§ 17. The press is not allowed to publish the bill of indictment or any other official documents accompanying criminal proceedings before they have been made known in public trial or before the proceedings have reached their conclusion.
§ 18. A fine of up to 1,000 marks or arrest or imprisonment for up to six months is imposed for:
1) infringements of the prohibitions included in §§ 14, 15, 16, and 17;
2) infringements of the regulations included in §§ 6, 7, and 8 that are committed when false details are knowingly provided.
The same penalty also applies to the publisher of a periodical publication if he knowingly allows a person to be wrongly designated as an editor of the publication.
§ 19. A fine of up to 150 marks or arrest is imposed for:
1) infringements of §§ 6, 7, and 8 that are not touched upon by § 18, item 2;
2) infringements of § 9;
3) infringements of §§ 10 and 11.
In the cases specified in item 3, prosecution only occurs upon request; additionally, the conviction and the sentence must order the inclusion of the submitted article in the following issue. If the unfounded refusal took place in good faith, then the sentence only demands the belated inclusion [of the submitted article]; there is no penalty and fines.
III. Responsibility for Criminal Acts Committed by the Press
§ 20. The general criminal laws already in existence will determine the responsibility for acts whose punishability is based on the content of printed matter. If the printed matter is a periodical, then the commissioning editor is to be punished as a perpetrator, unless the assumption of guilt is ruled out due to special circumstances.
§ 21. If the content of the printed matter meets the definition of a criminal act, then the commissioning editor, the publisher, the printer, and the person who commercially disseminated or otherwise distributed the printed matter (distributor) – provided they are not to be punished as perpetrators or accessories – are to be found negligent and sentenced to a fine of up to 1,000 marks or arrest or imprisonment in a fortress or jail for up to one year, unless they establish proof of having exercised due diligence or of circumstances that made the exercising thereof impossible.
Punishment, however, is ruled out for any of the persons specified if, prior to the pronouncement of the first sentence, he establishes that the author or contributor who consented to the publication of the printed matter, or that the editor (in case it is not a periodical publication), or that someone designated in sequence above is located within the jurisdiction of a judicial authority of a German federal state, or, if he is deceased, was located within the jurisdiction of a judicial authority of a German federal state at the time of publication; with respect to the distributor of foreign printed matter, punishment is also ruled out if the person has received it by way of the book trade.
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