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French Court To Yahoo!: Dump Nazi-Related Auctions
frinsore, John Leeming and several other readers passed on word of the decision of a French court that Yahoo is responsible for making it impossible for French citizens to access auctions featuring Nazi-related items. As John writes, "It appears France is now defining censorship on U.S. Web sites; in particular, Yahoo! and its auction sites. For all those who have in the past believed immunity of action exists because you live in a different country or under different laws, this CNN/Reuters article is an interesting glimpse into future international jurisdiction problems for the Internet, and why we need to watch for the manner in which governments decide to deal with it." Here's NewsBytes' coverage of the same story.
i dunno, any country that allows boobs on TV is okay with me.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Fascinating! Then the Russians were the Good Guys too! And to think of all those years of Cold War, brought on us by such a blatant misunderstanding of GoodGuyhood!
(Let's nuke the moon: that'll *prove* we're the good guys)
What we need to do. . .
/. before?
/. message count rises past the 650 mark. . .
How many times have we heard THIS phrase on
some recent examples:
We need to set up our own domain registrar.
We need to buy an island and set up our own free government.
We need to do this,
we need to do that -
I can see where it comes from - the burden of living in a Microsoft world, well, let's roll our own OS, and escape the hegemony.
Too bad it doesn't work that way for everything.
There are some absolutes in the world. The fact is that not everyone in the world will agree on where to draw the censorship line, but I think pretty much everybody agrees that there IS a line that needs to be drawn somewhere (except pedophiles). Maybe everyone needs their own line, or maybe what the world needs is a dictator to take over, and tell everyone where the line IS. Until that happens, this will always be an ugly unresolvable mess, and you can easily see that, as the
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That's fine. I promise I will not move to France and sell Nazi relics. But if they don't want their citizens buying the stuff from me, it is /their/ responsibility to stop it. I won't help their citizens get around their blocks, but I certaintly won't do their work for them.
;)
Oh, and personally - I would be livid if the US tried to tell a foreign corporation that was selling child porn that they had to stop. They can ask if they want. If it's a US citizen, or a US company, then they can get the person or seize assets in the US. And, IMHO, that applies to child porn, drugs, Nazi materials, and MP3's.
If the US (or France) wants to stop it that badly, then let the US try to enforce it inside their own borders. Not that I will always agree with them, but at least then they are staying within their jurisdiction.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
I might be one of the few people who think that the bomb actually saved lives. The allied powers were preparing a MASSIVE attack force. The Japanese were prepared to fight to the finish. Men, women and children were willing to fight for the cause.
Even AFTER the two atomic bombs were dropped, the Japanese were not willing to surrender. Only after the emperor said "enough of this" did they back down. From what I hear, the emperor never actually said the word "surrender" (translated, of course) to the Japanese people.
If those two bombs had not been dropped, fighting would have gone on for many more months, even years. The Japanese people would have been completely decimated. (Assuming they would never agree to an unconditional surrender.)
I am willing to bet that it even saved Japanese lives compared to what would have happened if the war waged on. It obviously saved Allied lives. All those men who were ready to attack mainland Japan were not on the line anymore.
-- Thrakkerzog
I first got worried about this sort of thing back when I heard a presentation by Herbert Schiller on NPR called "The Corporate Packaging of the Public Mind". Basically, it was a warning cry that the content controllers, the corporations who have the greatest effect on the very way we think were focusing their efforts on consolidating control of information production and distribution. He was very upset about the "recent" merger of Time and Warner, if this gives you any idea of how long ago this was. His warning has been pretty much ignored. Just to give you an example: How long do you think Brittany Spears will retain her present popularity? Wasn't Mariah Carey in that spot just a few months ago? For a period there, I used to get their names mixed up. Anyway, the answer is that she will remain popular just as long as revenue from her so-called art flows at a fast enough rate for the content controllers. As soon as the revenue rate drops below some value, the content controllers will drop the newest "teen phenomenon" on the boards and Miz Spears will be a thing of the past. Heck, New Kids on the Block. Remember them? Glad they died off, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. The content controllers have the ability to basically reprogram us in order to achieve maximum revenue flow, and I see few people outside of Slashdot who are even aware that there's a problem.
I was hoping that people would see the dangers and that some sort of grassroots resistance would spring up. The chilling fact brought home to me by the Lessig speech is that if we don't get our heads out of our collective rear ends, we won't get another chance. The new architecture that the content controllers are willing to impose on the net will basically make resistance impossible. And open source, freedom, and all the other Geek values we cherish will die out except for those who are willing to face being branded criminals.
I don't have an easy solution. We Geeks as a group have got to get our butts out on the line and do what is necessary. Donations to the EFF and then going back to watching TV aren't going to cut it.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Line by line response...
/very/ far cry from 99.99999999%. Exagerating your claim does nothing to help your credibility.
/they/ can do the filtering. Once they stop overstepping their bounds, the rest is an internal issue - which, while I may have my own opinions towards, I recognize that it is France's issue, and I do not have the right to jump up and down screaming about it.
1) Who cares? Or, put a little more kindly, I don't care if the French make it a requirement that all web pages have a footer that says "The US is a bunch of arrogant snots." In their own country, they can enforce that. Outside of their country, they can shove it. Likewise, if a French web hosting company is posting something illegal in the US, then the US can just deal.
2a) I respect their opinions. I am deeply offended by their demand that a US company spend a great deal of effort to comply with their opinions on what is "right."
2b) Agreed perfectly. Does not change jurisdiction issues in the slightest.
3) Flat wrong. What about museums? US history books occasionally show samples of Nazi propoganda to hammer home the point of just how bigotted these people were. Even if I granted you that 80% were Nazi jerks, that's a
And for your closing statement:
I, too, just want to keep this in perspective. In a large sense, this has nothing to do with censorship. It has to do with jurisdiction. Everyone (or so it seems) bashes the US for overstepping it's jurisdiction (and rightly so - often times, what the US does is WRONG, regardless of the motivation). Likewise, France has done the same stunt - and I will stand as firm as stone in my statement that they are wrong, it is not in their jurisdiction, and if they want it filtered, then
My 2c.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
I also salute you and your countrymen. In ALL of occupied Europe, only Denmark stood up to the Nazis and saved their Jews and other "undesirables". IIRC, King Christaan (sp?), stated that the Jews of Denmark were Danes, and he wore the yellow star himself to prove the point.
Denmark and the Danes deserve a special place in history for all time for those acts.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What if I decided to stand on a street corner and induce everyone to start killing all of the black people around there, and they did?
There's a great bar in Chicago on North Avenue called "The Exit"
That is a great bar. Ah, the days of my youth. Bud-n-mud. Sex-n-violence night. Gwar concerts. Gigi Allen concerts. That was before it moved to North Avenue tho.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I would be pretty disturbed if someone had death-camp memorabilia, I'd rather those be in museums, but there are a few legitimate reasons to have them, so why d*ck with them?
There's a great bar in Chicago on North Avenue called "The Exit" that has all kinds of death camp memorabilia (gas masks, etc.) hanging above the bar. It is a punk/fetish dive, and while I'm pretty sure all of the "paraphanalia" actually came from an Army Surplus Store (and not a Nazi death camp) the motif is pretty clear.
Does this offend people. Almost certainly. That is part of the idea (and part of the place's charm, as an aging punk dive). They also serve a disgusting mix of Jaegermeister and Schnapps called a "Dead Nazi."
Censorship is never the answer - if the paraphanalia is being used for hate speach, you merely drive such speach underground and outlaw legitimate uses, including such effective countermeasures as mockery and paradoy. Remember Castle Wolfenstein? Banned in Germany because of the swastika flags in the background, despite the fact that the hero (you) was running around shooting Nazis, rather the opposite of singing "Deutschland Ueber Alles" I would say. Clearly even the best intended and most justifiable forms of censorship run amok, given enough time and the diversity of human experience and expression.
The answer, instead of censorship, is to meet hate speach where it occurs head on, with intelligent counter-arguments, mockery, social stigmatization, and all of the other tools we as human beings have to encourage and even pressure people to change their offensive behavior without trampling on their civil rights.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Long distance telecommunications have been deregulated for quite a long time in France, and there are quite a few companies providing such services.
Furthermore, you seem to confuse the opinion of a single judge in a lower court and the opinion of the legislative body or the cabinet of ministers. For instance, when I talk about the United States, I take care of not presenting the opinion of, say, governor Bush of Texas as "the will of the United States".
Freedom of speech, to be meaningful, must apply first and foremost to speech which is 'offensive' or 'hurtful'. To ban something because someone else finds it unpleasant is the heart and soul of censorship. The fatwah placed on Rushdie was justified by some on the grounds his books deeply wounded the feelings of devout Muslims -- which, of course, they did. So smegging what? Hurt feelings do not justify censorship. The international nature of the net means only two answers are possible:Either the laws of the most restrictive nation on the net apply to all nations, or the laws of the LEAST restrictive nation on the net apply to all nations. I unhesitatingly support the latter. As for those who don't like it -- too bad. Your computer, just like your television and radio, is equipped with an 'off' switch.
Of course, they're not gonna have the guts to do that.
What this judgement really illustrates is the balance French jurisprudence is seeing between freedom of speech and its aftereffects. No one seriously believes that collectors of these items are all closet Nazi freaks, hankering after a walk in the park with old Adolf (having met some of these collectors, I cannot lump them into the same category too easily). But what the French court is worried about, and with good reason, are those fascist-leaning bully boys with little in the way of brains and big on the use of fists.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I agree with the French on this at all. But this case reveals that the French judge who decided this thinks very little of their national customs service and their ability to control access to these items. It also puts the onus of restricting access to these items on Yahoo, and for that reason alone is completely unworkable. Consider their alternatives, though. The other options, such as instructing their customs people to open every single package destined for France from Yahoo, are just as impossible given resource constraints and cost the government more in a direct fashion. Getting to that stage socially is only possible with one of these legal moves, as impossible as it alone is.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
I guess the this whole article answers this one: Ask Slashdot: Can Web Sites Go Offshore For Free Speech?
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
There are several things I'd like make clear for /. readers :
- this is not the french govt suing. Yahoo is sued by 2 anti-racist organizations
- this is not "France trying to rule the Internet". Yahoo France is a registered company here, and the problem was because these auctions were accessible from the yahoo.fr portal.
I usually don't agree with censorship, neither do I agree with racism or nazism. But due to various immigration and racism problems, France has passed several laws that forbids such things as "incentive to hatred racial" (sorry for the poor translation).
We have most of the same censorship problems that you experience in the US. The rules are simply a little bit different. As our history is.
Lots of things are allowed in France and are not in the US...
You might want to look up the dates of "The Battle of Stalingrad" and "The Battle of Kursk" before you spout off about sleeping through history class. You also might want to compare the relative troop strengths of the US and Russian Armies, and the relative troop strengths of the German armies in France and Western Europe in 1944.
The cake is a pie
An important point has to be made. Who's exactly been sued and condemned ?
;-)
Well, for once, France has not embarked in yet another overseas crusade as the article seems to infere. The defendant was not Yahoo.com (US) but its French subsidiary, Yahoo.fr. What is "innovative" in this decision is that Yahoo.fr, in France, has been found liable for facts taking place in the US.
The substantiation behind this de facto solidarity is not simply that Yahoo.com is a major investor in Yahoo.fr. It would completly contradict the European dogma on strict respect of national sovereignty and opposition to cross-border legislations (e.g. D'Amato act). Instead, it was found that, as Yahoo.fr points to Yahoo.com's services (including the offending auctions) and integrates them as a part of its own content, among things, as part of its search engines, Yahoo.fr is, as a consequence, a willfull contributor to the offense.
If Yahoo.fr's content was completly separate from Yahoo.com or if Yahoo.fr was making some serious effort to filter nazi paraphernalia out of its search results (and links), there would no offender to prosecute in France.
So why can't Yahoo.fr use a safe harbor disculpation ? First, there's no well-established doctrine about that in France, and that sometime leads to fairly stupid results. See what happened to altern.org last year. More compeling, the relations between Yahoo.com and Yahoo.fr are not simply passive, as an independant (and blind) search engine would be. This integration of US content in Yahoo.fr offer is a result of a voluntary and highly publicized strategy of cross-licensing and integration.
If an otherwizely independant French portal, say www.MonBeretBasqueEtMaBaguette.fr, had the same pattern of cross-licensing with Yahoo.com and was also actively indexing nazi stuff from Yahoo.com, the liability would be exactly the same.
The whole affair has nothing to do with an insidious overreach of sovereignty, and is in fact strictly Franco-Frenchy
So they can put headers in the IP packets. Yahoo should give a rat's ass because??? France needs to filter material coming into it's country. It needs to scan it's networks for incoming material from Yahoo. If it involves Yahoo's French servers than yes, they can make legitimate legal claims if those servers are located in France. By the way where are these French servers? Are they located in France? Are they servers located in America and simply translated into French? If these are American servers based in America than Yahoo should say "piss off". It is France's responsibility to monitor in/out traffic within its borders. This responsibility does not rest on the shoulders of companies outside of France.
Well France has been occupied for 5 years with no freedom of press, freedom of speech and with the obligation to serve the Nazi cause. Maybe it's just because we like our freedom of speech so badly that we have lost for 5 years, we don't want to see US peoples making money from racist symbolic items.
--- Bouh !!! ---
Imagine a world in which the mediocrity of what we see is dictated not by a single confused entity, but by a committee. A committee of nations is a bad plan. Especially when it seems that there is very little communication. All the diplomacy I have seen to date has been everyone yelling," Do it my way now."
My professor used to say that governments are like children. Now, imagine the web controlled by fascist third graders
Well said! Never mind the foreign laws are generally written in the naturalized language, not necessarily yours or mine! I think that if we could agree that the location of the server (not the author, but the server, as there can be many of the former but one of the latter) dictates which laws its content (and, thus, the author of that content) falls under, we'd all be much happier. As for all those people who worry about the creation of a country without content restrictions, the solution is pretty simple: don't allow (ie: firewall) your citizens/employees/students/etc to connect to hosts in that country! If you (as a legistator or voter) don't like the idea that in Country x one can post a racist webpage without fear of legal backlash, don't allow connections to that country. If people could agree on this, the problem would be non-existent: If you don't like it, censor it for your own people. If you don't believe in censoring, don't censor. The heart of the solution is that the IP number registries (not the domain registries) contain the country information. ARIN has the US numbers, RIPE has Europe, and so on. Turning up the resolution on the registration information so that it could be collated by country doesn't seem to be a monumental task (just a ``small matter of programming''). Am I smoking $3 crack, or does this make sense to the rest of you?
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
No wonder people hate the French...
No, people don't hate the French. Anymore than they hate any other country. All countries around the world make mistakes. Look at the US. Look at Britain. My god look at the US and our censorship problems! The UK and us have ECHELON, for God's sake. Going on about what country is hated, or deserves being singled out for hate, is bigotry in motion - and it leaves you and your nationality wide open to be judged yourself. (BTW I'm a hard core American.)
Hell, During WWII 90% of the French people were yellow-bellied German collaborators. The whole stinking EU would be speaking German today if it wasn't for the USA bailing the 'Allies' out TWICE this century. The Euro-Peons deserve each other.
Oh, now this is a great way to express the principles by which we decry the racism of Naziism. By dissing the Europeans like this, and singing the "America is K-Rad 31337 and we Ruulz all over you weak europeans" jingosong, you're showing the world how bigoted you are. In fact, it is remarks like this that make America a hated country!
Of all the evil things Hitler can be blamed for, at least he beat the shit out of the French.
Oh I bet this troll thought that was funny. (Where are the moderators when ya need 'em?) I don't think the sad nature of this remark needs be explained...do you?
(I can go on for quite a while with more example posts, but I won't. Y'all get the point.)
The sad part is this stuff isn't getting marked or replied to as flamebait - at least it wasn't as of my writing this piece of protestdrivel. So where is all the anti-racism now? Speaking of stereotypes, don't y'all think this will reflect badly on slashdot posters as a whole?
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
There's also a reverse swastika in Hopi petroglyphs, and in Japan, I think it's a symbol for either good luck or bad luck, but there was a Japanese pokemon card (Gengar, I think) that had this symbol on it, and mothers' groups raised a big stink, not realizing that A: it was a reverse image (the thing spun the other way), and B: it was a Japanese cultural thing, not German.
This is the kind of thing that results from ignorance. If you burn all the Nazi flags, no one will know what a real swastika looked like, then we'll all be ignorant.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The Holocaust was the plan by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews. Not to exterminate the French, nor to exterminate the Germans. I think what I wrote was clear enough.
Last time I checked, the following things were true:
1) It is not illegal to be neo-Nazi in the US
2) It is not illegal to traffic in Nazi memorabilia in the US
3) Yahoo! is a US-based company
4) Yahoo! has violated no US laws
Therefore, I don't see any problem as far as Yahoo! is concerned. As far as the French are concerned, I say let people be assholes. If they want to be Nazi worshipper idiots, let them. Just because it offends people isn't a good enough reason. There are WWII survivors in the US and there are people who spend their days dress as a Nazi in the US. The country is big enough that they don't frequently mix. So, the Nazis don't cause any problems, and we don't restrict their right to be dumbass Nazis.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Yeah, I did read the whole post, and I wasn't ranting about your comment about the Russians, which I totally agree with. I was specifically talking about the "If it weren't for the good old US of A" part.
Who was it that said something to the effect "I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
...
:)))
Ahem... it was the French philosopher
Wow, just too funny that you quote a Frenchman to illustrate the American position on free speech vs the French position
I read the press trying to get a few hard facts on the said court ruling. All I got is from imprecise sources such as newspapers, so take it with a grain of salt.
- The ruling is a summary injunction (référé), which means that it has been issued by a single judge.
- The matter has not yet been appealed to a court of appeal. We should probably wait until such things get appealed to the supreme court (cour de cassation) before we conclude that French jurisprudence has been defined with respect to sites abroad selling forbidden material. Unfortunately, with the current overload of the supreme court, it should take several years.
- As with the Georgia Tech case, the lawsuit was not brought by the government but by private nonprofit associations, LICRA (International League against Racism and Antisemitism) and UEJF (Union of Jewish Students of France). Therefore it is wrong to conclude anything from this case about the position of either the president, the cabinet, the national assembly or the senate. They apparently ask for reparations in accordance with article 48.2 of the (revised) law on the Press of 1981 which allows a nonprofit association whose statutory goals include fighting racism to ask for reparations even though the association is no direct victim.
- Apparently, the motive of the lawsuit is article 24 of the same law, which prohibits inciting discrimination, hatred or violence against a person or a group of persons because of their origin or their belonging or non-belonging to an ethnic group, a nation or a determined religion (punishable by one year of prison and/or a 300,000 FRF fine, not precluding the civil damages). Means of such incitation to hatred include drawings or emblems (article 23).
So we have two different issues here:Furthermore, as far as I know, are exempt from the ban prints of such items for education or scholarly research. I do not know where this comes from legally. Surely indeed, some public libraries, including the National Library of France have printouts of Mein Kampf available for readers!
I therefore think the Slashdot community should wait and see further progress in the case; jumping to conclusions is clearly overreacting.
eBay's mentality is such that they want to be perceived as doing it better and cleaner than their competitors.
Being the largest Net auction site everyone is going to want to take a shot at them. Blocking the Adults Only section from Australian residents is both an attempt to be appearing to do the right thing by the "community" and also to make sure that their arse is so clean that not even a hint of litigation comes their way.
The laws were, and are still, a little hazy with regards to who is responsible for the content. It only takes one High Court judge, as has happened in France, to make an ill informed decision and eBay's in a whole lot of hurt.
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
yall(1)
NAME
USAGE
DESCRIPTION
On the second; I'm not saying that these books are banned (sorry if I implied it). However, all of these are books with strong 'racist overtones'. In the case of Nietzsche and Hegel, both were misinterpreted to justify the nazis' actions. The law, as I understand it, is worded vaguely enough that almost anything objectionable could be a target.
This is not a cultural question, nor is sensitivity to the of world war 2. All countries seems to have their collective head up their asses these days when it comes to internet issues; France just made the latest mistake.
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
This is no different than businesses bowing to pressure from pressure groups in this country -- for example, companies with racially insensitive executives getting pressured by groups headed by the Reverend Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Yahoo saw potential lost business, and no doubt a potentially expensive lawsuit and acted accordingly -- and correctly, in my opinion.
Exactly what are these groups doing that is so outlandish in exerting pressure on Yahoo? This is no different than what happens in this country when a particular interest group puts pressure on a company. But rather than cheering the anti-war activists for getting a major win against big bad ol' corporate Yahoo and getting them to act somewhat in a moral manner, instead we cry and whine that "every last little thing should be out there on the internet, all the time, whenever we want, even if it's something I find morally repugnant like Nazi memerobilia".
Selling Nazi stuff is exploiting war and human tragedy for personal wealth is IMO morally wrong, and personally I'm happy there are people fighting against this -- legally.
I just openly wonder if so many of the /. readers would feel so strongly about the issue if the objects in question were, say, child pornography instead of Nazi memerobilia.
- Chuck the Bond King
And I don't really see your connection. What exactly do you mean by your relating TV manipulation and personal liberties? Are you saying that we have freedoms but are being pushed and prodded by the consumer culture? That we are automatons who have the freedom to do what we want, as long as it is from Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger (sp)?? If that's the case, then again, I don't think you're giving us enough credit.
Actually what I said is posted. It goes back to people like Erich Fromm in 1941, hardly new. Unless people choose to step outside the box, they let themselves be herded into conformity. It's so easy because without making a concrete choice to do otherwise, one is indeed just going along. And the folks being targeted by large corporations' legal flunkies, folks like those at 2600, are among those who step outside the box.
OK, that much I posted last round. Now I'll add something: we have a myth in our (American) society of how independent and individual we all are. The tough and independent Marlboro Man lighting up. Right. The group of people who read and post on a venue such as slashdot are (IMHO) more likely to think outside the mainstream culture than a lot of other collections of people, but the fact remains that our consumer culture runs deep. Look at Wired Magazine, which went from being a pretty innovative publication in its first year to being a sort of cybercultural GQ today. It's a very slippery slope, because American mass culture coopts and digests; this is why many educated folks abroad despise it even as they partake of it.
Am I idealizing the French or anyone else? Hell no. The French elite think Jerry Lewis is one of the most brilliant people of all time. Go figure. And your point about Euro. soccer fans is very well taken!
Does it really matter that the people around you are wearing the latest Polo styles and drive C5s and Beamers? As long as you stay true to yourself.
Branding and particulars of material consumption are just the surface of the problem. Think about it. How many people go to universities not so much to learn as simply to get their ticket punched to get a decent job so they can sustain a particular lifestyle? Why is there an epidemic of teenaged depression in this country? "True to yourself" is a good ideal, but without learning to be critical of one's culture, it can be hard to know what "yourself" is.
I'm not a pessimist, though, I'm interested in what the AdBusters and CultureJammers are doing, trying to get people to look at their culture critically, using the same tools that Madison Avenue uses to keep people from looking. It's long overdue.
Dave
Ok, so we just have to let people sell nude kid pictures or movies otherwise we are attacking their freedom.
--- Bouh !!! ---
Does the phrase "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" mean anything to you.
A couple of years ago a man doing talks denying that the Holocaust happened tryed to enter my country (Australia) and was refused. Many people, myself included, thought he should have been allowed to enter. I thought this not only because he should have a right to free speech (not a constitutional right in my country), but also because his ideas should have been held up to public scrutiny.
In 200 years, after everything about the Nazi's has been erased from french history books (ypothetically speaking), who will stop another right-wing party from gaining power, another dictator? After all a strong leadership has many advantages for a country during hard times, you can always return to a normal government when things get better, right?
Personally, I'm offended by the sale of books on e-bay, after all information wants to be free. They'd better stop it or else.
Well, would you buy stuff from the Columbine shooting? Stuff from that building (in Oklahoma(sp?)) they blew up? Stuff from a 747 detonated by terrorists?
Maybe you would, but if you had someone close to you killed because of those, you probably wouldn't.
I'm sure if you talked to all of the survivors of the Columbine shooting and the relatives of those who died, you'd find a number of them with some sort of momento of the attack. It's part of the grieving process for some people.
There's a half-wrecked piece of the federal building in Oklahoma still standing at the memorial to the attack, commemorated just this past April 19th. Almost all of the relatives of those who died have been to the site, and many unrelated people see it daily.
The "probably wouldn't" part of your statement is a huge assumption. Let people live their lives as they choose. To deny people to see the past just because it may be disconcerting to someone somewhere is insane.
"Your freedom to move your arm ends where my nose begins."
I agree that Internet access must be free and open to everyone, but please note that I am posting as an Anonymous Coward.
And that means that *everything* is permitted, no matter how appalling: children being tortured, Nazi items, White Supremacist bullshit and instructions on where to get and how to use date rape drugs.
The only reason I'm willing to go along with such freedom is because all the other alternatives are worse: governments have a strong interest in keeping their populations (and others) uninformed, partly informed or misinformed for the best interest of those governments, not of their people.
Eisenhower risked U2 flights over the former USSR because he never wanted another "Pearl Harbor" sneak attack. I never want another successful disinformation campaign by my government or by any other. But never forget there is a price.
Rommel's Iron Cross == Artifact
1999 neo-nazi regalia != artifact
perhaps you weren't listening. They're not trading cards and hate speech, they're trading historical artifacts, items that *were there* at a point in history.
Items that have stories to tell. History often isn't pretty, but we can't pick and choose what stories to hear, and destroy all evidence of the rest.
Freedom of speech is absolute. There are no exceptions. You have the right to say whatever you want, unless you are infringing someone else's rights.
This doesn't derive from some bullshit "endowed by their creator" crap. It derives from the simple fact that no one has any basis for a right to silence me. If you say you have a right to tell me I can't be a racist, it's your place to justify it. You have no more right to tell me I can't go around saying "aryans uber alles" than I do to tell the jehovah's witness they can't go around saying "refuse transfusions".
If those items are causing grief to any individual, that individual should grow some thicker skin, or should bury their head in the sand. The holocaust happened. Ignoring it won't undo it. There are neo-nazis in France. Telling them they can't use the internet to communicate won't make them decent people.
What you are advocating is mind control. It's forcing your particular world view on everyone. Isn't this exactly the problem with the nazis to begin with? Maybe we should burn all books advocating censorship?
If you think anyone, any county, any collection of bullies who call themselves "parliament" or "congress" or the "diet" or the "pope" has a right to censor anyone, tell me why. Where does he get this right? If the french have the right to prohibit sales of nazi memorabilia, do you think the Ayatollah has a right to prohibit the sale of Salman Rushdie's work?
Does anyone have the right to censor anyone else, or not? Only some people? How do we know who has a right to censor what? Do we come and ask you whenever it comes up? I mean, I'm glad you could clear it up that this particular instance is one in which the people we don't like should be censored, but what about other situations? Like, should people who say der Fuehrer is a little on the nutty side be sent to the camps as well? How about people who say Mao isn't all that great?
Does it depend on where the people live? I mean, does the Ayatollah's jurisdiction to prohibit Salman Rushdie from writing only apply to people in Iran buying Rushdie's books, or to anyone anywhere buying a book originally written in Iran, or only off a website hosted in Iran?
As an atheist, I'm offended by about 99% of all religious sites on the web. Does this mean they should be taken down? As a libertarian, I'm offended by assholes like you who think they have the right to dictate their morality to the whole fucking world. Do I have the right to ask Rob to yank your account and delete this post?
The sad thing is that most of the people on the planet think that you are being reasonable. I wish I could live somewhere else. My options for other countries to move to are even being eroded as the UN and other international organizations further homogenize the planet. The US seems the best place to live right now, but that's sort of like saying "I'd rather have the picture of the man being beheaded on my wall than the one of the child being run over by a lawn mower".
Before you advocate this moralistic imperialism, I urge you to consider whether your morals are any more objective than anyone elses, and what would happen if everyone attempted to force their morals on everyone else like you are encouraging.
--Kevin
Exactly...Or, as someone else has said: "He who forgets the passed. Is condemed to repeat it."
Censorship is just a half-assed solution to big problems. And half-assed solutions never work.
I'm personally fascinated by the Nazi era. An entire nation was brainwashed to believe that the source of all of their problems lay in the Jewish religion, and they were taught to mercilessly persecute Jews without question. How?.
You or I could have been in the same position - a member of the German military, ordered to instruct a group of Jews to dig a large hole so that we could later execute them and bury them in that which they dug. Thousands of people did this. Why?.
Would you have stopped and realized the absolute immorality of your acts, regardless of your peer's beliefs that these actions were moral?
Are you sure?
Don't try to delete the Nazi era. Don't try to censor it, hide it, or forget it.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
But just because they're now unpopular doesn't mean they're right. Now, don't get me wrong, I value free speech too. I completely understand why we should allow people to hold Neo-Nazi rallies -- it's their right to state their positions, and if we try to stifle that, we're only going to add more fuel to their fire.
The problem here is that this isn't just a free speech issue. People are actually buying the items being offered for sale (presumambly, or they wouldn't have auctioned off in the first place); there's a big difference there. This isn't just "stating your opinion", it's "taking action based on your opinion". The former is harmless, the latter is a real-world action that can actually lead to harm.
For example, suppose a KKK member decided to burn a Jewish's man house as a way of showing his (the KKK member's) beliefs. You can argue that the KKK member should be able to, as it's part of his right to free speech -- but, c'mon, the Jewish guy lost his house. We can't allow one extremist individual to take away from the rights of everyone else.
There are times when your free speech becomes secondary to others' rights. Just like we wouldn't want arch-conservative Southern hicks deciding to start up their own slave plantation this summer, we shouldn't let Neo-Nazis commandeer a public forum and use it to attack Jewish citizens. This is an "action", not a "speech", and should be judicized accordingly.
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
Most of what we gave Russia (some of it pre-Pearl Harbor, BTW), was stuff Britain couldn't have easily used. It was mainly food (which Britain had enough of) and trucks (which Britain had neither the manpower nor land-front to use).
"Let them" have Eastern Europe is an iffy question given that the Soviets outnumbered the US/British forces by a huge margin. The Russians had twice as many battle deaths as we had living soldiers in both fronts. That should tell you something about the size of their army. And at the time, we didn't particularly have the technological superiority we would during the cold war.
The cake is a pie
This is not about nazi related things, this is about making money with Nazi goodies. You just have to understand what it is to be under the control of a racist country for 5 years with no freedom of speech, freedom of press, etc... Also 6 millions peoples have died from those ideas. Even if the ideas are bad the French govt allow them, just not the sell of goodies.
Just remember that with money you can gain power. The French govt don't want to have an another Nazi country taking over an another one and impose their *freedom* of speech.
--- Bouh !!! ---
Seems like the US isn't the only country way over-extending its powers. Remember what we did to old Jon Johansen?
Stupid legal action like this needs to stop.
This may have an effect on Yahoos ability to make peering agreements with French telecom companies
___
Then there was this kissing noise and the sound of a really loud slap. When the train came out of the tunnel, Claudia Schiffer and the Irishman were sitting as if nothing had happened and the Frenchman had his hand against his face as he had been slapped there.
The Frenchman was thinking: "The Irish fella must have kissed Claudia Schiffer and she missed him and slapped me instead."
Claudia Schiffer was thinking: "The French fella must have tried to kiss me and actually kissed the Irishman and got slapped for it."
And the Irishman was thinking: "This is great. The next time the train goes through a tunnel I'll make another kissing noise and slap that French ass again."
oh great! NOW they decide to stand up to the nazis!! where were they in the 1930s??
--
J Perry Fecteau, 5-time Mr. Internet
Ejercisio Perfecto: from Geek to GOD in WEEKS!
--
And Justice for None
- Website X hosted in Country A
- Country B declares some information in X illegal to access for citizens of B
- Court in B takes action, ordering X to stop broadcasting to citizens of B
X's options areHow about alternative, equivalent scenarios?
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
This reminds me of when the ADL asked Yahoo! to take down KKK websites.
How is outright theft a "trade dispute"?
When Castro's revolution succeeded, the communists just stole all that was owned by foreigners, that they wanted.
If Cuba's allowed to take action against foreigners, to benefit its people, then what's wrong with the US taking action, to counter it?
- It's hard to find any Jew vilage in Romania history. Cause: (at least in 19th century, when the big Jew migration toward Romania took place) there were a law forbidding them to do agricol works. Consequence: they concentrated into cities.
- I can direct you to 2 jewish cemeteries in Bucharest (where I was born). From my window in my adoptive town Timisoara I can see the towers of two jewish temples (sinagogues). Do you want to send you a picture?
- If you really insist visiting Romania even once, maybe you will pay a visit to the jewish theatre in Bucharest.
Back to topics:The French laws against Nazism are very nice, but they fail to answer the real problem. Which is not Nazism, but hatred between groups of people. How can one determined individual (party, secret service, whatever) may create such a state of spirit? In theree steps:
- Identify the target population. Find something to differentiate those people from the majority. This may be race (Jews/Germans), ethnic appartenance (Albanians/Serbs), social position (burgeoise/proletar) or even glasswearers/everybody else in communist Cambodgia.
- Demonize them. "The jews are enslaving us. They steal our work" or "Albanian are driving us (Serbs) out of Kossovo" or whatever.
- Present reality deformed or even invent facts to support your demonizing operation. "Albanians have killed two (serbs) families yesterday". Censor any refference to your own condamnable actions.
The purpose is to create an emmotional state of hatred against your target population. After all, they are demons, so any actions you will take against them, no matter how abbominable, will have at least a silent support from the majority.The bad news are that Nazis or Milosevici are not the onlyt one practicing the above techniques. You may detect the same pattern even in the above posting (romanians "erradicating" jews during ww2).
You'll detect it even in CNN reports about the war in Jugoslavia. The Serbs were all the time criminals, so we are free to bomb them at will.
How can we protect against this? Censorship is not the way to go. I think the only way to dismantle such a scheme is to be extremely accurate on facts. We should try give anyone the exact facts and all the facts, from both sides.
I suggest to that Frenchs not to try to censor Yahoo, but to build a comprehensive web site with informations on what really happened during ww2. And not only concentrated on Jews fate, but on each european people which suffered in the conflict.
What the French and other socialist European countries are failing to understand is that by going down the path of censorship they are playing right into the hand of the Hitler's and Pol Pot's of this world. Why not protest Nazis by promoting extreme individual rights? Let people burn the country flag, fly the confederate flag, let lesbian humans marry hetrosexual horses, say words like "shit", and carry pistols in their pockets.
Perhaps so, but Yahoo! isn't doing this. This isn't a matter of cultural hegemony. Yahoo! doesn't permit auctions of Nazi paraphernalia on its French site, out of respect to French law and French sensibilities. This case is about what happens on the US auction site, since French citizens can access (and presumably bid on) auctions there for such paraphernalia. These items are quite legal to sell in the US but illegal to sell in France.
Without national firewalls, there just is no way to prevent French citizens from accessing a US site, with the Internet as presently constituted.
Let me suggest that the onus should be on the French citizens who are breaking French laws in France. Consider that if a French citizen bids on and wins a US auction for Nazi paraphernalia, he or she then has the problem of actually receiving the illegal merchandise. It is preventing the physical act of importation that the French should focus on. And that's their responsibility, not Yahoo!'s.
A) Hitler came to power on back of the Treaty of Versailles. The French are complaining because they helped create the problem and it is far easier to whine then to face up to your own history.
B) The Nazis took Europe because the French were too stupid and too lazy to defend themselves (leaving the Brits holding the bag).
C) Those Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen lost their lives for two reasons: 1. The French military was incompetent and 2. To return Freedom to Europe that includes the freedom to express opinions. Opionins and beliefs that you might not like. I may not like the views and beliefs of group X but I will defend to the death their right to express them. and yes, I have proudly served my country.
D) uhhhh.... Pearl Harbor? Hello? We haven't been really been flattened (like what Napolean did to Moscow - can I auction Napolean stuff?) because we have these two big things next to us, what are those called? Oh yeah, oceans. Plus we would not have even been in Vietnam if it was not for the, once again, incompetent French military. It is spelled Iraq and we really didn't flatten them, not like we could have.
E) Open wounds, huh? How about learning from history with an open and brutally frank discussion? Bury your head at your own peril.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
There is no "commercial service" which "propagates" something -- there is a marketplace in the US which some people in Europe think breaks their local laws. So? It's your laws, you enforce them. If France wants to ban the French from accessing Yahoo auctions, let it set up a national firewall that greps for words like 'Nazi' and we'll see how far it will get.
Your point is well taken, but I'll say again that to some people in these other societies, a service such as Yahoo creates a "place" where these transactions occur. I think you're right, and that one day we'll see some attempt at intelligent blocking in the more severe cases (e.g., China).
I for one don't think blocking solves anything, but that doesn't mean that some countries won't try it.
On the domestic front, I'm curious about the "pre-blocking" going on in the domain name wars, such as 2600's dispute with Verizon. Here, a corporation demands that 2600 handover a domain name (verizonreallysucks.com), citing a law against domain-name banker blackmail. Our corporations are starting to make the French look like sweethearts. I mean, the French are upset over symbols of Nazi genocide, while the corporate lawyers are worried that someone might mistake Emmanuel Goldstein for James Earl Jones.
Dave
First of all, contrary to what many people seem to think, the US has at least as many restrictions on free speech as most European countries (including France). For example in most countries (US included) you can't libel or threaten individuals, neither can you call for murder. The US has many more restrictions in the law (no child pronography, restrictions on "normal" pornography), and in the customs (no nudity on TV, etc...). Many American left-wing activists and black artists who emigrated to France in the 1950s certainly thought that France had a more liberal attitude towards free speech than the US back then. So, it's all a matter of perception.
The Yahoo lawsuit was made possible by two additional French laws described below. Incidentally, the French government was not involved in this lawsuit. The suit was brought up by LICRA, which is the French equivalent of the Anti-Defamation League in the US.
France has a law that restricts threats, libels, defamation, or calls for violence not only towards individuals, but also towards groups of people, particularly if these groups are defined by skin color or ethnicity. Such speech is called "incitation a la haine raciale" (enticement to racial hatred) and is a crime.
Contrary to what CNN says, there is no law in France against "artifacts with racial overtones" (there are plenty of movies on French TV with swastikas and such), but the anti-racial-hatred laws would limit what you can do in public with those artifacts.
There is another law in France that forbids people from denying the existence of the holocaust (Germany has a similar law). We often forget that fascism in Germany and Italy in the 1930's was the result of popular movements, and rose to power through quasi-democratic processes (at least initially). Those movements existed in France, but were not very strong (in fact, France kicked out the conservatives and elected a socialist government in 1936). A good way to prevent fascism from occuring again through the democratic process is to make sure the electorate remembers what happened back then. That's why France and Germany have these anti-revisionist laws.
- Anonycous Moward
hahah...yeah...I read about 3 paragraphs...
I see an early death for that guy...most likely involving a blunt object to the back of the head followed by a short-lived career in movies of the sort which make it to www.bangedup.com
Most of us got over that sort of behaviour in high school, but there always are "late bloomers"
Blar.
That was indeed a sad part in history, but unfortunately that is the price people have to pay for freedom.
Do you think shit like this happens for no reason? Do you think the US or any other country with a decent government goes around starting shit with other countries? No, it's all started by people (ie 1 ruler) with too much power who thinks he can push a smaller guy than him around.. BTW, those bombs didn't go off without warnings, and the leaders of the countries knew. I by no means advocate mass destruction on an innocent populous, but a certain country's govt. knew what was going to happen, but chose not to give in.
No this happens for economical and political reasons, morals just come in has a lame excuse, but the US citizens are too worried about their freedom of speech, that can not care enough about the freedom of information, to have enough info to question properly the acts of their own government. All the US presidents with the sole exception of Carter, fits in your example of a too powerful ruler, at least to a non-US viewer. The apathy and complacency of US citizens is turning back against them, if the US government can ignore the rights of people outside is country, how hard is to think that they can't do it too to their own citizens? All those treats against civil rights in US shouldn't come has a surprise, that's what US people were asking for.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Thinking like this is why you always lose in the end, right?
You're really onto something there. USA did not invade Russia and therefore lost WWII?
Guess *I* slept during history class...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
What about Ancient Roman artifacts? They did lotsa bad shit in their time, including feeding slaves and Christians to the Lions. They killed plenty of Jews, hell they killed the most famous Jew of all, Jesus Christs, for his-sakes. Thats pretty durn bad. I think we should ban sales of all Roman art and architecture.
So you can sell kiddie porn, bestiallity "porn" and drugs legally in the US, because it's all protected by free speech ? You can have sex legally with a 16 year old because that is freedom of expression ??
So, when a 16 year old Dutchman/Frenchman/German (Germanman ????) has sex with his 16 year old girlfriend is he committing a crime ? Depends upon which country he is in (many EU countries have a mimimum age of consent of 12, 14 or 16)
I'm comfortable enough with not being allowed to sell Nazi memorabilia, but attempting to block Yahoo et el is the wrong approach. You have to appreciate the history to be able to understand why they have these laws.
I find it weird that people collect these things, but obviously the French establishment has a bias here.
Do their laws forbid trading of historical items from the Crusades, the Napoleonic wars, the French colonial empire?
All of them remind of a violent past, sometimes against people who are currently French citizens.
And I think that the followers of Le Pen still have the myth of the medioeval knight, batling the Sarracenes.
And gosh! recently they analysed the DNA from the heart of the son of Louis XVI. Eeegh!
Don't try to silent history. Explain it and try not to repeat it.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
but you also gotta ask why in the world would FRANCE care about Nazi auctions?
/.'d stop reporting stories as "this country did this" each time it takes place outside the States.
Read the article and you'll find out : it's not FRANCE that cares about it but two associations, the international league against racism and antisemitism(LICRA), and the French union of Jewish students. Makes more sense ? See, I'm French, but I never asked for this lawsuit.
It would be nice if
Something else I wanted to get straight : this isn't a move by the French government either. This is a court decision. France being a democracy just like the USA, there's separation of powers, so the government is not supposed to interfere with decisions taken in courts.
That's the thing. France doesn't want Yahoo to censor THEM. They just want them to censor someone ELSE.
Personally, if some moron wants to trade Mein Kampf online or someone's selling old WW2 pistols, I could personally give a damn. My grandfather served in France during WW2. I understand the atrocities that went on.
I'm not saying "forget what has gone before". Quite the opposite. Remember, and learn.
The French government is trying to blot out a spot in history simply because they find it personally repugnant. All they're doing is making it easier for such things to happen again.
Banning sales of things, simply because they evoke emotional response from someone is ridiculous. That leaves EVERTHING open to banning.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The whole free speach thing is immaterial. The point is the French government has no right attempting to enforce french laws on a company not within it's borders. If they don't like what's being auctioned on Yahoo, they can request it removed, or threaten boycott, but they do not have the right to attempt to censor them.
Stop thinking of them as memorabilia. Think of them as the propaganda tools of a regime that slaughtered millions of innocent people, whether in the camps or in the nations they conquered. If you had spent time in Vichy France during the Occupation, or had spent time in Yugoslavia during Hitler's massacre there, or had survived the Siege of Stalingrad, you would be perfectly reasonable to find those symbols not just "memorabilia", but outright "hate speech". (I'm ignoring the most obviously persecuted groups, like gay men, the Gipsies, or, of course, the Jews, exterminated to feed the war machine. They feel a particular horror all their own, and their experience only makes it worse.) Now add to that the fact that many of those who buy Nazi regalia are neo-Nazi sympathizers, and you wind up with an even better reason for a rational person in France to fear those symbols. (Yes, yes, not all collectors of Nazi regalia or artifacts are neo-Nazis. That's not my point. Many of them are.)
That's why it's wrong to trade in Nazi memorabilia. Whether it should be illegal, of course, is another matter. I don't think so; banning such trash just raises its value. But that doesn't mean it isn't trash.
No.
Helms-Burton would, if not stonewalled by Clinton, ban entry into the US the officers of corporations which accepted property stolen from US corporattions by the Cuban Communists.
If you want to bash something, get the facts first.
Again it's not about free speech, it's about making money off the most dramatic moment of this 20th century. French allow all ideas, even Nazi-like idea. There is even a Nazi-like political party in France called "FN" that exist now for more than 20 years winning about 10% of votes.
This is just like not allowing nude kid pictures or movies to be sold. Even if drugs are allow in Netherland, this is not a free speech issue not to for them to sell drugs to the US.
--- Bouh !!! ---
I know for a fact, as an eBay employee, that all Nazi memorabillia is banned from being listed on the eBay Germany site and eBay members who are registered as living in Germany are actively blocked from bidding on such items, irrelevant of which eBay site they are listed on.
Just out of curiosity, how does eBay know what is Nazi memorabilia and what isn't, in order to block German users, without it being "brought to their attention"? I know that Australian residents are blocked from the Adults Only section, but there is no separate section for Nazi items. I had a glance after reading this story, and they're mixed in with everything else in the various subcategories of Militaria (i.e. uniforms, medals, patches, etc.).
(p.s., there's plenty of it. Someone was even auctioning a genuine WW2 Knight's Cross.. $US3200 so far, reserve not yet met..)
The solution?
The French goverment can only have one: To deprive every French person of human contact.
What you don't seem to understand is that your laws don't apply to anyone but you.
1154 items found for "Hitler".
211 items found for "Lenin".
155 items found for "Mao".
155 items found for "Stalin".
83 items found for "Mussolini".
3 items found for "Krushchev".
1 items found for "Pol Pot".
What's the point, you ask? Maybe this just goes to show that as far as 20th century dictators go, Hitler and his Germany continue to hold an enduring fascination.
I wish I had a nickel for everytime I've walked into the living room while my Dad was watching a WWII movie or documentary about the Germans. I've been known to joke: "Ahhh... where would cable TV be without the nazis".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I found your argument very thin. You say: today there are in Romania no Jews, before the war were around 1.000.000 so they all get killed in the war. You fail to take account the 55 years that passed from the war.
FYI, before ww2 there were in Romania around the same number of Germans as Jews (around 1.000.000) Today they are (almost) all gone. Does this means they have been all killed in the Holocaust?!
The answer is more simple: the economical conditions in Romania were so bad that Germans emigrated in Germany. And you may say they were forced by the communist regime. Well, the sad truth is that most of them left just after the communist regime felt (i.e. after 1989). By their own will.
Turning back to Jews fate in ww2. You may not speak of Romania as a whole in ww2 for the simple fact that Romania has lost a third of its population just at the beginning of ww2. The North Transylvania was under Hungarian regime. Maybe it's worth mentioning that Jews in that part of the country were sent to german concentrations camps. What fate they had there, it's horrifing to mention. On the contrary, Jews in the Southern Transylvania, under Romanian regime were not. That's true also for Jew population in the southern romanian province Muntenia and in the eastern Moldavia.
On the contrary, the fate of Jews in Bassarabia (extreme east province of Romania, today independent state Republic of Moldova) was terrible. For that, the ww2 Romanian regime is to blame. Basically they were deported over the Nistru river (eastern natural border of Bassarabia). Where they faced famine and persecutions, most of them perishing in terrible conditions.
Why Bassarabia had a different status from the rest of Romania? Because it was lost by Romania in 1939 to the URSS and in 1941 occupied by romanian troops and hence it had an occupied teritory status.
That's all I know of Jews fate in Romania during ww2. I may be very well a victim of Romanian propaganda (after all I live in Romania) but before accusing me of that try to find out the facts before making any affirmations.
You keep referring to some group - "we" need to get together, the government meddles in "our" affairs, they should negotiate if they want something from "us" - but who exactly do you think "we" are? Who is going to live in your independent internet nation? Who is an internet citizen? Anyone who is online?
"You can't arrest me, officer, I'm in the country of Internet right now. You'll have to wait until I log off."
The internet simultaneously exists and does not exist. I can exist in multiple places on the internet while still existing in the United States. You can't have an independently governed state if your state doesn't exist.
Nice idea, but it ignores human nature, the nature that drives us to try to control our environment. The wild west that is the internet today will not stay wild forever.
I think a much more realistic assessment is that countries will react toward the internet in much the same way they have toward international trading. They will form the WITO (World Information Trading Organization). Trade in, and access to information is just as important as access to goods and will become even more valuable. The info will increasingly be essential to countries to secure goods and maintain the IP (information property) allowing an economy to sustain itself.
We have yet to take more than the first baby steps toward countries forming internet trade alliances. We have international groups forming standards that are often ignored by the companies making the stuff of the internet but this will likely change once legislators here and abroad start passing laws requireing companies to adhere religously to set standards in order to sell goods in that country complete with policing rules. We will than have other countries wanting to join in these markets and if they don't like the rules tough luck.
Mabey we will have a few markets worldwide but we all know the power of the allmighty buck and if the US or the EU pass these laws first that will set the trend. Soon countries (and their citizens) will become familiar with the idea of global laws and global a truly global marketplace complete with global governance.
Soon countries will have to sign onto more and more global decision making bodies (GATT, WTO etc) to solve disputes among them ultimately leading to global governance. It is court actions like this one by the French and many other by the US and other that will lead to these governing councils. Be it this year or in the next century it will happen.
The internet may actually unite the world rather than declare independence from it.
no sig.
You forget that the swastika was stolen by the Nazis. It is an ancient and sacred symbol for Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. So I own pictures that contain swastikas, not because I am a Nazi, but because I am Buddhist. Maybe I should tell my Jewish roomate, and my Chinese roomate, and my Thai girlfriend to watch their backs because I might become a "jew/black/gay beating facism-loving jerk" at any moment, but my incling is that this is not a real danger.
Secondly, there is every reason to own Nazi artifacts if you are a historian. There is no substitute for a primary source, and the propaganda and imagery created by the Nazis is a very important cultural artifact. I believe the saying is something along the lines of "Those who forget (or attempt to push away) the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes." The Nazi era is a time I would just as soon not repeat; as such, I am very interested in remembering.
You've got cause and effect mixed up. The reason this is banned in Germany & France is that Germany & France had, before the bans, strong Nazi movements, and were also both ruled by Nazis. The US has never had a particularly strong Nazi movement.
Which country's law should we respect? The law in the U.S. says that selling such items is completely legal. Under your flawed reasoning shouldn't the french court have taken that into account, and dropped the charges completely? After all, wouldn't that be respecting the democratically created law that the U.S. put into effect?
:)
The internet is, as you say, an international medium. Therefore, any attempt to regulate it with regard to sites outside your physical jurisdiction is an attempt to force your laws on other sovereign nations, and this is flat out wrong. It is wrong when the U.S. does it, and it is just as wrong when the french do it.
The actual content that the site holds is really irrelevant to the issue. Possession of child porn is a crime in the U.S., and if you (while in the U.S.) download child porn from a site where the laws are more lax you are guilty of a crime and should face the consequences. I would not support, nor do I think it would be right, for the U.S. to attempt to bring the site owner, who is doing what is legal in his country, up on U.S. criminal charges. I'm not saying the U.S. wouldn't do it, I just saying it isn't right! In a similiar vein, if a french individual purchases an item with "racist overtones" then this individual must face the french courts. Yahoo, which resides in a place where the sale is legal, should be free from any external litigation.
Anytime a country trys to force its laws on another it is engaging in an attempt to dominate the world into following what it says is "right". Didn't Napolean already try this? As I remember, it didn't turn out all that well!
I was being facetious, you moron!
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
1) It is not illegal to be neo-Nazi in the US
2) It is not illegal to traffic in Nazi memorabilia in the US
3) Yahoo! is a US-based company
4) Yahoo! has violated no US laws
Therefore, I don't see any problem as far as Yahoo! is concerned.
Yahoo has assets in France, and those are gone if they don't comply with a french court order.
Furthermore, if Yahoo executives have broken french criminal law (which I don't know), they are subject to extradition (which would be denied by the US government) as well as arrest upon entering any country that extradites to France, e.g. all European Union countries.
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1) How can I teach my children that a swastika is an evil symbol if I can't show them one? How do they know there was Nazi memorabilia? Did they go onto Yahoo's site and look for it? If so, not only did they break the law, they have done it for the very reason it needs to be done.
2) Who is really displaying this information? Is it not the user of the information in France? Legality aside, who is to blame that this information, is being displayed in France?
3) As a Jew, one who has been touched by WWII in more ways than I care to comment, I hate everything that the Nazis stood for. However, this was not the first time Jews were persecuted, nor will it be the last. If France really wanted to eradicate racism they would eliminate many of the racist clubs and "private parties" that exclude blacks and foreigners. I don't believe for one second that the majority of their legislature had the best intentions at heart. Their motives are not pure, and that is exactly why they cannot back down from their position. This makes it a difficult argument in France. But elsewhere, the same arguments can be used on both sides.
It is the desire of man to destroy himself that makes him fear what he does not know. Yet what he does not know is infinitely larger than what he does know. As he realizes that truth - that he does not know more than what he does know he becomes close minded in order to protect himself against what he is afraid of - what he does not know.
=Your standard profound statement.=
Yeah , the U.S. imposing it's will on other countries, not the other way around.
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Article excerpt: "....A Yahoo.com auction site...."
Maybe if YOUR brain had been working when you read the article, you would have noticed that it was yahoo.com, and not yahoo.fr.
Sheesh, what is it, whack-a-rat day?
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Because in modern western culture (at least in europe) naziism is considered the ultimate evil. Most people are not willing to consider that several other regimes have been just as bad.
I cannot see any reason why Hitler should be considered as any more evil than Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin or Mao. Stalin murdered at least as many people as Hitler. Pol Pot did kill fewer people, but that might be because his contry had fewer people he could kill. In western europe you can still say that you think the communist in the soviet union had some good points, but not that the nazist had.
Sad, but all to true nowadays. It seems like ever since America had its little Vietnam "incident" it has been hell-bent on trying to prove its national power by rushing into every "trouble spot" with as many troops and weapons as possible, no matter what the real situation is.
Good question. Very good question. In the absence of an answer, I will throw my 2 cents in.
Historically, France and Germany have been natural adversaries. After two World Wars, there was enough of a "never again" that the economies were artificially interlinked rather than have either of them self-sufficient. Rather than just one major obstacle to war, there are lots and lots of minor obstacles. In this case, anything that can be interpreted as glorifying the Third Reich (sp?) is viewed with extreme disfavor. In short, by itself this accomplishes very little, but the large mass that this is part of, probably accomplishes a great deal.
Any historians out there can probably explain this a lot better.
Such a proposal wouldn't require that every web server in the world replace its TCP stack, I think.
For one thing, the handling of options is required by RFC 791:
France can't easily regulate the technical implementation of every web server in France. However, my guess is that the French could require that all telecoms (and I think there is only one in France) that provide internet access, add a location code to the options section of the packet at some point in the routing process.
What this would set up would be a reasonable method, built on current technologies, of marking packets as coming from a particular place. From that point on, then, there would be no "we have no way of determining where users are from" argument. Furthermore, the implementation burden would be placed on entities that clearly fall under French jurisdiction.
It would be informative to remember that this party is severely punished every time they make anything close to a racist statement.
Can you just understand why we can't accept some people making money on a subject so many have die to fight against?
That's all fine and dandy if you folks don't want any part of it. But you also have to accept that we enlightened folk over here in the US have a law guaranteeing our inherent right to freedom of speech and expression. If you don't like that then bugger off, and quit trying to force us accept your antiquated ways.
The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. -- John Gilmore
*cough* Helms-Burton *cough*
This, in case you didn't know, is a US law which allows action to be taken against foreign companies which trade with Cuba. I don't know the exact details, but it's essentially a blatant attempt to impose US foreign policy on other nations.
Cool. I'm Hindu, the swastika is a very important religious symbol, and has been for the past 3000+ years.
So does this mean that neither I, nor the 800+ million Hindus today can trade in our religious items?
Hold on, Buddhists and Jains also use it, though to a lesser extent.
So do we ban it just because a group of bigoted scum used it?
Hold on, weren't the Crusades and Inquisition carried out under the cross? The Frogs should ban that as well.
The problem is, as usual, political. Let me try to explain how I see it.
Back in 1945, when WWII was over, people said to each other: 'We do not want this to happen ever again' -- like they said after WWI :-( -- The Germans and their collaborators were punished and the Good Guys tried to get on with their lifes. And all was good because the Good Guys won. And they tried to banish all traces of nazism.
Then a second generation stood up and asked their parents: 'but what did YOU do in the war?', to which a lot of parents replied: 'I had very strong thoughts against the situation' or 'I once directed an officer the wrong way' or 'I has this Jewish neighbour, I helped him and en passant nicked all his valuables, I didn't like Jews anyway'. And this second generation scorned their parents for it, felt guilty about their parents and wrote way too many books about it.
And now this second generation is in control, and people ask them: 'what did the previous governements do?' to which they have to reply 'we helped the oppressors every way we could -- that really taught them a lesson'. And they get a lot of bad press about it.
And then some gov-related guy(m/f) in France sees that you can buy nazi-thingies in France. And he sees the questions arising: 'What is the french government doing against the rise of neo-nazis'. And now they can answer: 'we did everything we could'.
Of course, this is only a reason for their actions, not a justification of it. But please note that it's not just France -- a lot of (north-west) european countries could have done this.
(No, I'm not French)
It isn't trash.
Pretending that people have never hated other people won't keep people from hating each other in the future. They print Swastikas in history books and show them in museums so that people can learn what could provoke other people to such terrifying acts.
I would be interested to see the uniform my Grandfather fought in, and I would be just as interested to see the uniforms of the men he thought. Whether you like it or not, the symbols and the "hate speech" which went with them changed the world in ways that directly affect you every day. You are a fool to call your own history trash.
I can agree with what you say, but there are big problems with the precident that it sets. I would be interested to know if this memorabilia had actually been sold to buyers inside France, and delivered. That would constitute clear violation of the law; you're introducing a banned substance into a country that outlaws it, tantamount to weapons or drug smuggling in the US. But if France simply objects to the listings being present at all, that creates a very bad and very chilling precident. It would mean that nothing could be posted on the Internet that violated the definition of decencey/legality in any country in the world. Because if France can stop the posting of things related to Nazism, Iran can stop posts defamatory to Islam. Israel can demand anything criticizing Judaism or advocating Palestinian militancy be removed. The Australian government can sue sights containing nudity wherever they sit for violating their new anti-pornography laws. It would amount to making the internet the jurisdiction of every country in the world, making it the most restricted medium in the world. It is the equivalent of saying that no book can be published that offends anyone, anywhere, because someone from there might see it. Not a good precident to set. There are, of course, considerations of the need for Yahoo to respect French law inside of France, but the way the article was worded it seemd that there had been very little that could be construed as a direct violation of the law. Respecting democracy does mean allowing nations to run their own affairs as they please, even if their values don't agree with ours. But respect for democracy must go both ways, and that gets hairy when dealing with asymetric situations. The US and Yahoo owe the French that respect, but France also is obligated to honor the laws and customs of the US- which in this case hold Yahoo blameless.
How the heck does 2 organizations from France sue a California-based company by citing French law? These auctions aren't even in french.
Not that Yahoo can't space the $1300 bucks, but why should they pay? Whats going to happen other than the over-hyped bad PR they're gonna get? I can imagine the French impotently trying to enforce this and push their laws onto other countries.
The internet is global, that doesn't mean every law from every country simultaneously
apply to every ISP. You connect to the United States you get United States content.
Eh, the Germans and the French did not undergo the Holocaust-- the Jews did.
Oh man, read the post before you go postal.
You can think of it as a symbol of hate because of the actions of one group as long as you want to but until I die it will mean goodwill and prosperity to me. I would not do anything as foolish as wearing a swastika in public due to the ignorance of the populace at large of the symbols true origin.
"swastika (swst-k) n. The emblem of Nazi Germany, officially adopted in 1935. An ancient cosmic or religious symbol formed by a Greek cross with the ends of the arms bent at right angles in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise direction. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ [Sanskrit svastika, sign of good luck, swastika, from svasti, well-being; see su- in Indo-European Roots.]"
I am into the copy and paste.
Wait a minute... You like your freedom so much, that you're going to take someone elses freedom away? ok. whatever.
otherwise we are attacking their freedom.
Actualy, yes, you are. Kiddie porn is illegal, therefore the people who want to distribute those kinds of pictures are not free to do so. Therefore, a law banning kiddie porn has restricted the Freedom of certain individuals.
The thing is, modern society will accept laws that may in one way or another restrict their freedom, in order to control a smaller minority who may be a threat to the majority. Placing people in prison is another example, you remove certain peoples rights from them in order to protect the rights of the majority.
Note for the knee-jerkers: I am not condoning kiddie porn.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
The French court's reason is best explained while in a French frame of reference.
To a French judge, Yahoo's actions could be viewed as Yahoo's business interest expanding into French homes and pocketbooks. Additionally, Yahoo could be seen as expanding with disregard towards French customs and laws. The court might well feel as if it is biting back.
I don't agree with this, however. But it is an under-represented viewpoint.
I think that Yahoo should auction what it pleases, and if you don't like it, that's too bad; you don't buy it. But of course I'm an American, and I come from an American political foundation. Yahoo is American, as well. But France is not America.
This is yet another case of legal problems sprouting up because, at the creation of customs, cultures, and laws, nobody bothered to consider future TCP/IP complications.
Under US laws you can't sell or buy drugs. But you can do that in Netherland, so it must be a free speech issue for the Netherlanders not to be able to sell drugs to the US. Give them the right to sell drugs to the US.
Or you can also let the pedophiliacs buy nude kids picture or kids porno, hey if you don't do so you get over their freedom of speech
You don't know the French people but I assure you they (including all the geeks, pro free-speech and open-source advocates) agree with this law. We don't like seeing US people making money from the grave of millions.
French They have lost their freedom of for 5 years during WWII, comparing that the Slashdot against M$ case is pityful. But they support free speech and have a Nazi-like political party since more than 20 years. It's not the ideas, it's the symbols that are not allowed.
--- Bouh !!! ---
If you wants to regulate selling of drugs; regulate the physical transportation of drugs. You can not download mariuana through your modem! If you say you want to regulate drugs, and shut down websites, you are in fact lying - you are regulating speech.
If we don't stand up together soon, the governments will stand up over us. And we'l never have the chance again. I wonder what would happen if a group declared the independence of the Internet Republic, and themselves as its government (And of course created some voting website or whatever to vote for the next internet government). I wonder how the US and the EU and all the other countries would react?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Of course, technically, that will not work.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but, technically, the most viable solution that would pretty much guarantee that no-one in France would get access to this material would be for Yahoo! to maintain a list of IP addresses allocated to France and block based on that IP list
That would still not stop someone in France using a non-French proxy server to gain access. Which means that the only viable solution to absolutely guarantee that no-one in France gains access to this material would be to isolate France from the rest of the Internet. Frankly, I think the Yahoo! lawyers should point this out to the Judge and tell him that they are in contact with the international telcos to try to make it happen.
That wont work, a good few French ISPs use .com, not .fr....
.com :) gk.
Not only Americans use
--
--
Andy
Sir, I am offended by your post and therefor, Slahdot is morally obligated to remove it and kick you off of Slashdot.
I don't see how your ideas can work or why Yahoo is "morally" obligated to do squat to satisfy the French Government. It is France's obligation to block it's citizen's access to offending material, not Yahoo's.
Well, to me, what you said and what I said are two sides of the same coin. That is, if I understood you correctly.
People should be free to make their own judgements of ideas, instead of having those judgements imposed on them by a third party by force.
If the French find Nazi memorabilia so repugnant, that they don't wish anyone had the right to possess it, then let them boycott Yahoo. If the whole country feels so strongly, then let them configure all routers at the border to ban packets from Yahoo.
Let them make decisions for themselves, and only for themselves.
I suppose I should reply to everyone in one fell swoop... First of all, the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan may have killed a few "MURDERING JAPS" (see above link), but it also caused as much death and suffering for _innocent_ Japanese, in numbers even greater than that of Bataan or anything else you care to cite. At any rate, this argument is trivial because this was during war, and the "all is fair" cliche happens to be quite true. As a racial minority, and having personally visited the Dachau concentration camp, I am against Nazi doctrine, but that fails to make it uninteresting. My argument has been that art is the sensual expression of a message, and what I illustrated was an example that hatred runs deeply through both sides. You should not censor work because you dislike the specifics of the same emotion.
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
From France and the Final Solution:
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Yes it is to scary! And that is exactly why we should never forget what happened. Memorablia (sp?)we should actualy start calling them artifacts, are a wonderful example of how not to EVER forget what happened. Do we not value Roman artifacts? Did they not have the grizzly practice of killing Christians and conquering most of Europe and surounding areas? What is more appaling? I know everyone has heard it before but if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.
IMHO treatment by location is best handled by routing. In this case, the captives of the current French regime should be firewalled off like crackers or any other threat to free societies.
:)
hehe
Quite right. Also, halt the imports of Red Pills.
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Andy
Bringing up the dissemination of child-pornography (which you seem very fond of repeating in almost every post) is equally absurd. Nobody here is arguing for the Nazis or their views. Almost everybody seems to be arguing Voltaire.
P.S. And, unless you're over 50, please stop acting like you've personally had the s.s. storming down your doors. You are no more a victim than I, no matter where you live.
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
Why don't we just send the entire country the French Edition of NetNanny?
Why are you debating history like this? The fact of the matter is that the Russian lands ended up collapsing in upon itself in less than a hundred years. At the time the US and Russia were allies, we'd have no reason to start fighting against each other. So pitting the US and Russian armies against each other would make no sense at that time in history. Its not like there was some critical decision made to "not conquer Russia," because typically you don't do that to allies.
It's nice to see the French finally taking a stand against the Nazis.
I'm French, people of my family were taken by the Nazis, never to be seen again. I really have no sympathy whatsoever toward the ideals of the Third Reich.
But why won't my government let me analyze the political ideas on my own, listen to the debates and make my opinions ?
Censors seems to look down on the populace and consider them unable to make any decisions. Anything remotely relating to the German occupation of France is taboo and it seems that people in power will always dismiss any debate as being the seeds of hate : they decided that because Nazism is bad to us, there is nothing more to debate. The Truth is set in stone and anybody daring to defy it is catalogued as a revisionist defending Nazi ideas.
Please, it is precisely because I do not tolerate hate that I want it to be exposed. No one can understand how much nonsense the Nazi doctrine is until they are confronted with the reality of neo-nazi organizations. Let them express themselves if they want, let the debate happen again and my humble opinion is that the world will see once more that Nazi ideas are Hell and that revisionist arguments do not stand for even a second against the mass of collected evidence.
As someone once put it, "sunshine is the best disinfectant".
And if Nazi memorabilia can help people realize that Hell really happened and is not just a virtual propaganda construct, then it is even useful to the collective memory.
If the US would just keep their noses out of other countries' business, it wouldn't give other countries (namely France in this case) the idea that they can boss the US around as well. Like they say, what goes around, comes around. Good-bye to your independence.
Anyone who thought that Haider's emergence in Austria was a surprise hasn't followed Austrian politics.
The country has been seriously schizophrenic about whether it was a victim or a villain in WWII, and never got the amount of heavy-handed indoctrination at the hands of the Americans and allies that "taught" Germans that Nazism was bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
The result is that being right-wing never carried the amount of negative baggage that it did in other countries of Europe.
That said, 2/3 of Austria's population did NOT vote for Haider.
Does anyone else think hate crime laws are incredibly stupid? Anti hate laws are a form of mind control, you can't tell me how to like or not like something. Say I spray paint some guys car because I don't like him, is that a hate crime? After all, I hate that guy.
"3. There is little practical reason to own a swastika or other Nazi or neo-Nazi symbol. Chances are about 99.99999999% that if you own such a symbol, you're a hate-mongering, jew/black/gay beating fascism-loving jerk."
This brings me to my previous post. Ok I'm a stamp collector and buy some stamps with a swastika on them, am I a nazi? Its not hate speech anymore, its the past, get over it. You can't erase what happened. By your logic any museum with nazi uniforms and objects is a symbol for "hate-mongering, jew/black/gay beating fascism-loving" ?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Please believe me if I tell you freedom of speech is important for me. But I hear a lot of people here speaking of it in a very childish way. Because it's important, we can't consider it as a basic and absolute rule. You say any words can be spoken freely? People can spread nazi propaganda as long as they don't murder others? If words are not important for you it's okay, but it's not my point of view. Words do matter, they have an effect on people's minds. There's a direct link between speech and actio n, or else words have no reason to be told. I believe people are responsible and have to assume their words. Americans make me laugh with their free-speech-thing while disturbing words in their TV shows are repl aced with BEEPs. And what would they think of a French site publishing in details how to kill the US p resident, claiming it's nothing else than words?
...is a one-world government. That way there is no such thing as jurisdiction - the whole world is under United Earth Dicta-er, Directorate jurisdiction.
See how efficient that is?
I say we have a no confidence vote for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Who's with me?
- Palpatine
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I think more important than the this specific case of auctioning of Nazi memorabelia is its exponential impact on the internet. Could China impose fines on any internet site for anti-communist publications? And why stop at countries. Setting a precedent like this could oepn a flood of govermental fines and regulations from companies and even states or cities.
Don't those who promote such measures of censorship realize that they only drive such activities underground? There they fester and boil until they explode in full political fury that is unstoppable. Witness Austria. Not a peep from them, then wham. Everyone of the EU is pissed and now Austria (and its people) are becoming defiant, telling the EU where to shove it. I hate all politicians.
I don't think that France should impose their laws & beliefs on sites in other countries. If they think they've got a problem, than they should solve the problem internally. So they should not try to let Yahoo take actions, but they should be a nice little country-wide Berlin firewall, that blocks all sites that France doesn't want it's citizens to see. Now that poses a problem for all French people, but not for the rest of the world.
How to make a sig
without having an idea
This is more of a request for information than a possible solution, though it could be that too.
What would have happened if Yahoo had just refused to show up in court? As far as I know, they don't own property, machines, server space or anything like that in France. Being based in another country entirely (the U.S.), they shouldn't be subject to French law. In one sense, it isn't even really their fault that French citizens can access their web sites at all. So what if they had just said "screw you, this is your problem, not ours; you work out how to prevent your citizens from buying that stuff"?
Would U.S. agencies have forced Yahoo to appear in the French court or to comply with its judgement? If Yahoo now turns around and declines to obey the ruling, how will the French courts enforce it?
[We Have No Product] [The Swindle
Interesting move to pander completely to our sympathies by mentioning the victims, I'm sure they feel just as bad when they hear the word "Hitler" but we keep that around for some reason. Maybe because it would be hard to put WWII in the history books without it.
Nazi sympathizers buy these symbols? So? If they weren't for sale they'd just make their own, your implication that symbols empower neo-Nazis is laughable. Thats really your point here, do these symbols give some long-forgotten third reich magic to the users like some hackneyed TV plot?
Exactly why would a rational Frenchman care if an already neo-Nazi buys a Hitler youth knife? The screaming hysterical Frenchmen probably cares, but that doesn't mean we should.
In the end I'd rather have the choice between helpful and hateful speech than people like you deciding for me.
I know that most ./ers are avid free-speechers (and, for the most part, I am, too).
I think, however, that free speech proponents have a hard time dealing with the perniciousness that has been the nazi movement throughout this century. The French (and Germans) are understandably much more sensitive on this issue than Americans (having undergone the holocost more directly than most of us). The understand the way in which speech directly contributed to the rise of Naziism.
We need to figure out a way to deal with this kind of European feeling while still honoring our own freedom of speech tenants (which, on the whole, work well in free societies).
is your french as good as his/her english?
I found this poster to be rather interesting.
This is good censorship. While in the US we are censoring people trading MP3s (in order to defend an old monopoly) and still authorizing selling nazi stuff, the France government want to clean the action of some corporation because attacking inividuals. I don't know why it's legal to sell those creepy stuff here and not trading MP3s. Oh I forgot: Profit.
--- Bouh !!! ---
BTW, to all of you who showed me I mispelled the subject, I figured that out about 3 seconds after hitting Post, so don't bother. :)
While you're right in some sense, we have to be sensitive to the fact that the law in this nation (and in Canada and England and Germany) says you may not publish/post racist material or things relating to racist material.
Those are the laws, period.
The issue becomes what a country does about them. Does the country say "well we can't stop it so we we'll do nothing", or do they say "you can't look at it and if you do we'll put you in jail" or do they say "we'll block access so this whole issue will be prevented". It has to be one of the three.
In this case, France is trying to do the sane thing which is to ask that the material be removed. Otherwise they will be forced to block access, put web surfers in jail or, like Germany did, if any of the Yahoo people go to France, lock them up.
This is the best that can be done in the circumstances as I see it. If they were to do anything beyond this, we'd scream bloody murder.
And as hinted, Yahoo may have to respect laws in France... well then maybe that's the solution. The web site must now adapt content based on... IP addresses? Well that's not really easy, nor is it assuring that I'm maybe not using an ISP somewhere else and happen to be in France at the time.
I'd like to see a suggestion on how the French government could deal with the situation that does not include breaking thier own laws or ignoring them.
- Serge Wroclawski
I still have a pebble from the quarry at the Mauthausen concentration camp to better remember the day I as an adult cried in public to realize at "ground level" just what had been done to all those people (Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, homosexuals, gypsies, the handicapped, "politicals" and others that those bastards decided were "too inconvenient" to allow to keep breathing in their fresh, new thousand year reich).
One day I hope to have a piece of the Berlin Wall, and one day in future, a cobblestone from Tien An Mun Square the day China is finally free. Yes, I believe in remembering tragedies with physical evidence: Momento Mori.
The Commonwealth soldier who buys a Nazi shell as a reminder of the wounds he took on Juno or Sword beach. The member of the French resistance who buys a German rifle to mock those he fought during France's occupation. Think about it.
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
Russia, one of the most technologically backward and unorganized countries in Europe/Asia in 1930s, took on ~360 of German divisions, one of the most advanced and superior army in the world, in World War II. And they lost almost 28 million people in that War. That's why Russians don't call it "World War II", but instead a "Great Patriotic War"
All the rest of the Allies combined, took on about ~40 German divisions through out the war. Now, of course, if those 40 division had been up at Stalingrad, the outcome of the war could've been quite different.
So who won the war? The answer is: It was a JOINT effort! Russians clearly were responsible for most of the action against the Germans, while the Americans took on the Japanese and Italians. The British had the guts to stand up to Germany before ANYONE did and were the first ones to defeat/stop Hitler in the Battle for Britain.
This is plain outright censorship. Yahoo should tell the French government to pretty much f**k themselves, as they've no right to dictate the content of Yahoo. That's like Israel telling Yahoo to block any non-Jewish websites from the Yahoo database. Never will happen, and never should.
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
So you wouldn't object to a Vietnamese auction site that sold uniforms of US soldiers killed in the war over there either ?
I read your comments thoughtfully, but I have to respond.
Your comments are perfectly valid, but they don't address the root issue here. The problem isn't Nazism and whether it's right or not; this is a much deeper problem.
This is a fundamental problem of the internet's complete disregard for national borders. Anything which is legal in one country but on in another will suffer from the same problem.
In Europe, for example, it is legal to reverse-engineer software for the purpose of creating something compatible with it; this is not legal in the US. In many countries, it is illegal to say things against the national religion or government. These countries also have internet access; what would you say if your Christianity page was taken off-line by your local ISP because it was illegal to say such things in Saudi Ariabia for example?
Tolerance would be a great thing, but sadly this is one thing that the majority of human beings seem to lack, even in countries which claim to embrace it.
I guess the bottom line here is that no matter what is on your web site, it is the choice of the individual user whether or not to go to your site (assuming you're not engaging in false or trick advertising methods). It must surely be the responsibility of that individual if they use their choice to break the local laws.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Government is an invention to oppress people; if you want to talk specifically about government, say "french government", not "France"; if you want to talk about the country, say "France", not "french government". I am french, yet I feel little solidarity with present, past and future french governments; I know for sure than in other countries were governments are even more on the loose than in France, people feel even less solidarity with their governments.
That said, like many french people, I think that the "anti-racist" law is itself a very racist law (apart from being most inappropriate), since it makes a special case for the jews; of course, I can't say it on any french media, least I be censored by this very law.
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernet
There is one screamingly obvious problem: it would catch some people in different countries who happened to get their service from a French ISP (and hence were given a "French" IP address).
In any case it would be trivial to circumvent: can you say "public proxy in another country"?
I understand that this may not be a good business strategy, but Yahoo! should just tell France to go (censored) themselves. The judge even went so far as to ORDER Yahoo! to cough up some cash.
It's pretty hard for them to control all the auctions that go on on their site... and even though they may be able to, who says they should?
C'mon, France, I understand that this is reminiscent of a horrible time, but give it up already. The sale of this stuff is harmless... just a bunch of items for collectors.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
This issue is pretty interesting for a number of reasons: (1) Its pretty amazing that a French judge would have the gall to pass an (impossible to comply with) injunction against a US internet company -- and fine them to boot.
But, and I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me here, (2) I'm not too impressed with a law that makes it illegal to buy and sell items that could have a real historical significance. Maybe I'm underestimating the emotions involved, but this seems like a bad example of sentimental reactionary politics. I mean, are museums allowed to buy these things?
Well, now other countries dont even have to ask us for help. At the first suspicion of threat the US shows up at your doorstep with quarter billion troops and smart bombs specially designed to blow up Chinese Embassies. And when we're done protecting our interests we'll smear the whole thing with propaganda to make it look like we did a wonderful job. Heres a sample scenario to illustrate my point.
Sample Scenario: Two Saudi-Arabian goat-herders get drunk and start banging on an oil well with sticks and rocks. The US immediatly deploys the Atlantic Fleet to prevent this unethical genocide. US News services pick up the story, giving full praise to the army and revealing our battle plans to the Saudis. They find some particular hard luck case in the Army, put his picture up in the little box on the top-right of the screen, and accompany it with a half-hour of interviews about how this brave soldier overcame grave danger and used his wits to survive for 2 weeks after being stranded in enemy territory. US audiences rejoice at our successful war effort... several movies are made that have no basis in reality, but reinforce in audiences that the US did a great thing in the Middle East again.
As earlier posters have pointed out, by obeying this decision Yahoo! would set an interesting precedent.
What they neglected to mention was that, by obeying this decision, Yahoo! would essentially kill b2c (business to consumer) transactions on the internet.
We should be rejoicing: never before has it made business sense for a company with a market cap of US$300b to virulently defend the right to free speech on the internet. They won't be able to avoid it now; can you imagine the sort of performance hit inherent in doing boolean matching for every possible offensive word, phrase, or idea in English and every other language in existence? And don't forget languages like arabic where transliteration follows the author's personal preference rather than standard rulesets. I've worked with large databases for years and the idea makes my head spin. They'd grind to a halt!
dkl
is this still the case? i was talking to a friend about this a few weeks ago, he said u could get games that included nazi artwork in germany now
Can you just understand why we can't accept some people making money on a subject so many have die to fight against?
No. Living in Denmark, which was also occupied, I'm still unable to agree with banning the sale of historical artifacts, especially since it's such a self-centered position: You won't see any French court having a problem with the sale of Stalin, Mao or Idi Amin memorabilia, even though these dictators were even worse.
In fact, I find this position of bigotry impossible to defend--even reprehensible in nature."A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
"Technically anything is possible, but Politicaly? NO!"
___
If you really are "against Nazi doctrine", why are you using the "nazi" term in your signature in a way that show nazis as just little troublemakers ? Abusing words make them lose strength. Using terms like "sig-nazi" is a way to disconnect nazis from their crimes. And thus, to let them start again.
sigmentation fault
Before The US entered the war (well the British Commonwealth). You just have to see the photos that came out in 1940, of about 300 Australian soldiers escorting over 150000 Italians into captivity
[This is in response to MattBaggins, Chas and Steve]
MattBaggins: I'm not so clear on the subject as you, regarding where jurisdiction lies, or more importantly, should lie. After all, the rightfully elected representative government of the people of France decided that it was in the best interests of France to prevent the display or sale of Nazi items. Nevertheless, I can walk into an apartment in Paris, and call up an auction of Nazi memorabilia on Yahoo! This seems to me a problem, and one that can be addressed largely through technical means.
As for the French being the only ones responsible, that is possible. Beyond the fact that there may be extradition treaties handling this, France could build packet filters to shut off, or at least throttle, Yahoo! if Yahoo! failed to comply.
Chas: you say "Banning sales of things, simply because they evoke emotional response from someone is ridiculous. That leaves EVERTHING open to banning." I would counter that I, too, could use the logic of the slippery slope could also be used to say "If we don't build an infrastructure that allows for the rule of law to be respected, then there will be no laws whatsoever!".
Regardless, you seem to assume that the US Constitution applies here. I am not so clear on that point (see above).
Steve: I see what you mean, but the "leaving one place and going to another" metaphor is, in most ways at least, only a metaphor. At no point in the transaction does your body leave the country.
Yes, it may be the responsibility of the French to police incoming materials (see above). But my guess is that the French want a system that allows them to exercise their political will, and Yahoo! a method of appeasing the French government.
Do you actually think that yahoo is going to pay that 10,000 francs fine?
They are in america! The french can't impose their laws on american citizens! Are the french so arrogant to believe that they have any say at all in what an american company can or cannot do! Yahoo doesn't have to abide by their rules!
And what could the french possibly do to enforce that ruling? Storm yahoos offices with the foreign legion, demanding their money?
The french have NO authority at all over american citizens, so why are they pretending that they do?
P.S. I haven't quite figured out how to use italics yet, can you tell?
----------------------------------
While I agree that most, if not all, governments have dirtied their hands at one time or another, the french are doing this *now*.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
...it's OK to sell / auction off Nazi-related items (like uniforms, medals, pictures, and the such) as long as they're for historical and / or educational purposes only (correct me if I'm wrong). In other words, no outright propaganda.
No wonder people hate the French...
raunchola (at) hushmail (dot) com
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Remember, the French government's hands aren't exactly clean. Remember their language purity laws? They aren't exactly in a position to be making moral judgements.
/.ers. Haven't you realized? We're the true voice for the world. The US shouldn't police the world. /. should. The top 10 moderated comments shall become our bill of rights.
Then who is?
-Dusty Hodges
During the second big indiscretion of the 20th century, the Nazis availed themselves to all the tools an authoritative government can utilize (mostly because they had all the guns). Among the devices used was the suppression of anti-regime ideas in Germany and conquered lands.
Granted, it was a war, and even the United States resorted to censorship and other things that are no-nos under the Bill of Rights. Freedom was suspended in the name of preserving it. The Nazis didn't suspend German liberty in the name of preserving it. Their quest was power, and they won't surrender a bit of it in the name of common freedom.
Towards the end of World War II, France was a complete mess. The French were symbollically liberated when the Allies took Paris. Each soldier that died along the way died for the purpose of freeing the French and wiping this scourge off the planet.
What did the French choose to do once they got their country back in order? Ban pro-Nazi material. Regardless of how good or bad such material is, banning it defeats the purpose of that whole liberation thing.
Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez told the firm that the auctions were "an offence to the collective memory of the country" And censorship sits well with them? I guess two wrongs does make a right.
Shouldn't it rather be because they made it possible?
This is just as silly as the (californian?) US court that asked non-US sites to put DeCSS down because of the DMCA.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Reading the article I thought that the court had complained that the french couldn't access the auction site or something. Considering when I tried to sign up for Yahoo auctions, and selected 'other' country but was then told that I couldn't register because the cgi program complained that I hadn't filled out the country field, but there wasn't any! : Maybe that's what the court is complaining about? :>
oh well, haven't got my coffee yet...
J.
That's just one story. I am sure Deutschland made millions of the Nazi flags. I am also sure they were able to afford a flag for every mechanized piece of equipment. Maybe every citizen had one. I don't know. But I did see quite a bit of footage from that era showing HUGE marches and everyone had a flag.
I have one or two items from their propaganda machine, one is some medal for the U-boat crews, and the other is some type of holiday pin, I forget as I haven't looked at it in a while.
While I totally disagree with the Nazis, I would never, ever ask someone to give up their right to collect any normal piece of history. A flag. A uniform, swords, weapons, etc . I would be pretty disturbed if someone had death-camp memorabilia, I'd rather those be in museums, but there are a few legitimate reasons to have them, so why d*ck with them?
Anything that is legislated to be learned about only in history books will be revived. People need to see up close that this stuff was REAL. We have enough revisionists as it is, please don't advocate getting rid of the evidence so that these people can say what they please without having some sort of proof that they are wrong.
Yes, there are a few nitwits that believe that having Nazi-related material means you are one and there are those that have Nazi-related material because the agree with those ideas, but I have met neither. Most of the people that have this sort of thing are historians, collectors, families that have them as mementos, etc.
One word: Napoleon.
I see a lot of First Amendment waffle here, but I don't see anyone commenting on the particular traditional social position in France ...
France has something the US could learn from: a social conscience.
Censorship is unacceptable, even for such nauseating and indeed insulting items as these Nazi gadgets. It is far more "fascist" to support such censorship demands than to allow a bunch of immature frustrated lowlifes to sell and buy their swastika trinkets. Tanj! They'll be turned into martyrs, next. If the French are so worried about being reminded of WWII, why don't they send their secret service after some Nazi-trinket-production plants? They could sent them after Greenpeace, couldn't they! They sunk a Greenpeace ship, killed one of her crew in the process. Why the double standards here?
Moderate this to 5! Hey, you moderators, make sure that this (anti-crap) , this (actual fact) and this (clear explanations) are read by everyone out there. This will clarify the situation, and stop some crap.
It's not yahoo.com who's being sued, it's yahoo.fr. Capiche?
It's not the french gov't, but a french anti-racism organization, unrelated to government.
Read the post beyond these links, please, before trolling your crap.
sigmentation fault
Oh, again the "precedent" stuff. Nazis were also a precedent: they were the first to practice imprescriptible crimes. The precedent that French can made won't be to interdict anything that can hurt people, but anything that can led to imprescriptible crimes. Yahoo is not the only site to blame, Amazon is selling a revisionnist book saying the shoah was an hoax, this book was rated 4-star/5, with comment explaining it is really interesting...
sigmentation fault
Its war memorabilia, do you think the people who buy it walk around wearing swastikas and saluting the fuhrer? Most of them are probably WW2 veterans. Does that mean that germany should ban any auctions of US war items? Why should you censor the past? Is it too scary?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
When you grow up and happen to see pictures of all your family that were killed by the Nazis, hearing the stories of how your mother escaped the Warsaw ghetto, hearing how your father continued receiving anonymous antisemite phone calls after avoiding the Gestapo during the war, you cannot, you must not remain silent! Never!
It seems like the French government decided to not go the way of Australia and force its ISPs to block "illegal" content. Instead they went after the easy target of foreign company.
.fr TLD since lots of .com, .net, & .org domains must exist in France.
Forget the debate on whether this is censorship or not, it is currently part of French law. So why are they forcing an American company to bend to their laws. They should have the French companies (ISPs) enforce this law, especially since it is a lot easier to block foo.yahoo.com than it is for Yahoo to figure out what domains originate in France and block all $BIGNUM of them. You can't even rely on a global block of the
/*
and the very term "hate crime" is meaningless to me. [...] Hate crime: I kill a jew because I hate jews. Did I commit a crime? Of course, but it was not hating jews - it was murder.
*/
You must 1st understand the nature of the beast...
The term hate crime was created so that certain crimes could be dealt with more harshly _because_ of racial or religious implications. Murder is murder and whatnot.
However if you beet someone to a bloody pulp just because he got in your way that is a relatively minor offense. The courts go easy on you ( rarely more than a few months in prison ) because it is assumed you will simply learn your lesson and contain your anger next time.
However when a gang of Skinhead thugs beat the stuffing out of a nigger, the situation is different.
1st. The anger involved wasn't immediate and transient. It's something that has been carefully built for years before use.
2nd. The crime is more likely to be repeated because a Nazi honestly thinks he is on a holy crusade to protect his own kind from an alien invader of sorts.
For a real life example. If I have a quarrel with my priest ( How dare he not give a mob hitman absolution ? ) and come back to burn down the church then it's a simple act of Arson that won't escalate.
However what happens when 200 black churches ( in theory this doesn't exist. In practices American blacks and whites attend different temples. especially in the south ) are burned to the ground in one year ? It's considered an organized hate crime and someone caught for one is treated almost as a serial arsonist
or a conspirator on the others. This stuff can't generally be proven but you can sometimes prove that the color of the congregation was the motive.
and don't get me started on the Sphinx. The infamous "broken nose" was shot off with mortar fire by French or Italian troops because a broad flat nose on such a huge and ancient monument implies something they were not willing to consider. In theory this is an act of vandalism on par with painting a mustache on Mona Lisa ( never happened ). The racial implications add a lot to the crime however. The perpetrators wanted to claim the Sphinx and by extension the Pyramids as being the creation of Europeans or failing that space aliens. Nobody can claim a great engineer as inferior or less than human so destroy the evidence of that engineering and you can get by.
Lucky for us all, one of the newer and larger pyramids contained detailed documentation of how it was built. This was only recently translated. 150,000 full time workers for 15 years. As many as a million part time volunteers. Too bad the shiny tiles that covered the surface were all stolen. They are impressive now. Imagine when they sparkled in the sunlight ?
Note: Hate Speech and people who use it do not need to be suppressed. Merely watched from a distance. Invariably they escalate to Hate Crimes and are hence subject to imprisonment. They don't preach that "We whites must work harder and build more wealth and power for ourselves". Rather that "These [insert favorite grope here] must be driven back from whence they came at gunpoint because they are steeling our jobs and rapping our women and we don't care if there is no truth to any of this.
PS : It's not widely known but Nazis also killed all the Black people they found in Germany. It's only luck that there were not 6 million of them to make it a holocaust.
PPS : France is still asking too much.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I'm from the Netherlands and the French have this idea that they are alone on the the world at times. They think that they can do anything to "protect" the french econemy (if they have one) from "invaders" (mainly US and asia) ;)
We (that is the Netherlands) had this little problem that the french did not like us. We were evil due to our drugs policy, and therefore they tried to do everything possible to make US change OUR laws. This ofcourse did not work. The funniest part of it all is that the french has a bigger probelem with drugs addicts then we have
I can also remember not too long ago that the rfench were doing AGAIN a nucluar test on one of the islands in the pacific. The WHOLE world tried to convince them not to do it, and what happened, did they listen? No they did not, they couldn't care less about the restr of the world, they did it.
And now they want to stop another country from doing something, NO WAY. I'm not saying that it is allright to sell those items, but it is not up to France to stop it. There are other channels for this.
But you have to be carefull, otherwise they send in some french legion people to blow up yahoo.com (this is not supposed to be funny, since they have allready done the same with one of the boats from Greenpeace)
Does Godwin's Law count on this thread??
> "It appears France is now defining censorship on US Web sites"
No, John. It's not yahoo.us, but yahoo.com. TLD com, net and org are international, not specifically americano-centered.
sigmentation fault
we let them [USSR] have the Eastern part of Europe (as well as Berlin - which we were in first)
Why is it that the contemporary USA, with a genuine WW2 record to be proud of, still has to claim credit for "saving the Limey's Asses", giving Berlin to the Soviets etc. ? Even now Hollywood can't make a U-boat movie without changing the story from the British to the Americans.
Yes, America (and mainly the 8th Air Force) was a huge help to the Allies in WW2. OTOH, if America had kept out of it entirely, Stalin would have turned up in Paris by about 1950 and I (a Brit) would probably be living in the offshore Edward VIII theme park and home for retired Nazis.
America "gave" Berlin to the Soviets ? Maybe geography is different on your planet.
Can you get more ignorant than this!? Isn't this exactly how the US gov't have treated every issue related to the Internet???
(not that I'm condoning the action of the French courts)
As a previous poster mentioned... Jon Johansen (sp?) springs readily to mind and I'm sure it wouldn't take much searching to put together a page full of situations where the US or US courts have made rulings way, way outside the realms of their jurisdiction...
perhaps take a look in your own backyard before you open your mouth next time eh?
'sapientia potestas est'
I'd like to see a suggestion on how the French government could deal with the situation that does not include breaking thier own laws or ignoring them.
Here's a bunch: Do like Australia did and forbid hosting the things inside the country. Prosecute those who actually traffick in these kinds of items. Require all French ISPs to screen out the material. Fine people who view it anyway. Do anything you want in your own country, as long as you don't start imposing your law on other nations.
What's that, you say? The above suggestions won't keep anyone from viewing the material if they really want to? Well, duh. Welcome to the year 2000.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
Here are the last lines from yahoo.fr service usage policy :
Les présentes Conditions d'Utilisation et la relation entre Yahoo! et les utilisateurs seront soumises au droit français et tout différend n'ayant pu trouver une issue transactionnelle sera porté devant les tribunaux compétents de Paris.
"These conditions of usage and the relationship between Yahoo! and users are subject to french law, and any dispute that couldn't be transaction resolved would be taken to Paris' courts."
That cristal clear, I believe.
First IAAUSN ( I am a US native, 4th Generation even). The internet as a medium ihas obviously created a whole new dimension to international boundries and the way it shakes out will be an interesting play. At lesat initially the internet rather than being able to redefine international interaction will have to play within the context of non-virtual reality. The world not being an ideal place the occasional restriction may me neccessary... Germany restricts the marketing of things Nazi related and I think most(?) feel this is reasonable... Maybe Vichy should too...? There is a place for these items... They are called museums and schools. All uf us would do better to study not just the cool parts of war (to which these articals belong) but the effcts and causes of war. Such items presented out of context, without accomanying text and photos of the attending horrors of the Third Reich only tend to further distort an already distorted public view of the era. While i understand and fully support freedom of speech and I do not believe that censorship I also think that most here do not understand the depth of feeling envoked by Nazi related artifacts, philosophy and organizations in Europe as a whole(France is just usually the first to speak up). At this time there are two very real and palpable under crrents in Europe, first a resurgent xenophobic 'far-right' with a definate Nazi bent and secondly a fear of the first. Everyones's view of wars that racked Europe in the fist half of the 20th Century are skewed by a tempoaral lens however our view on this side of the pond is skewed also by physical distance and the fact that none us or our parents and grand parents (with the obvious exception of expeditionary miltary forces) for that matter have ever been caught up war, had our towns and citys occupied, our property comandered, been displaced, bombed, enslaved, etc. Think about the source of this request and read the news from the other side of the pond for context. The Third Reich may be dead but the sociological forces that made it possible are very much alive and the economic imperatives that froment such are only around the corner. This is a request made by people who have a fear and loathing that as Americans, unless you have delved very deeply into the lives of those who survived WWII in Europe, you cannot begin to imagine. They do not fear the past, they fear those among them who are embracing a past with a nostalgia for the simple answers of that past for the complex and very real social and economic problems that face Europe today.
morturii
Actualy, no, I don't remember the "French Purity Laws". Can someone give me a quick rundown? This sounds interesting. Does it have something to do with keeping the French launguage pure and unpolluted? That's my first guess....
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
Many firewalls block traffic with "unusual" option bits set. If the French want to introduce a new IP option it will take time for the firewall manufacturers to update their software, and even longer for end-user sites to upgrade their firewalls.
The French could find themselves locked-out of a lot of Web sites in the meantime.
if you look at Yahoo! you'll see that the sections called WWII (World War II) seems completly dedicated to Nazi guys Have a look at http://list.auctions.yahoo.com/20440-category-leaf .html?alocale=1us You can tell it's not Yahoo! fault but it's odd almost weird to me... Also, i've read around that it would be almost impossible to track Nazi stuff, but why not just ban the nazi world from auction in Yahoo! in the subject when you create a auction. When i see all stuff that's maid to track poor teenager that use Napster to leech CDs of a billionaire group like Metallica or stupid guys from MI5 tracking desperatly all copy of a report about libian guys in London (http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.openpg p.net/censorship/MI5/index.html)i think a compagny like Yahoo! must have and have the capability to track nazi shit on THEIR OWN FUCKING SITE !!!! damn god ! Look at http://geocities.yahoo.com on the first page ("Explore Our Community", mouhahaha) and search for "sex", you'll will find nothing (it says: "Yahoo! GeoCities does not provide this type of content")but if you look for "nazi" there is plenty of nazi shit. That's weird. I just think Yahoo! just don't want to avoid nazi stuff, because they don't give a shit unless there will be a true, organised boycott. The best to me would be a boycott from Providers (just delete the fucking yahoo.com from DNS for a while). Because i'm a French citizen and a jewish i think we must revolt against this and i'm disapointed that most opinions i saw on slashdot was a stupid debate about France vs America or even worst... (some of them where scored 5, hmm Interesting). Even if the french method is not to my opinion the good one for mainly technicals reasons, we (the non nazi guys) must revolt to this with strengh ! Yahoo! is not a underground nazi site, it's a main portal that everybody knows (even in France :-) and it's not normal that they publish nazi related contents and even worst: participate in selling an object that was belonging to a Nazi or is glorifying Nazsism. Is not only a question of freedom of speech but the fact that those people partcipate indirectly in the banalization of objects that represent one of worst period of our civilization and has made suffering millions of persons Would even imagine Wallmart selling Nazi T-shirt ??? I don't... And also, i'm wondering what is doing US jewish community... except asking refund from Swiss Bank. I hope you won't need babelfish to read my english. :)
Dipping in late this is probably redundant but...
Most European countries are _very_ sensitive to anything related to this extremely black chapter in European (world) history.
Seing this decision in this historical context I can understand how a court gets to such a decision.
Per se I do not believe that it's wrong to set up laws that limit free speech when such free speech is blattantly infringin on rights of other individuals. It is however difficult to draw the line. Is satire violating such laws ? That's probably very much dependent on the interpretation of the receiver.
Now for the decision as such. I do not agree that Yahoo has an obligation to block parts of it's service to selected countries.
If it is illegal to access such information (with which I can agree to some extent) then a country should go after it's citizens accessing such information or against a seller (or the buyer) ordering or shipping verboten items.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
You are right that the Indian svastika was usually depicted in a manner different from that of the German one. But like anything in Indian art and mythology, there are significant variations on it to be found; I have seen non-curved swastikas in some Indian art that would be, to most people, indistinguishable from a Nazi swastika. As such, it would seem that there would be plently of people attempting to block certain pieces of Indian art out of ignorance of the symbols involved.
As for the French and their history. . . I have no doubt that there are reminders of their history around. Which first of all raises the question of why they are so eager to get rid of this particular reminder. If they are truly engaged in recalling all the events of their history, than one more reminder of the Nazi era should be no different than the other reminders that are part of a real investigation into history. Secondly, whatever there attitude towards their own history, there is significant scholarly work that can be done by cultural historians using Nazi artifacts. The greatest question of World War II is still, for the most part, unanswered. Why did one of the most educated nations in the world (Germany, which had more PHD's per capita than any other nation) go along with the plans of a delusional failed art school student? Nazi memorabilia gives us great insight into the culture that the Nazi's created. Understanding that helps us understand how the rise of Naziism happened, and how something similar could be prevented.
In any conflict, as one side's evilness approaches infinity, the other side's "Good Guy" index increases at the same rate.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
A few quick points:
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
You find it puzzling that I would extend free speech protection to Nazism, which suppressed free speech. I find it absolutely incomprehensible that you could live in an region so affected by tolitarian reigns and apparently learn nothing from them. You claim to fight oppression and racism by using the tools of oppression and consorship, and see no hypocrisy in your stance.
Certainly wounds still exist. But you don't treat wounds by covering them up and pretending they never happened.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Studying numbers, strategy, tactics and the battle is fine, you know the war... but only the small part... Go learn about the effects on the civilian populations... Talk to people who survivrd the Siege of St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad/Stailgrad/St. Petersburg.. Go find a couple of holocost survivors or a Parisian woman who was forst into a Nazi brothel in Paris... Learn the economics and soiological forces the instigated the war, even Hitler was a puppet of these... Do this Then come and tell us that you understand the war..
morturii
is to have the French Gov't take it up with the French citizens. Yahoo cannot be expected to A)look at every item posted to its web site, and B) have a list of what is and isn't acceptable to various countries. What if someone wants to post some Salman Rushdie memorabilia? Does Yahoo! have to block the auction in Iran? And what if someone sells a video of Tiananmen Square? Yahoo! blocks Chinese users? And that's only Yahoo! What about E-bay, web-sites, etc. Where does the list stop? The only way that users of various nationalities will be able to be blocked is by laws prohibiting _them_ from accessing and said information. Not that this isn't an incredibly heinous idea anyway. For once I hope that the US, in its incredibly arrogant fashion, tells the rest of the world to shove off. Internet access must be free and open to everyone.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
I remember years ago when the world tried to do this with pornography, and it didn't work. Instead, anyone who wants to block pornographic material can do it quite well by using third party software on the client side. If France wants to regulate something on the net they should do it themselves.
Logically this would mean ordering all French citizens not to view material that trades Nazi-related items. Since they don't trust their citizens to do so on their own, it's the citizens they should be regulating. There are lots of choices. For example, they can:
If they're resourceful, maybe they could actually think of something that wouldn't cripple the entire internet structure in a country. But why should yahoo be singled out just because it's easy to find? All that blocking yahoo would do is redirect everyone who wants Nazi things badly enough to another site.
But in the end, why should the rest of us suffer just because a minority doesn't like something? If they don't like it outside, they should close the door. The same goes for all the other governments in the world trying to impose their localised values on the rest of the world. I despise nazi'ism, but at the same time I find this action very offensive.
I know I'm just preaching to the converted anyway so I won't keep going. Personally I hope yahoo tells them to grow up and it turns into a highly publicised international incident. Somehow I don't think they will, though.
Honestly I couldn't think of any "great insight" given by Nazi memorabilia... could you name any?
-- KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
It's not going against German items in general but against items that represent the Nazi part of its past. These belong in a museum, together with some explanations for the visitors, and nowhere else.
One of the reasons the concentration camps are still around is because some people do need to retun to traumatical sites as a part of their mental healing process. This kind of monuments are important so that we do not repeat our old mistakes... Still... This doesn't mean that survivors or relatives of the victims of the Columbine shooting would be paying money to get their hand on one of those black trenchcoates so they can hang it on the wall at home. Most of the "war memorabilia" that's sold today is bought by people with similar views as the traded stuff represents. Refusing to realize that is like refusing to admit that Napster is mainly used as a pirating service. (Yes, I do use Napster constantly to get files I can't find in stores - but it's still pirating.) It's easy for Americans (US) to have views on the freedom to trade this sort of stuff because the US had practically no civil victims during WWII. Countries that were involved in that pointless slaughter may, rightfully, have different points of view. Remeber that in Germany it's illegal to even say "Hail Hitler"... This kind of problem that we have here should be disscussed calmly and treated with strong willingness to understand instead of directly condmaning... From both sides.
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
I know it won't happen, but wouldn't it be wonderfull if yahoo were to take a stand against such horrific statist attempts to manhandle them and solve the problem by merely completely barring all access to yahoo from french domains altogether. A valuable resource on the net that countless citizens use on a daily basis would suddenly be gone, which could lead to citizen unrest. Yahoo could even make a valid arguement that they are in many ways just a pipe [even in yahoo online stores, which are available to anyone (yahoo just process creditcards & hosts) ], and the the process of reviewing all content is infeasible; in short, if the government tries to foist such self censorship on a medium of public expression, then they have to pay the price... [Of course, yahoo has stockholders who would not want to be possibly left behind in a concievably lucrative future market in france, but da*m, it would set a nice precedent...]
---
the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
And you, you forget true svastika (the sacred symbol) was curved, Hitler makes it angular. He also inverted the branch direction.
You can't mistake a buddhist svastika to a nazi one.
Then, preventing people from selling nazi symbols is not meant to forget history, but to prevent the propagation of the idea beneath the symbol. French do remember their history, it's teached in school, showed in museum, remindered in magazine.
sigmentation fault
I don't think the French could dictate Yahoo's actions...they could, at most, request it to respect their sentiments....I guess a better thing to do would be to have heavy penalties for the French who buy these products...or to block the shipments from reaching the buyers...these are things that are within the French Govt's domain...and that would not be hard to implement.
You see, here in the USA we have a thing called Freedom of Speech. Ever hear Voltaire's quote: "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
The minute we start making one form of speech illegal is the minute we might as well start putting the final nail in the coffin of the Bill of Rights. Nazis and KKK members have just as much right to march and express their beliefs as Jews and Negros.
Unless this law has been repealed, the MPAA had no right whatsoever to do the DeCSS thing. As for this article, I would have thougt that the US had a similar law since it has a legal system based on that of the UK, and it would be more important to the US after that little skirmish with England.
I operate the tongue-in-cheek FuckFrance.com site, do I now need to worry about a French court knocking on my door? I'm not racist or hateful but like poking a bit of fun at the "frog-eaters." I wonder if my site is blocked at their border?
Fine, this stuff is horrible, and no good person would involve themselves in it (except for historical purposes). But it isn't hurting anyone, and there's no good reason to make it illegal.
Remember, the French government's hands aren't exactly clean. Remember their language purity laws? They aren't exactly in a position to be making moral judgements.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Actually it's not strictly speaking _legal_ to buy or sell soft drugs - it falls into a grey area of law. Basically the Police will not enforce the law (hell, the Dutch police are so laid back that when some street dealer they want to talk to runs away, they shrug shoulders and walk on!!).
"Coffee" shops are licenced to sell hash and marijuana up to a maximum weight. Techically they break the law when the buy their supplies.
In France, just as in Canada, England and Germany, racism is against the law.
It's very doubtful that "racism" is against the law in England. We have a law on the books against "incitement to racial hatred", but that refers to incitement. Being a racist is perfectly legal yourself, so long as you don't encourage others to join in -- even if you're one of a large racist mob, it's a legal defence that you were all there independently, not because one incited the others.
As to the practice of racism and the law, then we still have a police service that's racist, and seen as extremely so. Make a complaint of being racially attacked, and find yourself arrested for it ? The Stephen Lawrence case, and the on-going harrassment of Lawrence's friends and witnesses ? Our police have an awfully long way to go to gain some credibility.
At present we can see the unedifying spectacle of leading politicians; chiefly the thuggish Hague and and Anne Widdecombe, although the Labour party aren't above it either, falling over each other in a bid to win political favour by casting any foreign refugee as thieving scroungers and "bogus asylum seekers". It's like watching "Bill and Ted's Kristallnacht Adventure".
If the Nazis occupied your country, killed your countrymen, killed and opressed you and your family, would you believe that people should have a right to carry Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols? Even if you're a so called Libertarian, can you be 100% sure how you'd feel after living through that?
Yes--and I'm Danish; they did occupy my country and kill my countrymen. Especially with a grandfather who fought in the war, and a great uncle who had to live in hiding for several years as a member of the Danish resistance, I am absolutely firm in my opinion that we should not stop anyone from carrying these symbols. Outlawing the Nazis would invalidate everything these two men were prepared to give their life for. Had either of them been killed by the Nazis, I would feel even more strongly about this. I want the Nazi scumbags in the open, where anyone can see how twisted and wrong they are. This is why I find the positions of France, Germany and others utterly wrong and immoral.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
I am sure everything in banned *somewhere* in the world. The illogical result of this is that censorship is set by the lowest common denominator.
X.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I really think this is a bad move. Sites like Slashdot, Auction services and other user-driven forums cannot be restricted based on the provincial laws of every country that can view them. It's just insane. Let the people speak and slap them if they try to import something to you that's illegal.
I left CompuServe as soon as I found a flat rate PPP provider in my area, never to look back. I rather doubt the laws in Germany have changed, but perhaps they have. The underlying problem is still there -- companies doing business on foreign soil being bound by foreign laws and can affect all their customers.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, in some countries it's forbidden to own certain items. Can't speak for France, but in Germany it is like that. You're not allowed to have a Swastika flag on your house, or the Reichskriegsflagge, or something similar. That's a restriction of personal rights, but I'm totally for it. They're symbols for a part of German history that should be presented in the right context only. And the right context is one that explains what these items stood for. I could understand how Jews, whether from Germany or someplace else, would feel when they see people having the above mentioned flag presented. What possible interpretations of that presentation are there if not support for Nazism? And that's something a huge majority doesn't want here anymore.
But I see the problem that it's difficult to draw the line.
How about they agree to block French users if France agrees to stop illegally testing nuclear weapons? Or, if they disagree, just nuke them and make it look like one of their own tests went awry.. >:)
-subtraho
And all was good because the Good Guys won. The Good Guys always win. Remember, they get to write the story. I would call them the Bad and the Worse. We know who were worse, but don't talk about the Good Guys: they never make it into the government.
Well how does a French court have jurisdiction here? How does an American court have jurisdiction in Antigua? Well neither of them do. I know they say they do, but they don't. They make up some bullshit commerce clause. Now, if the Supreme Court said so I would perk my ears up. Anyway, if you ignore these pansy little terd judges they'll go away. What are they going to do to you anyway? Is the French Military going to come take all the Yahooligans away? Yeah right... All they can do is sit back and throw a temper tantrum. In this case the foreign government only has as much power as you let them have. They don't represent us (USA). If they don't like the auctios well f$%k 'em. Go somewhere else. It's a big web.
JOhn
P.S. Nazi's suck!
Campaign for Liberty
Are you guys purposly trying to get slashdot bitch-slapped with another DCMA violation?
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
"We intend to block French access to said auctions by posting them in the English language only."
It's about time their isolationist language policy did some *good*.
Paul.
Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez told the firm that the auctions were "an offence to the collective memory of the country" and ordered it to report back on July 24 to explain the measures it had taken to prevent the French from participating in the sales.
It might be interesting to see how Yahoo.com is going to respond--how can you ban, technically, all the French people from visiting Yahoo.com? Simply filtering for the ".fr" domain would not be enough, would it? (I noticed that ICRAVETV said they had developed such a method, but it didn't help in their defense, it seems?)
Note that it's not the Yahoo site in France that is in question, evidently, but rather the U.S. site.
If Yahoo loses this case, next the French will require filtering all sites not in French (just so they can enforce their laws easier, like the proposed requirement that everyone retain email for 40 days)?
I visited an open-air Braderie in France in 1998, and one of the stands was selling a range of wartime items, many of them Nazi memorabilia.
I found these items fascinating but often chilling - documents, letters from local German officials, Nazi badges and items of uniform, most horrifying of all the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear.
The seller was French, the many passers-by were mostly French, the police were there (mainly for crowd and traffic control). No one complained about what was going on?
My guess is that this French law is not enforced unless a pressure group decides to gets involved.
Though these groups' motives may be noble, it should be noted that the relics are evidence of the terrible things that happened - should we be trying to hide them away?
I realise that some neo-Nazis collect this sort of thing because they want to glorify the Nazis. However, these assholes are going to glorify the Nazis whether of not they own a few Nazi badges or a uniform.
If it weren't for the good old US of A, France, Britain and the rest of Europe would have been living under Stalin. The US did not defeat the Germans. Russia did.
We just grabbed enough to keep the Russian army out of Western Europe.
The cake is a pie
Time Magazine, Newsweek, and the New York Times all have internet readers in China. Americans consider this a good thing, especially considering that all three of these publications are banned in China, and no ISP Chinese ISP will allow access to those sites. Proxies. The same is practical for French or Germans wanting access to Nazi memorabilia (or indeed, those Americans wanting access to their own preferred forbidden intellectual properties).
Now whethter one can actually get a valid bid in from a proxy...
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
I know a number of people that have Stalin posters simply because they are interesting works, not because they endorse communism or genocide, and it is perfectly fine to do so nearly everywhere -- why should Nazi media be any different?
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
Australia wants to ban porno.
America wants to ban gambling over the net and drug-related information.
China wants to ban criticism.
God only knows what Iraq will want to ban when it finally gets its shit together.
It's pretty easy to see where this is all going to end up in a few years. There WILL be some sort of international treaty where all signatories agree to implement and enforce these bans. ISPs will be licensed and audited. Separate licenses will be required for T1 (and other high speed) backbone connections to the net. There's really only a handful of really big nodes in the US and probably the same is true in most countries. MAE EAST and MAE WEST anyone? Add in a dose of protect-the-children and anti-terrorism hysteria and kick it up a few notches with organized crime fears and Intellectual Property wars and it becomes all too clear. People, i.e. the Governments, will demand this wholesale control over who sees what. And the people who make those decisions will have absolutely no idea what they're doing or talking about. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
We, the enlightened ones, won't be able to stop it. We can't stop the RIAA or the MPAA. We're losing the DeCSS battle on the DVD front. Napster might be doomed, for all we know. The companies that have the money will get their way like dingos in a day-care center and THAT will set the precedents. Once the technical means are in place to impose content filtering on a large scale, then the really radical do-gooders will follow in their path and screw it up but good.
I hate to say it but the Geeks and privacy activists and defense-of-rights groups are going to be left out in the cold like one-legged men in an ass kicking contest.
I don't think even Mussolini took a liking to Hitler - it was more that he represented a way to get back at the British (especially) and Americans as he felt he had been shafted by them over colonies in Africa.
The Bill of Rights in the U.S. is constantly under pressure, but that does not mean that it has not been successfuly defended, at least in part, nor does it take away from the contrast in rights in the U.S. compared to other places. The U.S. is different, and some U.S. citizens like it that way.
Recently our Supreme Court dusted off the Commerce Clause of the Constitution after decades of neglect and started taking seriously the idea that rights not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states. So we are guilty of twisting our Constitution, enough so that you might not think we deserve to keep it. But occasionally we wake up and take it seriously.
I wrote parts of this stuff
You know, there once was a Frenchman who said something to the effect that "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." I wonder whatever happened to that sort of Frenchman?
Seriously, there is really a problem here. We have the choice between two evils:
...), the servers just move to a country that doesn't have that law.
1) Any time you pass a law to restrict something (porn, casino, selling drugs online,
2) You end up with countries (like this case) trying to regulate what's happening in other countries.
The broader problem, be it with France, Germany (remember Germany and CompuServe?) or anywhere else, is that we seem to confuse a belief in the goodness of freedom of the exchange of information and ideas between individuals with the freedom of commercial services to propagate anything they wish regardless of national laws, cultures or sensibilities.
Germany in particular has some rather strong legislation against promulgating any images or items that are Nazi or Nazi-like. The French have strong feelings on this score as well, perhaps because they're still torn between the romanticized Resistance and Vichy's roundup and handover of France's Jews to Hitler.
Whatever the cause, an online venue becomes a "place," and apparently the French don't want certain kinds of "places" on their cybersoil.
Unlike these countries, in the USA we have fairly wide liberties (albeit threatened), because as a people we can be controlled and manipulated by passive consumption of television and whatever else passes for mass entertainment, like spectator sports. Notice that the people the big corporations are challenging are outfits like 2600 who don't and won't fit into the groove. American culture is sort of a universal solvent - it gives one a sense of empowerment but mainly empowerment to consume information, ideas, and opinions delivered by corporate boardrooms - unless you choose to step outside the box, and at that point things get uncomfortable.
Other societies vest other authorities as arbiters of what's right or wrong in their cultures. Would I prefer some Left-Bank deconstructionist 's views on culture to those of Steve Case? That's what we're up against these days. So yeah, we do have a problem, Houston, but it's deeper than laws and enforcement.
Dave
While I agree with the gist of your argument, I have to take exception with one area of your post. Moderating you down is NOT a form of censorship or oppression. This is a privately owned forumn. Yes, it is publicly accessible. But, like TV and radio, Slashdot is under no requirement, legally, morally, ethically or otherwise, to provide you with a soapbox from which to preach your own particular brand of salvation. Censorship occurs when someone uses violence or the force of government to silence opposing speech. (Not a comprehensive definition, but close enough for this discussion.) It doesn't occur when someone refuses to listen to you, or when someone refuses to support your beliefs.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
The only thing a French court or any other court can do is fine Yahoo. It is up to yahoo to pay or not. If Yahoo has no assets in France, France has little options. But this is a big deal because yahoo will be blocked from doing any real business with France for then on. France may pressure other countries to make Yahoo Pay. This also may happen. What is disturbing is why doesn't France handle this on their own. Filter out the sight if they must control what there citizens watch and buy. What would they think if a US court decided that a French sight must be shut down because it has nudity? I do not think they like that but the French has always been hypocritical and full of them selves.
How about Yahoo just pulls their french sites. After all don't the french think that if it isn't in their language that it doesn't exist?? ahahhahaha!
;) (I hope that is the proper acro., the organization that provides free legal support)
;)
Why don't we have a big auction site of anti-french stuff and donate it to the EFF.
Or I hear that Metallica is losing money to Napster and MP3 piracy, maybe they could use the profits???
-jim
-Xen
But that doesn't mean it isn't trash.
I would strongly disagree. Locked in a trunk in my dads attic is a bloodstained Nazi flag complete with five bullet holes, sitting next to a box containing a Purple Heart. You want to know why that Nazi flag is important to me? In December of 1944 my grandfather and his unit were tied up in some intensive fighting in France. One day his unit was crossing some fields when they were ambushed by several armored Nazi units. Although they were seriously outgunned they fought back hard and suceeded in destroying five of the units before the rest pulled back. Afterwards my grandfather climbed on top of one of the wrecked vehicles and pulled down the Nazi flag to keep as a momento...with the five bulletholes already added. Two days later his unit was entering a small French village when they were attacked by snipers, and my grandfather was shot in the neck within the first few minutes of fighting. His buddy, looking for something to staunch the bloodflow, found the Nazi flag, pushed it into the wound, and held it there until a medic could arrive to help him...probably saving his life.
To me, that Nazi flag is a symbol of the hell my grandfather went through to make sure we would continue to live in a free society, and of the suffering he endured because of it.
So please don't call it trash...to some of us it is much more. I would hate to think that we are entering a world where such an important momento to my family could be made illegal because it offends somebody. I would never consider selling the flag, but allowing governments to regulate momentos like this is a step in that direction.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Like most geeks, I'd love an Enigma machine. Is this Nazi memorabilia ? Eagle, swastika, military service history, the lot, but is it Nazi ? Would Goering's trainset be Nazi memorabilia ? No obvious military connotations...
I think most of us would have no problem in answering "No" and "Yes" to those examples, but could we defend that in court ? If eBay do take an editorial line here on what's acceptable, then they're into a very difficult area. Their ToS quoted above seems a very fair attempt, but I'm glad it's their problem to deal with and not mine.
Now add to that the fact that many of those who buy Nazi regalia are neo-Nazi sympathizers, and you wind up with an even better reason for a rational person in France to fear those symbols.
:) At least I think I managed.
:)
Even though I don't like neo-nazism, or nazism - I won't try to censor it. True free speech doesn't limit hate-speech. If you start saying that "that and that should not be legal to talk about" - then its no longer freedom of speech. Yes, the nazis resisted freedom of speech - but we're just as bad, if we refuse them their *RIGHT* to speak about their opinion.
The only way to beat nazism (if that is what we want, that is at least what I want), is to argue against it. You have to *argue* against those who believe in it, and *convince* them that they are wrong. Trust me, its possible, I've managed it once.
I used to discuss with a neo-nazi at a BBS I ran. He was a revisionist, and a neo-nazi. Well, after a couple of years of constant arguments, and after I had shut down my BBS and moved from where I lived to Oslo (where I now reside and study) - I met this guy. He was no longer a nazi. He didn't believe in it anymore. I do think I had something to do with it, but he never admitted *that*
But, its possible to reform hardcore nazis. They just need to hear the truth. If you try to supress their opinion, they believe more and more in "Big Brother" who tries to hide the one Truth that they've discovered. The only way to convince them if is they're allowed an open argument - without shouting from people - like "Goto hell, you nazi bastard". That way - you never win. You'll have to argue, calmly - and refute each of their arguments, again and again (because they WILL repeat them, clining to their beliefs, for al ong time).
.. Point is - censorship is NOT the way to go. Free speech - even for nazis and other unpopular opinions - is the only way.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
What we need to do is get together and draft a declaration of independance -- of the internet, from the worldwide governments.
;-)
Governments keep on interfering -- the US government does it without even thinking about it, but France, Canada, the UK, and probably lots of other countries have meddled in our affairs as well.
If governments want something from us, they should *ask* for it, and negotiate for it. Want us to respect your copyrights? Convince us to sign on to the WIPO rules. Want us to censor people because you don't like what they say about you? Tough, we're not going to give you that
An independant internet would solve many other problems as well. Few people would argue that patents have no value, but in order to establish a patent on the internet one is pretty much obligated to register it in every nation in the world; with an internet government such a patent could be granted once at much reduced cost. Similarly, an internet government could pass useful laws including requiring standards compliance.
What it comes down to is that the internet both needs to have a governing body in order to enforce reasonable conduct on its members, and needs to be free of interference from external governments.
Geeks of the world unite!
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Has anyone read this speech by Lawrence Lessig of Harvard law school? He has an interesting take on the problem. Well worth a look.
Say we get our offshore data haven (see Can Websites Go Offshore For Free Speech) declared to be an independant nation, we can write a few "custom" laws, eg "It is illegal to present or use foreign legal documents that contain the letters M.P.A.A.", then fine the MPAA for $$$ (plus $$$ per day violation) and demand they take steps to prevent their "legal filth" contaminating the haven :-)
If you look at the propoganda and imagery created by the Nazi's during their stint in power, it reveals quite a bit about the way in which they constructed a mythology around the party in order to rally people around them. Nazism is a great big ball of weird psuedo-occult-ism, borrowed Christian symbolism (The swastika, in addition to being an Indian symbol, was taken from a Christian sect from days of yore that used a crooked cross as its symbol), and militarism. Everything from the uniforms, to the posters, to the choreography of their mass rallies was designed to create loyalty and fear. Hitler had probably the most powerful cult of personality in existence, as evidenced by the fact that 50 years later there are still some people (educated people, mind you, if you consider anyone in the US educated) that advocate his beliefs and immitate his mannerisms and dress. The draw of Nazism for the average German was the image that it created. It was one part religion, one part army, and one part patriarchy. Only by studying what was produced by this group can we ever understand the particularities of their symbolism of power, and the way in which they manipulated public sentiment to get great masses of people to support unconscionable things and repulsive doctrines based on psudeo-science and psuedo-history (the idea of the 'Arian' race and people; the Arians are a Persian tribe, much of which migrated into India. Modern 'Arians' can be seen in the northern Indian population, and among the remaining Zoroastrian community in Iran. Probably not what Hitler meant.) So the insight is the understanding of how the Nazis engineered their rise to power that a historian might gain from examining these artifacts.
Now, is Yahoo auction the best place for such things? Debatable. But the effort to get rid of them has a generally restrictive effect on investiagations of this sort everywhere, and particularly in France. Certainly, there will be some people who will use scholarship as a shield for anti-Semitism, as modern 'scholars' of Holocaust denial attempt to do. But I don't think that justifies across the board attempts to stop people from studying what remains of the Nazi era.
It was probably moderated up because his opinions reflect most peoples opinions. Free speech is more important than a few french people feeling that their Good Moral has been stepped upon.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Even on the Internet, there must be respect for law and repect for individual country's laws.
In the US for instance, we have laws about child pornography which may not exist in other places.
In France, just as in Canada, England and Germany, racism is against the law.
Whether you agree with this law or not does not change the fact that it's not up to Americans whether they agree or not. It's up to the French citizens how they decide to run thier own country. That is how democracy works.
If you respect democracy, then you must allow countries to run thier country the way they want.
The fact they recognize that the Internet is international only shows how complicated this issue is for everyone.
I doubt that all these negative posts would come if we found the US government was going to some small nation with a child pornography or snuff film sale.
- Serge Wroclawski
...Remember "Helms Burton" (spelling?), when the US decided that other countries could not do buisness with Cuba (anybody knows what happened to it?).
...), the servers just move to a country that doesn't have that law.
Seriously, there is really a problem here. We have the choice between two evils:
1) Any time you pass a law to restrict something (porn, casino, selling drugs online,
2) You end up with countries (like this case) trying to regulate what's happening in other countries.
I don't think one is better or worse than the other. The only way out is to have uniform laws, which I don't think is likely to happen in the near term.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Fair use clause of the Copy Write laws say that you can copy stuff if you intend to debate it.
SB.
Ah, but Goering's were rather awfully small.
Wait, that dosn't rhyme.
Ummmm, Goering's were rather awfully sad?
I'll have to work on it.
iCraveTV?
Found it! Append research to previously unresearched comment: Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942) (USSC+) See the case here: http://www2.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/foliocgi.exe/h istoric/query=[group+315+u!2Es!2E+568!3A ]!28[level+case+citation!3A]!7C[group+citemenu!3A] !29/doc/{@1}/hits_only? Argh, I need to learn HTML... :-P
Once again (I am writing this one more time) this is not about free speech, this is about free commerce. In France you have a Nazi-like political party called "FN" or "Front Nationale", can't do more than that to allow free speech, existing for more than 20 years and grabbing around 10% in the recent elections.
This is about free commerce: do the US have to let their citizens buy drugs from Netherland, even if it's legal there, because otherwise we would take over their free speech?
Do we have to let pedophiliacs buy or sell nude kid picture or movies because otherwise we would take over their free speech??
This is about selling goodies and making money from immoral goodies.
Yeah you are right we should let Yahoo sell drugs and kid porn.
--- Bouh !!! ---
agree.
One of the things that empower them most is the atention they get. Other groups are probably as violent and do greater damage today (for example the Hells Angels) but since they do not use that symbolism, they are largely ignored.
rmstar
to judges who are geopolitically challenged.
"Yo, Froggy-boy! Mind your own shop! We're not in your pissant country..."
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Do we have to go through this again?
.fr domain at your router, and be done with it.
.com etc. domains that are physically located in France, not to mention folks dialing long distance or using VPNs.
Fine; Yahoo, block all access to the
Refuse to take any action beyond that, because it is not even theoretically possible to track
--
OK, yes this is stupid because they sue the American Yahoo wrt French laws. This sure emphasizes one big problem of the Internet : it's an international media whereas there are no international laws. Every court of every country going after stuff considered illegal under their laws doesn't seem to be the right solution
Now I'd be glad if someone would explain me why this is a free speech story. This is about an auction, remember ? How can an auction be considered as speech ?
IMHO, free trade != free speech. To my understanding, under the American law, you're allowed to discuss child pornography, but you aren't allowed to sell it, are you ?
Now now..dont flame me yet..
Freedom of Speech must be the most raped and over-used right on the Net. I am not surprised. We use it so commonly, everytime someone takes offence at the content on a website or at a particular post on a Discussion Group, or in this case a Yahoo Auction site.
First off Slash dot doesnt consist people from the United States alone. Our nationality doesnt unite us.. our skills does, what we believe in unites us. I am grieved by some of the posts by Slashdot members which boast about what United States could do to France which are totally irrelevant to the topic at hand and most of all childish and doesnt befit a Slashdot member to make such a comment. We are not bound by our nationality, if we were this Discussion group would have gone to the dogs long ago. This is a Discussion group, because it is what it is.. a discussion group.
Yahoo has every right to keep the Auction site up and allow them to keep selling those items, but those items themselves are remnants of a god forbidden era, which no one would like to return. If those items or the auction of those items are causing grief to any individual or to a group in particular then Yahoo is morally responsible to take it off. ITs true that its not humanely possible for Yahoo to keep track of content published by its member sites, but it doesnt free Yahoo from the responsibility of removing offending content and kicking out the offenders once its found out.
Internet is a community without boundaries. Lets keep it that way. I am worried about all this talk about laws not being applicable in here, as Internet transcends human boundaries.. but if this is to remain that way, then both sides should comply.
Rapid Nirvana
Stanley Fish wrote a fascinating essay called "There's No Such Thing As Free Speech .. and It's a Good Thing, Too," which is reprinted in a book of essays with the same title. His basic point is that defenders of free speech always delimit the boundaries of what kind of speech is acceptable. For example, Milton's Aeropagitica, a 1643 essay in favor of religious tolerance, goes through pro-free-speech arguments that any modern reader would find very familiar, and then, about three-quarters of the way through, says that of course, none of this applies to the Catholics.
Thus, "free speech" is like "fairness" or "merit". Different political factions present their spin on what the term means. Whichever faction gets its definition widely accepted then gets to present itself as the champions of virtue and can put its opponents on the defensive.
Fish's essay is not available online, but I found an interview excerpt here with his main points.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
If it weren't for the good old US of A, France, Britain and the rest of Europe would have been living under Stalin.
His quote:
Otto: Well, would you like to know what you'd be without us, the good ol' U.S. of A. to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire, that's what. So don't call me stupid, lady. Just thank me!
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Maybe I don't bear these predjudices because I was never in a war and didn't have my family and friends killed by a fascist regime. I guess I would probably feel different if this were the case.
There are two reasons to uphold freedom of speech for a holocaust denier and similar people.
Firstly, their ideas should be known - not just spouted to a secret cadre of believers, but publicly debated and shown for the lies they are. And if some of their ideas are true, we need to know that too - the history books don't always tell the whole story. Call me an idealist but I think the public should know the truth, especially about things like this.
Secondly, how do you restrict such actions to a particular group. Today it is the neonazis, tomorrow a religious right group may gain power and anti-christian speech will be banned. Then congregations of other religions will be stopped. If the slide into governmental censorship and control continues you end up with another fascist regime. This is an extreme case, but the more restrictive a government is the harder it is to stop.
I logged on to /. to get *away* from studying for my final on Nazis and Germany tomorrow. And now I have to go work on my existentialism paper and talk about Nietzsche, who wasn't a nazi, but was bastardized by them. I tell ya, someone should ban these nazis before they go any further. . .
Well, I guess actually stopping them before they killed 6 million jews would have be idea; stopping the aution of their junk seems a bit pathetic compartively.
I'm making no sense. sorry.
no comment
These are the same people who won't let their citizens encrypt their own data (which is like saying you can't lock your house, in case the government would like to rifle through your papers). Yet, they had the nerve to refuse extradition of the murderer Ira Einhorn, because they felt it was "unjust" that we tried him in absentia. It was his choice! He ran from the law! Naturally he ran to France, land of the free (criminals). That's where all the good murderers and pedophiles (Roman Polanski) go. Now the commonwealth of Pennsylvania had to place Einhorn in double jeopardy (admittedly, in his own favor) and withhold the death penalty in order to meet France's "demands". They are without honor, and we should immediately reneg on this "agreement".
More info
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
yes i know I'm jumping to conclusions. or am i?
wisconsin does not exist.
If it weren't for the good old US of A, France, Britain and the rest of Europe would have been living under Stalin. The US did not defeat the Germans. Russia did.
Nice revisionist history happening again here. I would yell at you for exaggerating the US's importance in Europe, but of course, nobody denies that the US Forces contributed greatly to the "ALLIED" success.
However, as is typical of US citizen bigots such as yourself, you seem to forget that there were many people from other nations fighting Nazi oppression long before the Americans even loaded one boat of troops.
Perhaps you weren't aware of the fact that US Army troops didn't even begin arriving in Europe until January 26, 1942.
The reason why your comment irks me so much is because it belittles other countries, and more specifically, the soldiers of those countries, accomplishments. What about my grandfather's? What about their brothers? Some of them fought and died in WW2, and they fought for Canada. And besides, I have always hated the fact that the American's view themselves as the saviours of Europe.
Take a drink from the fountain of "fucking clues" before you spout shit like that again.
Ok first off, just becuase the U.S. has imposed it's will on other countries doesn't mean that that same country do the same to us!!
Think about it, the U.$.A is like the world's bully (and iraq, that pyromaniac kid who no one likes) telling all the other kids what to do and stealing their lunch money (oil). No one has the guts to stand up to that bully, and when they do, the U.S. will just beat the snot out of him!
Which is probably going to happen to france if they pursue this further.
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Maybe in 2060 the French will condemn Yahoo for making them the laughingstock of the world (again).
Not that I condone neo-nazi shitheads. But I know people collect war memorabilia, and a few whiny losers from "nous nous rendons!"* land won't change that.
(* "we surrender," at least according to babelfish)
-Legion
I think there are a number of things you have to keep in mind before you jump to the conclusion that France is being fascist for making such a demand.
1. I know you Americans value free speech above everything in all cases, but that is not necessarily how other countries see it. Many countries have anti-hate laws. Those laws exist for a very good reason. Hate speech most often promotes murder, assaults, cross-burning, etc, of minorities. It makes those minorities feel intimidated and frightened. Many countries see the consequences of some speech as far outweighing any "rights" that someone may have to make that speech. Free speech is not an inalieable right. Remember that even in the U.S., it's illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater.
2. There are cultural differences here. The French are not Americans, and you should respect their opinions too.
2. France is especially sensitive about Nazi-symbols given the history there, and I think it's understandable. Keep in mind that France was occupied by Nazi germany for years, and that their citizens were made oppressed and helpless by the Nazis. If the Nazis occupied your country, killed your countrymen, killed and opressed you and your family, would you believe that people should have a right to carry Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols? Even if you're a so called Libertarian, can you be 100% sure how you'd feel after living through that?
3. There is little practical reason to own a swastika or other Nazi or neo-Nazi symbol. Chances are about 99.99999999% that if you own such a symbol, you're a hate-mongering, jew/black/gay beating fascism-loving jerk.
I just want to keep this in perspective, and say that this is not a case of outright no-good censorship like when the government wants to take away your right to read "indecent" materials. To many, hate speech is just as dangerous as yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre.
And just recently the MPAA shut down an Oxford student's website for his DeCSS cascading style sheet HTML page filter, mistaking it for Jon Johansen's excellent DeCSS dvd content scrambling system decoder (not copier).
Oxford Yanks Student Page Over Spoof DeCSS
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Oops. By "Franch" I mean "France".
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
recognize it. Sorry asshole, but you're taking the easy way out. Over here Nazis cry out for changes and they get horror in response. Over there Nazis cry out silently, and they get revolution in response. Get a fucking grip.
Prohibition is for child psychology rejects.
Figure it out.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Historical artifacts as hate speech. Interesting opinion. Obiviously you're opposed to free speech, period, since you state clearly that speech should be free only if it is inoffensive (non-hate).
Does France ban Communist memorbilia? (Hate speech against, well, everyone.) Feminist memorbilia (hate speech again men). Gay memorbilia (esp. Darwin fish, hate speech against Christians, Jews, Muslims...)? (And please, don't bother arguing with me that those aren't hate movements or hate speech. Just like you, I get to say what is hate, too.)
"Jews are rapists" -- bad hate. (Nazism)
"Men are rapists" -- good hate. (Feminism)
If money doesn't buy happiness, you're not spending it right.
> Just like it's no longer considered 'free speech' to draw up a 'hit list' of people to target You mean like this? - Homer's Revenge List: - Bill of Rights - Grandpa - fat free lard - gravity - Emmys - Darwin - H2WHOA! - Billy Crystal - God - Soloflex - the boy - Stern Lecture Plumbing - Econo Save
Well, after reading the articles surrounding this case, I can see most of you have no clue. France is not trying to tell Yahoo what it can do. They had been given two months to block access to the particular server for people who live in France. Now, having the government block sites is bad enough, but this is not a case of the French government trying to dicate Yahoo's content, they just didn't want their country to access it. Debate that....
It's all well and good to present things in whatever context you want. But that doesn't change the fact that what happened, happened.
I could understand how Jews, whether from Germany or someplace else, would feel when they see people having the above mentioned flag presented. What possible interpretations of that presentation are there if not support for Nazism?
Plenty. The swastika existed long before Hitler twisted it (metaphorically and literally; the arms used to point the other way). Back then, it was a symbol of good fortune. I believe it was Hindu in origin, actually. Should such a symbol be blasted out of general sight simply because a madman perverted its meaning? I don't think so.
Every group out there has a symbol of some kind; it's almost a requirement. There are groups out there that would kill all men; do I get offended when I see their logos? Hardly. I'm more secure in myself than that. Some people aren't, I realize, but those people need help.
The Holocaust was a terrible period in history. One of the worst, from a moral perspective. It has also been over for fifty years. The Nazis have been scattered to the winds, existing only as small pockets of lunatics who have no chance of ever coming into power again. Far better to get the news of what they did spread as far and wide as possible, educate people about why it was so horrific. The saying goes that those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Trite, but true. Look at the Balkans, where old hatreds were loosed after the Soviet Union's breakup, leading to Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing." In Rwanda, we've seen the same thing. This is because people haven't yet learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Hiding the truth won't teach them a damn thing. Particularly when it's the truth about people who did twist the truth at every opportunity; Hitler himself once said that "people will believe one big lie more readily than many little lies." It's how he managed to take and keep power; he twisted history and reality for his own ends. And that is what the governments of France and Germany are doing now. They're twisting history to make themselves look better, with no thought of the final effects.
The court's decision is NOT an attempt to "forget the past". Come visit western Europe and you'll see if anybody's trying to forget the holocaust and WWII there. Talking about what I know best, France : there's this French/German television network that shows prime time documentaries on WWII about twice a week. Last year, a former collaborationnist's trial made top headlines for months. There are a lot of memorials/museums on WWII. WWII is the most important topic on the history test for the final exam in high school...
I don't think anybody tries to forget that dark era in western Europe, at least in France. In fact, the expression "memory duty" is the most commonly heard talking about these events.
Now, people have such terrible memories of the war that it has been generally acknowledged that the nazi ideology always leads to crime. It is IMHO the reason for the French laws excluding nazi propaganda from free speech. IIRC Germany and several western Europe countries that were involved in the war have similar laws
Now, why are those items illegal too ? It's not quite clear to me, but I see two possible reasons :
1) The memories of nazism being so bad, it's hard for the French to believe that anybody can buy such stuff out of anything else than nazi nostalgia. Sure researchers would need such items but the museums have plenty of those, they wouldn't buy it on Yahoo
2) The president of LICRA (league against racism and antisemitism) said on TV that he felt that selling those items without any historical explanations was wrong.
Well I still don't know whether it's good or bad to ban such auctions. But I really think that it is stupid to go after the content of an American website hosted by an American company with French laws.
I tink historical testimonies belong to museums (possibly virtual ones), where they can be publicly displayed and explained, and not to auction sites.
The events that occured in WWII were horrible. Necessary precautions should be taken place to make sure they do not happen again. What I do not understand is how preventing French citizens from purchasing this war memorabilia will do so. If there is a risk of similar events taking place again, it is unlikely that it will be in the name of nazis and that it will be inspired by war memoribilia. So I guess my question is how is it that this censorship prevents racism?
I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with Nazi memorabilia? I'm not a Nazi by any means, and don't even agree remotley with their politics or the atrocities of WWII.
But what the hell is wrong with trading the Nazi relics of the war? Some of us are history nuts who collect anything from WWII. Some of us keep momentos of teh past around for people of the future to learn from.
Not allowing people to trade relics doesn't mean that it will all go away. Alowing someone to own a relic of the Nazi past doesn't make them an instant Nazi. I really don't even see why there's a problem here.
Justin-- Object known as a camera. Vintage uncertain, origin unknown. - Twilight Zone
So how does this froggy judge intend to enforce his ironically fascist ruling? Foreign judicial branches have no more sovereign power over American companies than my dog Spot.
Or did Clinton give them that power in exchange for a campaign donation? =)
He said words to the effect that someone didn't like winners, and the reply was "What? Like North Vietnam?"
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
But who's the goose?
On one hand, we have the Internet, which allows for the exchange of a plethora of ideas. On the other hand, some factions (countries, groups, whatever) consider the ideas of other factions to be stupid, rude and/or illegal.
With so many different opinions existing and the internet growing daily, clashes are bound to occur with increasing frequency.
If we are to live in a "Global Village," perhaps common rules should be set down. Not only are cultural philosophies clashing, but ideas regarding intellectual property, economic trade, criminal law, etc. are being rethought almost on a daily basis. Geography, it seems, doesn't count as much as it did even five years ago.
Everybody wondered what the kind of "Peace Dividend" the "New World Order" was going to bring after Communism. As usual, nobody was able to predict accurately the future. Perhaps this is the start of a "One World Government." Not a government brought on by high-minded idealism, but by plain, old-fashioned practicality.
Does anyone remember when this thing we cal the net was a free exchange of information? You know, before the whole censorship thing began running rampant. I understand that some people can be offended by this auction, and I understand every reason why. But, simply becaue your offended by something doesn't mean I can enjoy it. If you dont like Yahoo because it is offering Nazi Memorabellia, then for gods sake, go to Ebay, or any one of several other online auctions. Or maybe, just maybe, go read a book and realize that the items up for auction here are from a time when a group of people decided to tell everyone else what they could and couldn't do-say-think-beleive.
censoring a nazi..... kinda hypocrital dontcha think?
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
Yes, we Americans defend free speech. Even when we find the subject matter distasteful, the right remains. Who was it that said something to the effect "I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"? I can't recall.
The Americans who died in World War II died in part defending freedom. Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental liberties our country is founded upon. Not that the majority of Americans seem to even care about such liberties any longer.
Though I may dislike the message of racists, they do have the right to express their opinions. Freedom goes both ways, you can't abridge someone else's freedom and expect your freedoms to be unaffected.
That's exactly the trouble, though: speech and action are *very* difficult to tell apart. From a practical standpoint, the supreme court has a host of rulings about this (ranging from the basic: shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre is ruled to be action, not speech).
at a more academic level, catherine mackinnon has some excellent writing on this issue (regardless of whether you agree with her points about pornography or not, she is a brilliant legal theorist and the speech-action division is a central area of interest).
blythly commenting that speech is one thing and action another does not make the two easy to distinguish.
Currently eBay US has a policy with regards to potentially offensive material, which says in part:
"eBay has always exercised judgment in allowing or disallowing certain listings in the best interest of the community. Therefore, eBay will judiciously disallow listings or items that promote hatred, violence, or racial intolerance, including items that promote organizations (such as the KKK, Nazis, neo-Nazis, Skinheads, Aryan Nation) with such views. eBay will review listings that are brought to its attention by the community, and will look at the entire listing to determine whether it falls within this rule.
eBay recognizes that some older relics of organizations that promoted hate, violence or racial intolerance are legitimate collectible items that serve as a reminder of past injustices or horrors. Obviously, the past cannot be erased, and such relics can serve as important reminders and educational tools in a community that can learn from the past. Therefore, relics of groups such as the KKK or Nazi Germany may be listed on eBay, provided that they are at least 50 years old, and the listing is not used as a platform to glorify or promote the organization or its values. Listings of such items that are not 50 years old will be removed when brought to our attention. Sellers must state the approximate age of the item within the description. "
(Found at: http://pages.ebay.com/help/ community/png-offensive.html)
Therefore if the item is over 50 years old and has historical value it is OK to be listed on eBay. I know for a fact, as an eBay employee, that all Nazi memorabillia is banned from being listed on the eBay Germany site and eBay members who are registered as living in Germany are actively blocked from bidding on such items, irrelevant of which eBay site they are listed on.
The actively blocking users is the same for the eBay Adults Only section. Any member who has registered as living in Australia, is unable to access the eBay Adults Only section, whether they are willing to provide age verification or not. This policy helps eBay to comply with other countrys' laws outside of the US. The eBay Australia site simply does not have an Adults Only sections.
So technically it is certainly possbile to block certain users, living in a particular geographic region, from certain areas of the site.
This ruling will certainly prove interesting for eBay as they are planning further international expansion into Europe in the near future, including one particularly relevant nation.
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
Yahoo should just do a name lookup of all the incoming connections and if the name ends in .fr
to refuse connection.
An effective way to make sure French people don't see something that offends them on Yahoo.
Nonsense! Genghis Kahn appeared in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. And he was one of the good guys, no less. Therefore, he must be all right!
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
This news upsets me. Never mind that it is impossible for Yahoo! to monitor the hundreds of auctions going on on their site, I am not liking the trend of US Companies and web sites being subject to other countries' restrictive laws.
Even if you ignore the historical relevance of this stuff, and you think it shouldn't be sold, the fact of the matter is, under US law it is OK, and this is a US company.
France might think they have the right to ask for it to be censored in their country, and they might be right about that, but ask for money? What makes them think Yahoo! should pay them? They are under US law. A disturbing trend indeed.
Just my $.02
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Artifacts != Swastikas
Caution: unresearched comment, IANAL, etc. That said, here goes: AFAIK, in the US at least, it is not legal to say things that the speaker would be reasonably expected to know would have a high probability of causing a physically violent reaction in the persons/people to whom the comments are directed. Note that this does not imply that illegal consequences to the physically violent reaction (eg beating the crap out of the speaker/aggravated battery) are protected. They are still illegal. To paraphrase the judge who wrote the decision in the relevant case in the US Supreme Court, "Them's 'Fightin' Words', and they ain't protected." For example, it is not protected speech to walk up to a black person and call them a "watermelon-eatin', cotton-pickin', nigger monkey". (I'd never say that, BTW, it's just an example, and does not reflect in any way my beliefs or opinions.) Not sure how the decision is worded, or how it would be enforced, but I would guess that it would be similar to "inciting a riot" or somesuch... If anyone knows a link to the relevant decision (mid 60's???) I'd love to read it...
The momentos exist because Nazism happened. Their existence is an important reminder of the dangers of ideology. We need them to discuss, to consider, to learn from... if we are concerned that such a tragedy should never happen again. That there are those who embrace Nazism means the task of education is far from done. If they collect these momentos, then they have revealed themselves. Ignoring the symptoms won't cure the disease.
"Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."
Yes it should, you reap Naziism if you sow limitations on free speach.
"They were always excellent at flattening other countries (Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Irak, etc) but were they ever flattened themselves. And by flattened I mean literally flattened."
Yes. Find a picture of Atlanta or Savanah in 1865. As for why we haven't been invaded in the past century, aleutians aside, it's called a navy. Unless Canada or Mexico (speaking of french imperialism) decide to invade us, you gotta get through our navy. You french should appreciate this since the Brits kicked Boney's ass due mainly to their navy.
Speaking of Boney, what about Napoleonic items? A buddy of mine has a Klingenthal sabre from 1809 with the imperial crest on the hilt. Some frog cuirasser could well have slaughtered innocent spaniards, germans, russians, austrians, greeks, arabs, brits, itallians, etc., etc. with it. Where did my buddy procure this sword? Why france of course, you don't seem to care much when it's your own power mad dictator slaughtering people, but reminders of your collaborationist past are just to much for your tender sensibilities I suppose.
Such high moral ground from a country that still hires mercenaries so it's own citizens don't have to pay for it's boneheaded foriegn policy.... or help us flatten Iraq. Speaking of the Legion, it was a virtual retirement camp for ex-Waffen SS troopers after WWII, whats a little memorabilia when you get real Statschuffel troops?
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
WAVE america anyone?...
The fact is Fascism is something were all born with. It's the simplest social model we have when we're born. The problem is people are convinced not by what ppl say but the fact that they can articulate (not to be confused with speech but oratorical skill) such infantile ideas.
Read Mein Kampf he sounds like god damned cartoon character or worse something off a daytime soap opera. "...and if the conquered land shall not be enough to contain the German blood, then the tears of war shall flow." What an idiot.
The key is to put these things in the light not let them rot in the underground. Why do you think they say always travel in crowds? Because if you might be mugged ppl can hear you scream.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Reposting an anonymous coward (worth a read ) :
That magical number "Six Million" includes *everyone* who was killed in "non-combat acts" in Germany and all its occupied territories during WW2 (excluding those killed by the Allies), and it's a figure presented right after the war by the US military as a part of their propaganda campaign aimed at the German civilian population.
The number of people who died (regardless of cause) in concentration-, labour- and extermination camps and prisons is nowadays estimated at somewhere between 2 and 4 million.
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BTW, I suppose most if not all of the supposedly "Nazi" items for sale at Yahoo actually are memorabilia from the regular Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS (i.e. non-political militaria).
To say that the WW2 German armed forces were "nazi" and fought for Hitler and National Socialism is as absurd as saying that I have fought for the Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson (internationally known as That Fat Mongoloid) and that I'm a Socialist because I did my compulsory military service here in Sweden.
Alongside the US propaganda, the heads of concentration camps inflated the numbers to appeal Hitler and Himmler. So the US propaganda machine exaggerated those numbers -again- to make the point to the world that they were the good guys, and vilify (as if the concentration camps weren't badly enough ) the nazi regime, since they had their own fascist regime at home. The bad point of this is it makes for many people the Holocaust more of a joke than a true history.
Sadly, not many people in the US remember the forced sterilization of poor people by their own government in the 20's and 30's in the name of eugenics (breed a better race, same has Hitler), the concentration camps for japanese-american, the bombing of Tokio 100000-120000 deaths in a single day, burned, but without that fancy nuclear mushroom... so good for the people of USA, that enjoys a beautiful country, but not care about the homeland of others. It's OK to have freedom of speech, as long that it is for USA citizens, and that's all.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Just a note....
while Yahoo is a US company, they do buisness in
france, they even have offices with an address
in France, so they are not Entirely based
and residing in the US.
(Someone I know looked them up in a french
directory online, they do indeed have an address)
However, I do think this is a silly thing. Just
one more example of a government whose attitude
is "We wish it would just go away, so you can't
have it". (The US does it with drugs, and a host
of other things, Germany does it with porn and
certain types of litterature....evidently with
france it is War Memoribilia - I can see why its
a period of history they wish they could just
bury their head in the sand and forget about)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
There is a translation problem here. In French, gouvernement means the cabinet of ministers at the head of the executive branch, which in American gets translated as the administration (whereas in French, the administration is the set of government agencies).
The executive has apparently nothing to do with this case. As it appears from the press, two private plaintiffs, noprofit associations, sued Yahoo on grounds of a restriction of the freedom of the press law that prohibits incitation to racial hatred. A judge issued an injunction against Yahoo. The matter has not been fully judged yet, neither appealed. It is therefore totally premature to speak of any official French policy on the Internet. This is only a single judgment by a single judge in a local correctional court.
Would that work, though, if you had a high-traffic site? I uinderstood that the latency is higher to access a website on a server on another continent, and the overwhelming majority of internet users are in North America.
Damn it, I thought I saw some Mongolian artifacts for sale on Yahoo the other day. Don't the French realize the Mongols slaughtered millions of innocent men, women and children? They wiped out entire towns in the worst, bloody ways possible.
Apparently the French endorse the actions of Genghis Kahn.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Now we see that these same laws will let tiny businesses and gov'ts of other nations sprinkle iron filings into our e-economy and screw up local business and cost jobs with blame falling on politicians who want ot get re-elected badly. Finally corporate pressure will start demanding a relaxing of these stupid laws. And maybe we, the common user, can benefit too.
Yeah... right. :)
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
You know. It is obvious that you know very little about Japan. The taxes are higher in the states than in Japan. I could go on, but if any country is more capitalist than the US it is Japan. As for teh social welfare system bit Japan's system is not any more extensive than the US's. I'm not sure why I'm posting this since you are more or less categorically wrong in every statement you made. -wyn
Okay, maybe I'm dumb, or missing something, but couldn't a country-of-origin code be embedded in the options section of the IP packet header? I believe that there is a state telecom monopoly in France, so...
Couldn't the French government mandate that country-identifying data be added to every packet leaving Franch? Then, they could say to Yahoo, "You have the ability to discern French visitors from non-French. Comply, or ______" where _______ is probably a whoppingly large amount of money. At that point, it would be a reasonable request, and probably legally enforceable.
I suppose such a system could be easily extended to any other country that has a state telecom monopoly--which is just about every country in the world, I think--though I don't know if it would be a better world.
Please tell me if I'm wrong here. But if I'm not, please consider solutions of this type before you type, yet again, that the Internet is naturally borderless, or whatever.
If the French don't like what they find on the Internet, they should stop connecting to it. It is after all French people pulling the content down from the US, not the US dumping the content on the French.
From the CNN article:
"Under French law, it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones."
Isn't this the same country that prohibits buisnesses from posting signs in English and forbids the adoption of English words, all in the name of preserving the "purity of the French language?" How is that not a violation of the spirit of said law, if not the word?
Then again, hey, what's that over there?
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"If God were truly omniscient and ubiquitous, He wouldn't have created such dumbasses."
--Ted Rall on creationists
Apparently France "realizes" that you can't beat fascism with liberty, equality and fraternity, and instead decided to fight fire with fire.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Well, we really do have a thing about free speech, and that doesn't just mean love letters.
And I do appreciate that you acknowledged that Americans did help a wee bit. You should know that we don't forget much about WWII either, especially given that this weekend is Memorial Day which is when we remember our veterans. But in the larger picture, if France can stop an American Yahoo! (and apparently the articles weren't advertised on the French Yahoo!) then Iraq (with whom France seems to like doing business) should be able to shut down all the fashion runways of Paris! They certainly don't let good Islamic women wear that stuff, right?
Hell, if you really want to be offended watch Hogan's Heroes, a comedy about a WWII POW camp. It's been running for 30 yrs here.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Actully, this kind of makes sense. I mean, in the United States, citizens can sue other countries. This seems just extending the power a little bit.
Apparently these are very resourceful goat herders. Just try getting drunk in Saudi Arabia
US Interstate Gambling prohibitions
http://www.compar.com/news/news1vs11.html
The United States leaves the legality of gambling (gaming) up to the states. To allow one state to outlaw it while another state condones it, a complex web of federal legislation makes interstate gambling illegal, until the casino lobby petitions for another loophole. This isn't just between casinos, the Feds and you: VISA and MasterCard have been sued for allowing illegal transactions, as if they could monitor it.
International Free Speech prohibitions
http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~sha llit/afraid.html
"Here are just a few of the historical limits to freedom of speech that many countries have imposed: Libel and slander. Obscenity. National security. Invasion of privacy. False advertising. Age limits. Solicitation of murder. Fraud."
Providers such as CompuServe and Yahoo! have already become familiar with the technical and legislative issues of geographical censorship. If Yahoo! has a presence as a company in France, the corporate whole will likely move to follow the restrictions that a French court may impose, as far as they're technically able.
It's been said before, but people don't seem to get it. The US Constitution's First Amendment just guarantees that the US Government won't unduly hinder free speech. It says nothing about what your employer or service provider may choose to hinder, it says nothing about what International Law may choose to hinder.
(The Internet is not borderless. =anagram>
Distort the terrible nonsense.)
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-----Quote----------------------------------Unlike these countries, in the USA we have fairly wide liberties (albeit threatened), because as a people we can be controlled and manipulated by passive consumption of television and whatever else passes for mass entertainment, like spectator sports.
-----Quote----------------------------------
Unlike these countries? Have you ever seen a British football game? I think those fans would rather nuke a random country every day for a week than lose to a bitter rival. And don't forget the Colombian defenseman who was killed because he scored on his own goal. I think that the people around the whole world are just as controlled and manipulated by television, sports, etc, even more so. I don't think you give the general population of the US enough credit.
And I don't really see your connection. What exactly do you mean by your relating TV manipulation and personal liberties? Are you saying that we have freedoms but are being pushed and prodded by the consumer culture? That we are automatons who have the freedom to do what we want, as long as it is from Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger (sp)?? If that's the case, then again, I don't think you're giving us enough credit.
I really don't think that corporations have that much control. I admit that there are alot of people who pander to the corporate gods and obey their commands to wear the latest cologne, but I don't see this as an epidemic. And even if I'm wrong about this, who cares? Does it really matter that the people around you are wearing the latest Polo styles and drive C5s and Beamers? As long as you stay true to yourself.
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
I want to state my agreement with France's laws against hate speech. Personally, I think speech to incite violence or hatred against another group should be on par with speech to assasinate the president and planning to overthrow the government. All of those are threats to US national security -- it's a threat to Americans, it's a threat to America.
This is one area that should fall under the list of exceptions to the 'free speech'. Don't give me this "well if we do that, then we might as well censor everything else", and "who decides". The answer is simple. Speech to incite violence, hatred or intolerance of any other group of people should be *wrong*.
People often use the catch phrase "your right to swing your fist ends at my face". The problem with that view is you can't swing your fist at someone's face and not expect them to react. Once they react the chain of violence begins. Weapons are drawn and used.
Just like it's no longer considered 'free speech' to draw up a 'hit list' of people to target, hit lists or hate lists against groups of people should also be considered real threats.
Why is it not ok to target 1 person with hate speech or incentives towards violence against that person, but it is ok to target a group of people with hate speech and/or incentives towards violence? It just isn't logical.
-l
That is bull****. In England you can't own guns, and there are many less murders than here. And what, do you think they live in a democracy or something? Or wait.... maybe some Natzis should come take over the city you live in, kill all your family and friends and put you into a slave labor camp so you come out looking like a diseased starving Etheopian, and then see how you like looking at Natzi propaganda
we seem to confuse a belief in the goodness of freedom of the exchange of information and ideas between individuals with the freedom of commercial services to propagate anything they wish regardless of national laws, cultures or sensibilities.
The confusion seems to be on your side. This is not a cultural imperialism issue.
In this particular case, France wants an American corporation to enforce French laws with regard to servers in the US. Moreover, it's not like Yahoo sells Nazi paraphenalia: it just provides a place for individuals to sell them. There is no "commercial service" which "propagates" something -- there is a marketplace in the US which some people in Europe think breaks their local laws. So? It's your laws, you enforce them. If France wants to ban the French from accessing Yahoo auctions, let it set up a national firewall that greps for words like 'Nazi' and we'll see how far it will get.
I see no difference at all from, say, China ordering Yahoo to make all anti-Communist information on its servers unaccessible to all Chinese.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
And all of this is truer 10 times over and more for religion. The unbelievers are brutally slain in the name of the assassin's preferred God(s). Any writings or speech or even thoughts that is counter to the local faith is met with similar burtalization.
Six million were killed by Nazis and Nazi believers. But hundreds of millions were killed in the name of various religions. Which is the more dangerous philosophy again?
How can you condemn Nazism more than religion when the former has killed less than the latter?
Oh that's right, you're one of "them". And your religion tells you you're right (absolutely) in persecuting others. Your belief controls your definitions of right and wrong. Therefore the belief, naturally, can never define itself to be wrong under any circumstances. See the power play and the mind control tactics here?
Go ahead. Persecute me and prove my point. Moderate me down and oppress the free speech you all claim to support. Tolerance was never meant for those you disagree with, right? Just a trendy buzzword that has little meaning when it really matters.
Do I expect you to say you believe in Nazism? No. But if you truly support freedom and tolerance, then you must say that you support my right to support Nazism or the KKK or Grape Nuts or whatever you may not personally agree with.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If those items or the auction of those items are causing grief to any individual or to a group in particular then Yahoo is morally responsible to take it off
Taking offense and causing grief is completely and utterly subjective. Small voices simply never get heard, only large organizations with influence are the ones that are heard. So it really comes down to this:
1. Every complaint should automatically be taken as valid, to be fair, and that content should be unquestionably removed.
OR
2. Only large organizations with influence should control content.
I'll take neither, thank you.
Jeez, read that damn post before you rant. It was only two sentences. If you'd gotten to the second one before posting, you'd have noticed that I credit RUSSIA with the allied victory.
God, I wish people would read before they post. Talk about "fucking clues"!
The best part is, you even quoted the RUSSIA DID part!
The cake is a pie
Frankly, I think governments should just give up trying to regulate what people see on the internet. Trying to censor what someone can see is just a waste of time on the internet. Its like trying to stop a damn breaking with scotch tape (no offense to the scotts).
As for having you citizens bring down computer networks, that is still reasonable to try to stop because it just pisses off everyone involved. But it is also reasonable to stop your citizens from actually *buying* the Nazi stuff. That seems a much less retarded place to draw the line.
Censoring fascism does make about as much sense as planting bombs for peace.
Strange enough, people seem to have a problem understanding the stupidity of both methods.
Humans! Go figure...