&gt; <i>I hear things have gotten better in Frankfurt and you only have to provide an email address. How did they skirt this law?</i><p>By being run by companies that claim to be ISPs. What exactly counts as an ISP is at the core of the entire issue, because ISPs are protected from this. A company which only exists to provide internet access has a better standing (and better lawyers) to argue that it is an ISP, compared to a private person or a coffee shop owner.<p>Most coffee shops I use Wifi in thus have access points provided by such companies. They offer AP&#x2F;captive portal etc as a package and send the traffic through their systems, taking responsibility for it. (for good measure, some of them probably send the traffic out to the internet in other countries, to make it harder to harass them over it)