Provision of Name and Address Data
Tags: address, adres, distribution, four-step test, lycos, Lycos/pessers, naam, name, name and address data, naw, naw-gegevens, pessers, provision of address details, residence, verstrekking, verstrekking naw-gegevens, vierstappentoets, woonplaats.
If you do not know who the person behind a certain wrongful act is, it is difficult to hold this person liable. Therefore, in some cases providers (and forums) may be required to provide a user’s name and address. In Dutch, the abbreviation for this information is NAW (which stands for the Dutch words for: name, address, city). This can be the case, for example, when someone infringes intellectual property rights on her website or when someone makes defamatory statements on a forum under a pseudonym.
Four – Step – Test
In the Lycos / Pessers case from 2005, the Supreme Court developed a four-step test that can be used to determine whether a provider has to present someone’s name and address details. The Supreme Court ruled that a refusal to provide the name and address details is contrary to the provider’s care towards a third party if the following circumstances arise:
“a. the possibility that the information, taken in isolation, is unlawful and harmful to the third party is sufficiently plausible;
b. the third party has a real interest in obtaining the name and address details;
c. it is plausible that in the specific case there is no less intrusive option to retrieve the name and address details; and
d. balancing the interests of the third party, the service provider and the website owner (if any) implies that the interest of the third party should prevail.”
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