e-mail addresses that are not functional. For example,  create a google app domain nd assign addresses to sudents from that domain,  but don't actually activate the address without parental approval.

A good rule of thumb is never believe anything an educator tells you about may or may not be illegal.....

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In reply to Henry Freye

Re: Moodle illegal in Germany

by Petr Skoda -
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Moodle requires something unique that looks like email, if you do not want real email addresses you can simply use fake local emails and disable smtp server, you may disable other messaging plugins too. Then of course you can not use new user signup, forum notifications, password reseting, etc.

You can also tweak the user edit forms and disable email editing. Moodle is open source, if it does not fit your needs you can always change it yourself and share the improvements with other users with similar requirements.

Petr

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In reply to Petr Skoda

Re: Moodle illegal in Germany

by Richard Williamson -

Thanks everyone. It looks like someone was feeding me some useless information. I'll try and track down exactly what their concerns are.

Regards
Richard

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