‘Pay or OK’ at DER SPIEGEL: noyb sues Hamburg DPA

Forced Consent & Consent Bypass Following a complaint by noyb, the Hamburg data protection authority declared the use of controversial ‘Pay or OK’ systems to be permissible. However, the procedure raises considerable questions: Although the authority was in active dialogue with news magazine DER SPIEGEL, it did not hear the person concerned once during the proceedings. Many relevant facts were never investigated. In a parallel case, the authority is even said to have actively motivated a company to demand money for saying ‘no’ to the cookie banner. The person concerned has therefore filed a lawsuit against the data protection authority with the Hamburg Administrative Court. Background to ‘Pay or OK’. In the summer of 2021, the complainant submitted a GDPR complaint against the ‘Pay or OK’ banner on the website of DER SPIEGEL. At the time, he (and all other users) had to decide whether to allow the news magazine to use personal data or take out a paid subscription. The authority the