Slashdot Mirror
French Judge Demands Yahoo Censor Auctions
davejhiggins writes: "In this ruling a French judge has upheld an earlier ruling ordering Yahoo! to ban French users from buying Nazi memorabilia from its auction site. Even though the content is not accessible from www.yahoo.fr/ the ruling insists that even "the visualization in France of these objects" on the www.yahoo.com auction site constitutes a breach of French law and orders Yahoo to bar all French IPs from accessing it despite Yahoo's assertions that this would not guarantee that nobody in France would be able to see it." This kind of stuff annoys the hell out of me.
1. You mean you're in the same century as the 1980's, but not the 1930s or 1960s. Man I know there are all these folks running around thinking they're already in the 21st Century, but what century do you think you're in? :P
2. Look, I'll cite Tuberville v Savage (1669) 86 ER 684 (which happens still to be good law in my jurisdiction), if it'll help me argue my case (though I'll conceed, it won't be of much help in a libel case). "Your caselaw is old" does not strike me as a particlarly convincing legal argument. Maybe you could try citing some newer stuff which shows how these cases have been overturned or modified.
3. To help you on your way: You might want to argue that Philadelhia Newspapers v Hepps 475 US 767 (1986) together with Milkovich v Lorain Journal Co 497 US 1 (1990), by displacing the common law 'fair comment' defence with a constitutional 'defence' of pure opinion (or at least opinion not implying false facts) + public concern, has raised the bar for plaintiffs in defamation actions. Against this (given the argument is about comparative restrictions on speech across national jurisdictions), you would also have to take into account the various modified 'comment' defences in different national jurisdictions. See for instance the exspansive 'comment' defence that arises from the wide meaning the Privy Council gave to 'public interest' and 'information' in reading a New South Wales statute; Austin v Mirror Newspapers [1986] AC 299; re s22 Defamation Act 1974 (NSW).
Further one has to consider other cross-jurisdictional impairments to free speech. In the US, for instance there still survive some species of tort which protect the privacy of individuals. Admitedly the tort of unreasonable publicization of private facts has probably been buried by Florida Star v BFJ 491 US 524 (1989), the tort of false light, on the other hand, would still seem to be afoot. Elsewhere in the common law world such protection of privacy is virtually unknown (see Kaye v Robertson ANOR [1991] FSR 62), though there have been some stirring in New Zealand Courts that such American torts might be developing there (esp. Tucker v New Media Ownership [1986] 2 NZLR 716)
4. I agree with you, the devil is in the detail.
ps. sorry to be such a pratt
Let the Basque, Brittany's and other groups have sovereign control over their own peoples and control their own boarders and I can have sympathy for the descendants of the Frankish tribes who wish to maintain their language and their unique cultural ideas.
In the absence of such tolerance of devolution, separatist and secessionist movements, I have no tolerance for those who hypocritically denounce "nationalist socialism" and then enact social engineering policies with force of national law.
Seastead this.
"Stupid frogs." -- Homer Simpson
But this still doesn't mean that a foreign firm is responsible for what they may receive through a broad-cast medium. My point was that the French jammed US air-waves to avoid such incidents, so they can use similar (and even more sophisticated) methods today.. It should be easy to require by French law to filter incomming operations of objectionable nature. Are they going to order the shutting down of all Nazi propaganda web-sites around the world?
There are two points of view here.. The US FCC, among other things, considers broad-cast air-waves to be hazzardous to minors and otherwise sensative individuals, so they regulate it... Likewise with Broad-cast TV. Other pseudo public media such as Theaters are now getting similar forms of enforcement through the MPAA. The internet is just another broadcast media that many believe should also be restricted.. Or at least provide road-blocks that physically prevent sensative viewers from reaching them... The only way this could truely work is if all web sites were legally bound to post ratings with their web site... Or that all web servers apply a ratings filters on all outgoing HTTP packets.. Violators could be prosecuted... Thus home viewers could simply set their browsers to a max rating and the world is safe once again.
This is unlikely since, only ascii text could be easily filtered / rated. Images would have to be on a voluntary basis. Course, I think web sites are taking the right step in placing initial "over 18 only" pages. I'm sure they'd be willing to rate their entire web sites as X or what-ever to further avoid litigation. It would be a simple extension to the HTTP protocol to add a rating header field. At this point, you could argue a finer grain of rating, which, among other things would rate propoganda such as Nazi's as at a minimum R, or even to be flagged. Course flagging would get into a hairy situation (since you could have an infinite number of them).. And politicians and courts would be independantly mandating their use to the point that the over-head is insane.
This whole point of view is based on the idea that responsibility lies with the broad-caster.
The other point of view is that responsibility lies with the recipient.. This point of view works more like Gun laws.. Do you hold a gun manufacturer or salesman responsible if a parent doesn't lock their gun properly such that a child can't get to it? If your country outlaws public owning of guns, then you can block imports (for the most part).. I personally believe the internet can be viewed more like a gun than a broad-cast PA system. You can filter or modify the data at every node with the internet, much like you have "customs" at every shipping point.
-Michael
-Michael
Maybe we should have left them to the nazi's in WWII. It is nearly impossible to ban someone who's really determined for one, and for two Yahoo hasn't violated the law. The french users have by "ENTERING" into yahoo's sites. If it's illegal for them to buy such things then they shouldn't be there in the first place should they? I believe that yahoo's TOS specifically states that items posted are not indicative of yahoo's policies, beliefs or political views. Anyone who uses said service is using it at their own risk of exposure to items that they may or may not find offensive. And by entering in the first place they give implied consent that they have read and understood beforehand and that they waive any right to a lawsuit against said company.. (standard legal jargon for we aren't responsible for anything.) People need to start taking the responsibility for their own actions. Instead of blaming it on the evil corporations which forced them to be there. (yeah right, and the chinese govt deserves the humanitarian of the year award too..... :P )
> but why do you keep on bashing everybody who
> disagrees with this law as misofrancic [...]
I don't. I wanted to bash the "Oh, thanks God we have our holy Consitution and 1st amendment, it could never happen here" morons, and also the usual "the French are a bunch of faggots that got their ass kicked and we bailed them out and now they're bitter and they're fascist and they're language biggots and they're lazy, and they have a reduced workweek because they are socialists dumbasses, and there's no freedom in France blablabla" stuff. Which, if you read the commentaries in this story, are omnipresent. I'm just tired of this ranting, of hearing the same old cliches again and again because a (maybe tiny, but vocal) portion of the Anglo-Saxon people really has a problem with us. Trust me, if you were French, after 1 month on \., you would understand.
I see a lot of people in here, talking about democracy and freedeom of speech. I think that they are right. On the other hand, it looks like a lot of this people do not know much about democracy themselves. Why? They are blaming the French government for the decision of a French judge! Ever heard of "division of powers"? About the difference and the duties of judicative and executive? Maybe you think that is not important, not even worth a single post. But: its a very basic principle in all democratic countries - and it makes me sad that so many people here seem to not have idea about it.
Hello? This is the country where you could succeed in a libel action based on the publication of a photograph, merely because a strap hanging from a saddle in the background could be seen hanging between plaintiff's legs Burton v Crowell Publishing. You might be correct that in regard to public figures the bar has been substantially raised by NYT v Sullivan.
The devil is in the detail too, when you consider the court based exceptions to the first amendment (Go back and look at the 'clear and present danger' cases Schenck v. US, Abrams v. US etc), the rather partisan (poltical) nature of free speech becomes apparent. Back then it was anarchists in the US, now its neo-nazis in France ....
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Americans are bred for stupidity.
Yes I was kidding : the UETF is one of the student organisation well known to pertain to the "sue-all-those-non-kosher-bastards" dept.
But I read the /. posts again, and the points I was trying to make just did not make it to North-American ears. So let me rephrase the serious part of my e-mail.
About the french government making some move to censorship. One of the most promeniment part of the 5th french republic constitution is the separation of powers . The various chambers (deputy and senate) are making and changing the laws. The government is responsible to decide how and when the laws are going to be applied. The judge are their to see that the law are enforced properly.
This means that the french governement has (theoretically at least) no influence on the judgement.
Another really important thing is that the french system is relying far less on precedent (jurisprudence) that the US one . This means that this technically clueless judgment his going to have far less importance if the appeals fails that I would have had into the US.
That would be the first such case, granted, but that would not establish a precedent, jurisdictionally speaking.
A sad note now : I did not realize that, on /. so much people had such basic anti-french attitude, and that so much french had so anti-american attitude. I just want to remember anybody that despising someone because he was born (and could not help it) somewhere is just the beginning of nazism.
I will now browse /. at a +1 treshold, thus missing the numerous interesting anonymous posts.
But at least some crap will be filetred out. I think we really need to do something about the moderation system.
[Pruneau
Perhaps they can license the required censorship software from the Chinese government?
In my post, I was NOT criticizing (or even remarking on) the french law. What I found ridiculous (and continue to find ridiculous) is the idea that the judge seems to think that the rest of the world should moderate it's content (which is not even hosted in france) to suit this particular french law. I consider it the equivalent of sending nasty letters to newspapers in foreign countries, because someone in france subscribes to them and might be offended by their content.
I have no problem or complaint with countries making laws as they see fit, and enforcing them. But if you want to see things that adhere to all laws within your country, then perhaps you shouldn't be using the world wide web, which contains content from quite a few people who are outside your jurisdiction. As I stated above, you are obviously free to make any laws you see a need for. But, being in a seperate country, we are also entitled to make judgements reguarding which laws we think need passing. And at the moment at least, yahoo, (A U.S. based company) is perfectly within the laws of the country it belongs to.
So, as I see it, france has three realistic options:
Ok, maybe only one and a half of those are realistic.
Err, there was no referendum. Austria was bullied by Germany for months along with internal disruption by the Austrian Nazi party. Finally they were bullied into not resisting a German invasion.
There was referendum planned, but that just hastened the German invasion plans. The referendum was cancelled and Austria ceased to exist.
You've got some serious issues, dude. Let me guess, you respond to Natalie Portmann posts too, right?
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
>It kind of makes sense [...] Now imagine if our country had been taken over by Hitler about 50 years ago; I think the government wouldn't be too fond of Nazi memorabilia.
In fact, this law isn't a follow-up of WW2. It has been voted in 1937, after a failed coup d'état by fascist leagues, to prevent fascist and nazi propaganda.
For french speaking people out there, you could look at what we think of it here, on a french Slashdot-like forum. The main feeling is that this ruling is stupid.
sigmentation fault
In turn, Yahoo! should, as a responsible and respectful member of the global community, agree to put these blocks in place and allow the French to maintain and administer them.
No. Should they also ban pictures of women with exposed faces because Iran wants them to? Censorship is never acceptable. Period.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
"The good thing about Alzheimer's is that you can hide your own Easter eggs."
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
Say you have a program, like Windows Update, that were to update based on your geographical location by IP (as is sanctioned, for example, in international encryption issues). All a person is doing when they change their IP is fucking up the system.
Personally, I say let them shut out French IPs. Hell, shut the French out of the whole goddamn web. Maybe then, they won't see the "Nazi" images they are touting.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
A) It's Yahoo, not Ebay.
B) Yahoo does have offices and employees in France, so to a certain degree they are a French company.
Ranessin
The people buying and selling this should have their heads checked? Why? I think it would be really neat to own something like that (my lack of money prevents me, alas). It's not as if owning a piece of Nazi memorabilia signifies my support or agreement with their ideals.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I agree with your post, but equating a government with a judiciary could make you look ideutic.
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Why are they stopping with Yahoo?
/. seems to think.
Simple answer : because the two organizations that started this decided so. This is no French gov't conspiracy to censor the Internet as everybody here in
It's obvious that these NFP orgs (Int. League against Racism and Antisemitism, Union of French Students - UEJF) are seeking publicity, and nothing else. They can't be stupid enough as to think that they might succeed in censoring the entire Internet with rulings made in France. Or can they ?
OTOH, expect more of this from UEJF ; as a friend who used to be a member told me, their leaders are mostly law school students who will sue everything on sight to "practice" what they learn...
> Let the French make their own laws...
Fine, but they're telling an American company, in the US, what traffic they should accept. The Judge should be barking orders at French ISPs, not Yahoo!.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
and is limited by our government. (Slander? Libel? Shouting fire in a crowded theater?)
This isn't just "Freedom of Shopping." The judge has said that even allowing people in France to view these items is forbidden. Under that ruling, it's perfectly ok for a totalitarian regime to bar access of its citizens to basic political information, foreign newspapers, etc. This gives legitimacy to suppression of fundamental freedoms and I think sets a dangerous precedent.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Please. Get a life, pull your head out of the sand, and never judge a book by its cover. Did I mention that when your head is in the sand, your butt sticks in the air like a moron?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Buddhist or early native american stuff? After all, the Fylfot (swastika) was used a heck of a lot by a heck of a lot of people (still is, in some buddhist areas) long before Dolf baby got ahold of it. Wonder if they ban that too, on the grounds that it contains an offensive symbol? (I can show you older churches on the US east coast where it is still in the tilework as decorative bordering).
The French.. Le SIGH!
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
No, I cannot respect censorship, in whatever form it is disguised. Real freedom means everyone should be free to do anything, even things I may not personnally approve, as long as they are not criminal actions per se.
It's just plain wrong to expect foregn organizations, based in foregn countries to conform to their laws
That's ridiculous, as you very well know. Do you wish to follow orders from French judges?
They can NOT police their laws on the rest of the world.
Last time I checked, that's about all US foreign policy is about.
Censorship on Slashdot
Because... we have nukes and you don't. You were saying?
There is one phrase that sums this up:
Those who forget the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.
Without copies of Mein Campf which is banned in German and arguably in France under this ruling, we cannot peak inside the mouth of madness that spawned the Jewish Holocaust and understand why it happened, and how it could happen again.
Without knowledge of the symbols, how will we know when this horrible racist movement is trying to rear it's ugly head again? To those who don't think the neo-Nazi movement isn't well and alive in America and Europe, I can tell you that you are sadly mistaken.
Yes, it may be PC and emotionally sensitive to ban what causes people distress, but once it's gone, it's too late to learn from the lessons the past has beat into us with a barbed-wire whip.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This may be true but I don't recall getting any support last week, when I said it was wrong of the US to try to force their trade embargo of Cuba on the rest of the world.
Isn't it the French that decided that legally pi had to be equal to some ridiculous number (like 3.5, or 4.0 or some such idiocy)? So legally you can't compute anything that requires a slightly more valid number for pi.
You think your big time?
You think your big time?
I'll kick your ass so hard you'll be unbuttoning your neck button to piss!
But of course, almighty America would not let Thailand do that and would put economic pressure on them... But then I guess it helps to be the "police of the world" and have the implicit right to decide what is right to show and what is not.
As repellent as I think child porn is, I'm not in favor of laws trying to ban the viewing of it. I am in favor of prosecuting those creating it, if they abused actual children in creating it. The problem nowadays is that it's possible to take a child's picture from an innocent context and turn it into a pornographic image using an image editor. Laws have been passed that have attempted to get around this by banning images that even apprear to be that of a child in a pornographic context. That would mean it would be a felony to possess or distribute certain types of anime, for example. I don't think we ought to be going to those lengths, as then we're prosecuting thought crimes.
Why are you picking on Thailand? Do you think Thais are particularly likely to create child porn? That seems like a bigoted attitude.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
From Webster's Collegiate dictionary:
/-sist also -shist/ noun or adjective
Main Entry: racism
Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-
Function: noun
Date: 1936
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
- racist
I believe the word you're looking for is "nationalism" (easy mistake, political correctness rarely is):
Main Entry: nationalism
Pronunciation: 'nash-n&-"li-z&m, 'na-sh&-n&l-"i-z&m
Function: noun
Date: 1844
: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Ok, you're just ridiculizing yourself. You haven't demonstrated anything, and you know it.
You obviously know nothing about the revolution, nor about the European coalitions that immediately started fighting it (oh, I know, it's always much more comfortable to make the French responsible of anything that goes wrong).
As far as the change of republic goes, you're also ignorant. The constitution was changed peacefully, because it was time for important reforms. On the contrary, America, just like Italy or the UK, whose systems actually also need radical changes as the one that were necessary with the 4th republic, have always been blatantly impotent to change archaic and cumbersome institutions. The American experts in American policy know how this system has become inefficient in the way it distributes power, but nothing can be done. As long as business goes on... Even the electoral system sucks, and nothing happens until an election turns into an hilarious turkey (happy Thanksgiving!).
Last, the constitution in France does not have the same role as in the US. It specifies the way institutions work, not the values, which are specified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which hasn't changed still 1789. It's OK to replace the constituion when the institutions have become unadapted. Under this approach, the American constitution would have been changed at least 3 times since the birth of the US. The only reason why it didn't is that is is considered untouchable, just (and after tremendous efforts) "amendable". The irrational ones are not the ones you think.
I forgot: the fact that you only choose to remember, in the very dense 25 years that followed the French revolution, the 10 months of the "terror", is typical of a certain Anglo-Saxon propaganda that comes from an establishment who doesn't like the idea that their people might have the guts to fight the establishment when they're getting screwed. The anti-revolution propaganda started in the UK immediately in 1789, and it's still part, in a different shape, of the narrative. As minimizing its very deep impact on the whole Europe is also an obligatory attitude.
No, on the other hand, France and much of the EU, as referred to in the parent posting, could be construed as 'not getting the point'. Criminalizing the possession of Nazi memorabilia seems a rather petty (not to mention pathetic) reaction to something that happened sixty years ago. Besides, it could be construed as an attempt to erase Hitler and his antics from collective memory, and we all know the fate of those who forget history, don't we? Look, memorabilia is one thing. Actually emulating Krystallnacht, etc. is something else entirely (assault and battery, property damage, and murder are illegal; it doesn't matter what ethnicity the victim is).
And don't even think of bringing gun ownership into the issue. Ownership of a gun does not a criminal make, either... in fact, I recall that many jurisdictions that cracked down on provate citizens' gun ownership (in an effort to reduce crime) actually saw an _increase_ in crime - reference articles under newsmax.com under the topic 'Guns/Gun Control'.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
I agree, as the French Law is for every French people or company.
In order to go on with its Waffen SS auctions, Yahoo should quit France (and European Union too).
In France, we have a word 'Everyone at home, and cows will be well guarded'.
The main problem is French and German governments are creating European Union, and doesn't want to remember now they have been at war a very short time ago.
I understand them and I approve them, even if it's now less individual freedom.
There was too much propaganda in the 70's and 80's about WWII. We all French have enough of this.
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If Internet is Freedom, Linux is Democraty
I don't understand how the French government has any control over a website hosted on US soil.
The French government has nothing to do with this. This is a private court case was brought against Yahoo by two associations - LICRA (the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism) and UEJF (the French Union of Jewish Students).
ps. sorry to be such a pratt
When arguing minutae like this, some prattishness is required, I don't mind a'tall.
I'll try to look up the case law to defend my point. I am not a lawyer by training, so it may take a while. You have brought up some good arguments. While the case law seems to be on your side, I have a common-sense question: in a country where people sue for everything, why are libel suits so uncommon?
Anyhow, I'll look at the case law and get back to you.
thx
j.
Sorry, I can't take credit for that one.
I DID like it though!
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Well, if you want to discuss about stupid intelligence (isn't it funny ?), we can talk about CIA putting Pinochet to avoid a (legally elected) communist presidence in south america. Or about CIA financiating pakistanish Talibans. Or trying to put back the dictatorial Shah in Iran, only strengthening the islamical revolution in doing so because he was really despised. Or about bringing Mobutu in Congo/Zaire, only to get pissed when this despot finally prefered france. Or... You get the point ?
sigmentation fault
You should read this book, it tells what actually happened, from a non-imperialist viewpoint:
Another View of Stalin
You can't say the government is censoring everything related to the Nazis, there's no black curtain above History, books/films/documents about Nazi are freely available, it's just that promotion of Nazism is prohibited, that's all the law and the judgement are about. Selling Nazi memorabilia is considered part of Nazism promotion here in France. That's all.
Now from a technical standpoint, Yahoo has to deploy means of blocking access to such an auction site from French citizens, they're not obliged to spend millions of bucks to block ALL accesses, they must just show their good will by deploying appropriate protection that will block Average Joe. Of course Web anonymizers can still be used, but what percent of the population knows even the existence of such stuff ?
Frankly, do you think the US govt would let Yahoo Colombia sell cocaine ? I don't think so.
US of A lost all rights to the moon when they decided to nuke it. :)
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
well the thing is theat French law forbids you to buy Nazi type stuff. A bit like in Germany where the Nazi emblems are illegal. You can find them in museum and the likes but any type of Nazi propaganda is banned. if you get a Model kit From Revell (german company ) the Nazi cross will be missing from box art and Decals too. In Corel were I worked a While ago We had to reissue A WP box as the clipart included nazi cross and adolf nice little facies The laws like this are used to keep a heck on Far right extremists and overused in some cases.
My drinking team has a Rugby problem
You go, Wes. :)
--
"Give him head?"
>Take a look at Canada and Sweden... as socialist
>as they come.
Hardly. The Canadian governments (at all levels) soak up 40-50% of the GDP. Fortunately private industry produces enough out of the rest that we haven't quite managed to bankrupt ourselves just yet.
>Were not evil 3 eyed commies
>are we?
The more Socialist among us are. Thankfully the socialist parties running in next week's elections won't get even a small fraction of the vote.
If there's any stupidity in this court decision, you owe it to the fucking retards at UEJF.ORG, admire their fucking retarded home page with that ridiculous photo, it's entertaining. UEJF means French Jewish Students Union. They're a bunch of crybabies who want people to believe that THEY were in the concentration camps. Nevermind they're 20 year old and still covered with acnee. Anyway, voice your contempt on their online forum that they never read anyway.
The decision is not final, Yahoo is going to appeal, and AFAIK their legal argument was along the lines of "we can't do it" or "we're not responsible for it" (IE it's Yahoo, France that was sued when it's Yahoo, CA. that did it). For the appeal, I guess they will switch legal strategies; basically, the "law" invoked does'nt stand very well as it's only a government decret, whereas, per the constitution it should be a full fledged law as it restricts freedom of speech.
As for our friends at UEJF, let it be known that this bunch of losers are famous for suing like mad monkeys. They have sued the antiracist activist Costes when the incriminated work was, obviously and irrefutably so, sarcastic, a parody, etc ... (it said "give white women to arabs" or something).
A big bunch of whiney, arrogant losers. Let them know what you think. Call them at +33 1 47 34 62 00. Fill their forum with junk. They deserve all the shit they get.
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They can't. To apply, this ruling (not sure it's really the correct word) must be approved by a USAn juge. If this ruling finally apply, you will be able to criticize your own juge's stupidity. After all, they demonstrated all their skills in this matter in the DVD/DeCSS stuff.
sigmentation fault
Believe it or not, most French people don't give a fuck about that, the problem is all about those moronic associations (LICRA & UEJF, who only care about racism against jews or arabs, but don't give a damn about the other minorities) who prosecuted Yahoo. Now if a few morons can have a site banned for a given country, that would make the internet unuseable. What if Slashdot started to ban connections from Israel because of their killing innocent people in Palestine ? Man sounds like a good idea, at least they would whine for something real ;>
Man, believe me this kind of ruling is stupid and don't make French people very proud of their legal system.
...and not all of them require an actual ruling.
Kalifa does have a point. We do have the occasional dust-up over such things here in the USA, and we have also gone after foreign companies for perceived Nazi tie-ins. See this press release from the ADL for more info.
Though Pokemon is neither as disturbing as nazism or as fun as sex (or do I have those backwards?), the principle difference between here and the land of the Eiffel Tower and sub-40-bit encryption is that here the mere *threat* of legal action (as opposed to a ruling) was enough to force a Japanese corporation to change its product, which was not ever indended for consumption by Americans.
Disturbing enough for you?
Well, temples does not use the same PI as circles. You know, the bible is never wrong. ;)
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
they're the French.
That's gotta suck.
Yes.
The US government passed something called the Helms-Burton Law that made it possible for US citizens/businesses to sue foreigners if they did any business in Cuba. It also made it possible for the US to ban these foreign citizens (who have been to Cuba or done business there) from crossing into the USA.
I don't remember the outcome of this law; last I heard, it was being challenged at the International Courts in Geneva on the grounds that one soverign nation cannot enact laws that affect the citizens of another soverign nation (specifically, the ability of private citizens of the US to sue a Canadian/Brazilian/whatever).
WARNING!! WARNING!! GODWIN'S LAW MAY BE IN EFFECT
People are obsessed with freedom, whereas in fact that freedom represents a violation of someone else.
Nope. Freedom means ALL ideas are allowed. A late Justice of the US Supreme Court once gave the proper method for combatting repugnant ideas: offer a better idea. Yes, the Nazi meme **IS** pervasive. But making believe it doesn't exist, or trying to actively deny it exists, only feeds it by making if forbidden, and thus appealing to those who rebel by taking up forbidden topics. . .
Does he realise how disgusting Nazis are?
About as disgusting as knee-jerk censors. .
Does he realise that they are a serious threat in Europe, that they have 20% in Austria, that German neo-nazis have killed dozens of people, that in France the Fronte Nationale holds a council.
So, you find their ideas repugnant. Fine. Then fight their ideas. Ridicule them. Point out the flaws in their logic and ideology. . .but by censoring them, you become their moral equivalent. Your ban is no better than the book-burnings held by the Nazis. . . .
Snide comments aside, how is collecting Nazi memorabilia any worse than collecting the memorabilia of any other historical era? If I collect memorabilia of the Napoleonic era does that make me a history buff or a fan of a man responsible for the deaths of millions in the Napoleonic wars? What makes the relics of the Nazi era somehow "worse" to collect? Are they lacking historical value? Do you need to be an accredited curator or historian?
Or is it that a few pinheads (most of which couldn't afford any Nazi artifacts of any real value) like to beat up minorities while wearing swastikas?
I'm all for banning hate speech, in the interest of the constitutional rights of minorities and sensibly minded denizens.
In other words, you're all for giving up your right to free speech. Do us all a favor, move to France where you can check your civil rights at the border. Don't forget to tell all your friends in Greenpeace how well you think the French Government defends the rights of minorities and their political perspectives.
I support France's right to control every aspect of French culture and the behavior of French citizenry. The direct issue, beyond mere censorship, is forcing a company that was not formed under French laws to comply to French laws.
Yahoo.fr complies to French laws. Yahoo.com doesn't. If every website has to conform to every local law, then everything will be regulated by the strictest standards. If we follow this logic all the way through, no website will be able to support Taiwan as a seperate country from China because Chinese law forbids it.
Unfortunately, censorship cannot occur on a case-by-case basis. To go through and say this is bad and this is good opens up issues of content control, 'this defames the government, it gets censored, this promotes the government, it doesn't' And who draws the line? Who gets to decide?
France and its citizens can pass any kind of law they want. Yahoo is not a French company and accesses French citizens only through the CHOICE of the citizens. Nobody forces the French to visit Yahoo.com over Yahoo.fr.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
In Mayanmaar, the country formerly known as Burma, unlicensed posession of a modem is often a capital offense.
There's nothing to say that memorabilia can't be propaganda, in the hands of the wrong person. It's all about how the owner perceives and uses it.
It's like the difference between someone who enjoys and collects weapons as a hobby and someone who's stockpiling them for The Revolution.
French judge declares moon is now legally green!
Actually you'd be doing the same thing that Netscape and Microsoft used to do when the U.S. crypto export laws were tougher, and they had to determine the American origin of an IP befor you could download the 128-bit web browsers. There are tools that can locate where your IP number orginates from geographically. (I used a MacOS demo of one awhile back.)
What ebay would have to do is essentially put a flag on the auction items that would subject the item listing to the IP blocking filter.
I hate bureaucracy and I hate technology. I give up.
Just a thought.. will the judiciary in France rule someday to create a separate internet for France ??
.com's to start their operations in france for the french internet :-)
And then lawsuits will be files against
Ok,
First of all, banning French Ips doesn't mean no one in France can access it. They could proxy around if they really wanted to, and I'm sure there are Ips which aren't directly French, which would allow people to get in. Secondly, what if for some reason a French type person WANTS to actually look at and purhaps buy this type of item? What in the world is this coming to? If they are allowed to do this, then perhaps they are also allowed to make CNN block it's democratic pages to people who are in republican states, or vis versa! That's like slashdot blocking it's site from AOL users.
I wrote them a letter (in english) and actually got a timely response back. (in french) I asked them why they thought that this was a matter that could even be decided in a french court. I speak no french, but from what I was told by my many interpeters, the head of the cabinet (who wrote the letter) told me that while he disagrees with part of the situation, it's not his job to meddle in that part of the government.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
And years from now, when there will be dire shortages of Beanie Baby's, Pokemon and Holy Hobbie collectibles in France, they will be rioting!
Freedom to buy and sell is basically freedom of speech. Saying that I may not sell or buy an item for no reason beyond the fact that the item represents unpopular/reprehensible political ideas is no different than saying I may not say or read something that represents unpopular/reprehensible political ideas.
Slander and Libel are both civil crimes, meaning you can be forced to pay damages but can't be thrown in jail for them. For all three, you are punished not for your speech, but for the results of your speech. Sure, it's a thin line, but it's a line. (Regardless, I think all three should be legal anyway.)
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I refuse to hear any arguements that come from the country that took the delicious taste of Vanilla Bean ice cream and turned it into the drab and flavorless French Vanilla ice cream.
Let's make a list:
Pros:
French Kissing
French Fries
French Toast
CONS:
French Vanilla
Silly-looking hats
Recipes that use a lot of yougut and small,dead, stinking fish
French judges
------
Let me give you the lowdown
It kind of makes sense- it's like if somebody posted child pornography or snuff films on a website, the US would do everything they could to make sure Americans couldn't access it. Now imagine if our country had been taken over by Hitler about 50 years ago; I think the government wouldn't be too fond of Nazi memorabilia.
I'm not saying that I agree with them, but it isn't as irrationial as everybody tries to say it is.
-- atomly
Several people poined out that the french don't have jurisdiction on US soil. Of course, this is true. The same should be upheld the other way around.
Has no one noted that the US has forces in several places of the world to uphold it's own drug laws? For instance, DEA agents work here in Europe enticing people into crimes (which is illegal in some countries here) to be able to arrest them. And the US is just entering and "upgrading" a war in Columbia. Does anyone care about that? If we try to make - for ourselves - a more lenient drug law, the US pressurizes us for it. If an international organization mentions the word abortion, the US tries to get the UN to stop financing that organization. Do I hear any American protesting this? No, of course not, we should adopt your god-given laws and stop thinking for ourselves!
The arrogance of the French, though legendary, isn't bigger than that of the Americans. It's actually kind of nice to see you two nations butting your head against each other. The immovable wall and the unstoppable object, things like that.
Also, remember that you may be very happy with your constitution and your society, you must realize that the French have their own constitution and are in no way bound by the American one. If they want it any other way, they can change it. These people have the *right* to make their own laws!
As far as stupidity is concerned, your lack of significant thoughts on the matter make you the definite wrong spokesperson for this issue. Let me tell you a few things about what is technically possible or not. IP addresses are divided in blocks assigned to different organisations who give them out as they see fit, according to their regulations and best judgements. In the US, thats ARIN, in europe, its RIPE. It is perfectly conceivable to block an entire area for a specific things, since the US often block a lot of things from asian countries such as Japan, like SPAM for example. As for your pathetic display of anger at the rulling of a court, since when did US law become the de facto standard for International affairs? Unless im mistaken, the US are still fuckign up cuba (an act of sheer cruelty and arogance at this point even though justified at the time), your election system proves the stupidity of your country and your people, as the state of Florida has a vast majority of people unable to read far enough to find the proper hole to punch. The US is however, the de facto standard for Idiotic laws, such as legal drinkign age at 21, when you can drive at 16, go to war and DIE for your country , as well as vote although after this past election, maybe that should be reviewed, at the age of 18, yet cannot enjoy the simple pleasure of a beer. Do you mean, that you can trust a 16 year old kid, to drive in a car, a potentially lethal object, that can easily kill people, yet not allow him tyo drin k or even smoke??? The logic behind this evades me. Then again, thats why I'm not an american. Now that i've made my point about sheer american arogance, and stupidity, let me tell you why the court judgement is valid. Technology moves at its own pace. When spam started pissing people off, a way was found to reduce it, laws passed to try to control it, bandwith improves, so does security. Nothing is impossible, not if u got the incentive behind it to do it. As for NAZI items, the US is known to have jailed ex nazi's on the basis of past cruelty and genocide. remind me how many wet yanks were butchered , burned, gased, and terrorized during the 2nd world war? Disregarding your fights with the japs (which was purely US interest based) I'm sure you're probably not out of high school yet, to be so fuckign full of urself thinking that just because you dont give a damn, there are'nt people out there who suffered from the NAZI's. If it's acceptable to the US to have neo nazi arian crackheadds, shaved and parading around with nazi uniforms, then you have no right whatsoever to even be giving your opinion on this subject. Nazi intems in france, as well as other countries in Europe, are a reminder of the atrocities that destroyed the lives of milions. How much crack does a person liek yourself have to smoke before becoming as arrogant as you, to think you can treat an entire nation of fuckign assholes. I'm not saying that i was affected by it, but people in my family were, and none of us are jews. But it affected everyone, jew or not. I would mention the KKK, but for some rason, the acts of the KKK are still accepted. If i was an "african american" i would beat the living shit out of the first white boy wearing a klan outfit i saw. well, as a European, specifically French, i would do the exact same thing to any arian nazi ass biatch i ran into. Thats the way it is. French law dictates nazi items are ILLEGAL, just liek POT and drugs are in the states (although we tend to try to uphold our laws a little bit better than you guys). I dont even respect your opinion. any fool crazy enough to rant for no apparant rason other than to show hes pissed off at somethign that doesnt concern him deserve no respect. go back to high school, try to find a hostory book that doesnt show the US version of history, but the european side of things, and try to determine if you things yahoo's right to make money out of the suffering of milions, is more than the freedom from past terror of an entire nation. Morgan
not exactly the same: France only tries to regulate the internet for the French, where the US tries to regulate the internet as a whole. The ruling was not: remove the offensive content, but rather: make the offensive content unavailable for known french persons. I don't agree with either, but it's an important difference.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
While you are an extremely intelligent, gregarious individual with varied interests and a penchant for dialogue
I'm also a person who understands the power in a succinct statement. People don't have a right not to have their 'feelings hurt' in the real world. They do have a right to say just about whatever they want. And for a very good reason, you might want to read Fahrenheit 451 some day. Once we start arbitrarily deciding what is people are allowed to say based on the political content, anything is possible. And I hope you're not going to say that the a government would be capable of making sure the power was only used for 'good'.
If we stopped racist literature now, why couldn't we also block Communist tracts? Or perhaps harbingers of the religion of Islam?
When you teach evolution in schools, are you violating the rights of fundamentalist christens? Are you hurting their feelings?
When you teach the history of world war II, are you violating the rights of holocaust deniers? Are you hurting their feelings?
You may not be an actually be an idiot, but, provided you actually believe what you're saying, you certainly lack some pretty basic critical thinking skills (like generalization, for instance).
Oh, and congratulations on using Dictonary.com's word of the day for august 2nd 1999. Although I don't think you actually knew what it meant...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You completely misunderstand the issue, but that's not so strange since you've not been brought up in these parts. Nazi propaganda and Nazi memoribilia have been outlawed in many European countries since shortly after the second world war. And with good reason: right from the word "go" all those with dubious sympathies during the war began questioning and denying the very real horrors of teh second world war. So those denials were outlawed, as were memoribilia of the Nazis, to try and prevent a second wave of that murderous idiocy.
Now you Americans immediately lament the loss of freedom of speech, but it never dawns on you that there is no such thing as absolute freedom, unless you're the last person on earth. Freedom is always a balance between the freedoms of all the individuals involved. And after the horrors of the second world war Europe said: "Never again!".
The French are starting down a dangerous path that may leave their view of history distorted and risk having their children relive the tragedies and evils of the past.
Not so, the true scope of the second world war is taught on every European school, and certqainly the French schools. But not the lies some ouwld-be Nazi's would like to believe. You hold much by "And justice for all." These laws are firstly and foremostly to ensure justice for those who were the victims of the Nazi regime.
Never forget, never belittle.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
Swastikas are for Krauts!
But seriously, this is just another example of why the French should be blocked from the rest of the net... Their recent trends towards isolationism and the real world's trend towards globalization of the internet just goes to prove this...
Did you know, for example, that they've adopted a "Speak Francaise or Die" policy in their society? English for example, is illegal (despite the fact that English, linguistically, is based almost 1/4 in French), and any American cultural reference is on it's way to becoming verboten there (once again, gee, even some of American culture is directly derived from French, British, Asian, African, German, and lots of other countries' influences, hence the "melting pot" concept)...
So I say hey, if the French really want to become isolationist in their ideals, then we should encourage it, and block them from the rest of the world... Considering how they treat computer geeks there, I see little reason why anyone outside of their country would care to patronize their mode of thinking...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
[Note to moderators: the parent is no troll.]
Are you talking about the aims of the Party leadership, the rank-and-file members, or voters and casual supporters (or all 3)? Nazism was not an attempt to make a better world in any reasonable sense of the word 'better'. It was overtly a German nationalist movement which advocated enriching Germany at the expense of other nations by building an exploitative empire. Of course, there was nothing remarkable about such an aim; the British, French, Portugese, Dutch and American empires were regarded by many as models of enlightened practice.
National Socialist German Workers Party voters may have expected Hitler to keep his promises and end exploitation of German workers, but his first actions as chancellor included the banning of trade unions and a system of work permits unfavourable to employees. Among many other notorious acts, the Nazi regime defrauded thousands of ordinary people by promising a Volkswagen if they paid a certain number of installments in advance, but no cars were ever delivered (the factories were busy making tanks).
It's quite true that American cinema often turns Nazis into dumb stereotypes, which makes them uninteresting both personally and historically. Bear in mind, though, that Hollywood also portrays almost every other group of people as dumb stereotypes. Your implicit claim that Hollywood is pro-Communist is laughable - Communism is the only ideology treated with even less comprehension than Nazism. The Communists I know really do want to make the world a better place (I think many of their reforms would have the opposite effect, but that's another story).
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
Wot ?, like the US GSM system being forced to run on different frequencies to every other country in the world. How terrible!
I'm not sure if this is still true, but it used to be that if you were in the armed forces, you could legally buy alcohol at your post's class six store, regardless of whether you were 21 or not.
"Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."
Seems to me like France is trying way too hard to forget about the Nazi era and their association with it.
See, it's things like this that simply irritate me to hell and back. The French Government, in all of their divine elegant Frenchie wisdom have decided that something which is produced overseas and is of an incredible nusiance to them, should be not merely controlled or limited, but done so from the source.
... you can't do that, sadly, as radio waves--and according to my analogy the data on the internet--is everywhere, though it simply needs to be tuned in.
Imagine the internet as a mish-mash of radio frequencies (websites, ftp sites, wais, archie, gopher, etc) and imagine your web browser as a radio. In this "radio station" model, two things are made painfully obvious: 1) you have to tune into the station in order to listen to (read) it. 2) It would be silly (and impossible) to go to a radio station somewhere on the planet and say "Please don't broadcast here."
I see it that the French Government should take some intiative and block Yahoo sites at the points where information enters the country. Or, simply make it illegal to buy Nazi War Memorabilia online. Then the French Government could monitor the people's web activity and give them fines for breaking the law--that's the better economic solution, anyhow.
I just think it's silly, unreasonable, and outright odd that someone an ocean and a continent away can dictate what Yahoo can and cannot broadcast to that country. There are broadcast countermeasures which the French can put in place, so why the hell don't they? I mean, it IS their problem...
-Sy
If at first you don't succeed, cheat. Repeat until caught. Then lie.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
What's so wrong about naked humans? Naked humans aren't banned on the net by the way. Nex
just send us the list of individual ip's you want banned.
Some people are just history buffs, antique collectors, coin collectors, etc.
Get a grip, owning a Nazi's dinerware does not make you a Nazi, nor does it make you evil!
Trying to censor the internet, OTOH, is both evil and moronic.
While you are an extremely intelligent, gregarious individual with varied interests and a penchant for dialogue.
In a recent ruling, France outlaws all attempts to thwart the law. It is now illegal to find ways of doing illegal things legally.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
How can you take seriously a country that, on one hand, maintains itself as the birth of modern European democracy and on the other hand enforces censorship on this level?
Gawds, I hope not!
Long ago, I mused on how everyone wanted to eliminate their own piece of the Internet (albeit not on here):
"Americans want to outlaw pornography, Germans want to outlaw racism, the French want to outlaw any advertising that isn't written in French..."
Back then, I had no idea it could get this bad -- I miss my naivete. I really hope this doesn't become precedent. Imagine a world where the communications medium is governed by a combination of the most restrictive codes of law instead of the least restrictive. (China, anyone?)
And then imagine those restrictions slowly leaking off of the communications media into other facets of life.
Some people say the Internet will bring the world together. Assuming the world doesn't tear the Internet apart first, I'm not sure the world is ready to become a single entity yet. At least not until they get their ground rules straight.
And no, this is not just a knock at France. (So 50 years ago you got burned in a war. We appreciate your sacrifices and all you went through. But get over it! It was half a century ago! Get some therapy or something! I mean, look what we're going through in politics now! We plan to survive that...)
If it's a barb at anybody, it's at those countries and companies that think they can use the Internet (or any other media) to either:
a) publish one more form of useless, insincere propaganda -- a single-page of prechewed and committee-approved irrefutable bullshit where everyone else is trying to post vividly interactive and frequently updated encyclopedias, or
b) surf the world and try to put the kibosh on any information they don't like -- browsing everyone else's vividly interactive and frequently updated encyclopedias and trying to black-pen them by judicial order, advertiser protest, or out-and-out cracking.
No, this isn't aimed specifically at France. But if France wants to be that way about it, then welcome to the party, we feel your pain, now take a seat on the front porch and wait until we've had our fun in here.
(Feeling vinegary today, what can I say?)
---
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
They've got an office there with managers and secretaries and everything. Geesh. Do some research before you shoot your mouth off.
WTF?
First of all, why does Yahoo even need offices in France? I mean, it isn't like you need your server to be physically in France to put up French web pages. I can see the advantages of having them there, but who cares.
Also, does Yahoo have any legal options left available to them? I do not know French law..
Yahoo should just pull out of France all together. I know that is drastic, but maybe the French goverment will get the message. French people losing jobs because French citizens can get to a US company's website.
This is such utter stupidity.
-- bearclaw
please change "french dude" with "french judge that is a representative of french civil law that was created by the population of french citizens".
"some french dude" as you would put it is not causing the problem. Yahoo! is disrespecting a law that french citizens wanted put in place so some extent. otherwise, it wouldn't have become a law.
while we might cherish the right to say or do most anything, others can not be judged by our standards, but we must respect others and the laws they enact for themselves.
When the day when it is possible to see a frontal nudity (or even a breast, for god's sake!) on American TV before 22:30 or to hear 4 letter words, or to see somebody giving a finger without having a ridiculous mosaic on it has come, then maybe Americans will be able to start teaching lessons. 1st amendment, my ass, I've never seen such a bunch of blind hypocriticals.
For us, nazism means deads in our families, collective humiliations, foreign tanks parading in Paris, hunger, poverty, entire villages slaughtered (women and children included), genocide, shame on some of our citizens who became collaborators, etc... So, yeah, we're irrational about nazi icons, Jewish associations are very agressive to keep it that way, and in the end we're probably wrong. But I'd rather leave in a country which is irrational about nazism than in a country which is absurdly puritan about sex, alcohol and related, sorry.
... would we all really be that bummed out if we just banned all French IP's across the board? I mean, they think Jerry Lewis and Benny Hill to be the height of comedy!
What about Friends? What about The Nanny!? What about the new Saturday Night Live!?! What about *snort* what about... *laugh!* I mean... *guffaw*giggle*laugh*
Ok ok... Nobody could have said that last one with a straight face.
"Put a glide in yo stride and a dip in yo hip, and come on to the Mothership!"
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Even better, place a "500" error message: "Access to Yahoo! denied by the French government."
Rediculous problems require rediculous solutions.
/tma
----
But this case is about the French trying to exercise control over an international corporation; instead of sucking it up and going after the French who buy Nazi materials, they're going after the seller. Bah, humbug.
And don't pull that collective memory bullshit, either. Massive guilt over the collaboration of some 50 years past is not, to my knowledge, a basis for broad, sweeping legislation against the international community. How many people alive in France today were alive during WWII?
The internet is now officially screwed. Whatever happens with this case, a nasty precedent has been set for any and every government.
And, by the way, what's up with that crappy babel-fish translation? "...an offense to the collective memory of a nation profoundly murdered by atrocities". This statement shouldn't be nearly as funny as it sounds. Anybody have a link to the French?
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
This sort of censorship action is common in European countries. In many nations, the laws allow the government to prohibit speech that they believe threatens the well-being of the state. They exercise this power more often than the U.S. The mentality of some European states is that the government must protect the people from harmful and influential information that could infect them with bad ideas (like nazism). Maybe this government-over-people mentality is leftover from the era of monarchy and the absolute sovereignty of the king.
The french have really funny and inefficient ways of doing things in their legal system. I don't mean this as a flame against the french, most of them are well adjusted people. I mean France told America, bring Echalon, or else like there was something they could do if the Americans didn't. Then this. They could make it illegal to view those kind of things in their country, and stop bugging American companies. Secondly, they got a revolution but no freedoms from it evidently. On the overhand, I can see why the don't want their citizens to see this stuff. They were invaded by the Germans during WW2, so it's a much more personal issue for them.
+===========================+
|http://mere.2y.net/scoop/ |
|Tome=SCOOP+COOL_CONTENT; |
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Uh... the French have nukes too... Remember a year or two ago they got a huge amount of protests over them doing nuclear weapons testing in Southeast Asia... Of course the US has a lot more nukes than the French do, probably more powerful nukes, and probably a lot better delivery capability... But we are talking nukes here... Even one or two on-target to US cities or interests would be a bad thing... For that matter, a bad thing for anyone downwind of the fallout...
Based on how many complains there are whenever the US expresses its might beyond its borders, I think you're trolling, sir. Nobody is being held to a double standard here, unless it's in your imagination.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
So if Yahoo has to do it, as we read Amazon, and ebay will probably as well. And then Google and altavista and all the free home page sites. Fairly soon no one is going to want to bother and they will just not allow anyone connecting from France to use their services.
Then every French user who points their browser at google.com gets a message explaning why they were blocked and who in the government to write to about it. Once this happens I can't imagine that the laws would not be soon changed.
Just like the Americans are inferior to the Vietnamese.
Why pick on yahoo?...
:-))
/.rs reading this.) We are around now, and if we sit back and allow OUR Internet to be regulated in this manner we will become the modern day equivalent of "collaborators" OK, no lives are directly at stake: but freedom of information is.
- ---------------------------
Or even better; why pick on the Internet?
OK, all French are arogant, they smell, they roll over at the sight of a uniform.....
Americans are all fat, vacant and work-shy....
The Scots are short, hairy, ginger lunatics.....
English are......and on, and on and on......
Can we please get back on topic.
The issue in question is not a new one. For the sake of this argument; if an item is illegal to buy in any particular region - rightly or wrongly - then it simply IS illegal.
However, when selling such items, all that is normally required is a disclaimer along the lines of:
"Some of the items we sell such as: knives, bayonets, machetes, handcuffs, leg irons, etc. may be illegal to own in your locality. Since ####### cannot know every local and state law in the country, it is the responsibility of the buyer to comply with all local, state, and federal laws. When placing an order with us for "restricted" items you warrant to us that you are a legal adult without legal disabilities and are in compliance with all local, state, and federal laws. All such products will be shipped via UPS with "Adult Signature Required""
{taken from a US website}
{UK electronics sites often carry a similar disclaimer re: radio equipment}
It appears to me that what we see here is the very dangerous issue of the French judicial system trying to set a precident in Internet censorship. Banning access to sites due to content is surely the issue. Once a precident has been set by France, we could easily find this kind of censorship on our own doorsteps.
Doesn't this strike anyone as more important than off-topic xenophobe rants?
(Although, granted, not as much fun
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, none of us was likely around to fight the Nazis in WWII. (By "us", I mean the
And, in my opinion, the freedom for us (and future generations) to learn / think and make informed decisions is pretty fucking important.
I just hope that the "Internet experts" manage to put this across in their investigation / appeal period.
tear along the dotted line
-----------------------------------------------
I'd just like to get in a supportive post for France. They may have tried to hide the true extent of BSE in their cattle, but I truly respect their determination to say "screw you!" to anyone who messes with their own laws/culture.
Here in the UK, we have a tendency to roll over whenever the US make their demands. The American way is not the only way, it's not necessarily the right way either.
That's not to say that this particular case is right though. I think removing the auction from yahoo.fr should be enough.
This is not so old.
The decision was ruled out yesterday,
News is here :
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/001120/1/qvp1.html
This commentary (on the previous decision), is also interesting :
http://linuxfr.org/redirect.php3?i=1504
Ziad
On the contrary, the American always speak about freedom and their 1st Amendment, as it were sufficient to provide democracy, success and happiness. In Europe, the governments have a different approach. In the same way the American think that it is dangerous for their children to see a bare breast on television, the European think that it is dangerous to let Nazi objects become too banal in our society. Maybe WW2 would not have happened if anti-semitism had not been banal in the 30s, who knows. The idea is that freedom, like capitalism, is a good thing, but it is only a means, not an end.
Our governments may be wrong, and sometimes they goes too far : I remember that Noam Chomsky was considered as a revisionist by some people because he said that a revisionist should be allowed to express his opinions. But you must remember that it is more a cultural difference than anything else. The US economy works better than the French economy, but France is just as much a democracy as the United States.
(Another example of cultural difference is obvious these days with the US presidential election: in Europe, it would be a great scandal to see the candidates go to court to win the election. Everybody would scorn the winner; in America, it's perfectly legitimate.)
This is NOT the government. This is a judge.
Now, try and tell me no American judge has ever blurted out a completely stupid and ridiculous judgment.
Heh.
-- Colin
As a few posters above have noted, France was invaded and captured by Nazi Germany approximately 60 years ago. Emotions related to WWII are still very strong in most of Europe. In France, censorship is apparently far less terrible than remembering WWII and Nazi Germany. I don't think it's possible for US citizens to make comparisons here... we simply don't have any similar events. As time passes, the emotional pendulum may swing back... censorship may become worse than information related to WWII. For now, I don't think this decision should be criticized.
Where can I get ... from the French government (not from RIPE or ARIN) ... a list of the IP addresses to block ... e.g. the ones the French government, or better yet, that judge, thinks are the ones to be blocked.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
All we need are about five backhoes, and a good idea where the fiber links are along the border. Then we can be pretty sure nobody in France is connecting to much of anything ;)
That's interesting. Your theory is that this judge wants to ban Nazi items from Yahoo auctions because it might annoy the Germans ?
Newsflash : Hitler lost the war, Germany is NOT a Nazi country ; I really don't see why this might make the German gov't unhappy.
Only if their audience is American.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
You have mine now, for whatever it's worth.
For that matter I think it's wrong for America to have a trade embargo against Cuba, but that's another issue.
It's wrong for America to force it's trade embargoes, drug wars, morality etc. on other nations.
It's wrong for America to invade another country, kidnap it's legal head of state and forcably remove him to the US to face trial for American crimes * especially* when those "crimes" weren't even "commited" on American soil.
When this happened the American people rejoiced, rather than hanging their heads in shame.
The grand Republican experiment ended long before the current election fiasco.
Every year the Congress reads to the full session Washington's farewell address, they all feel a swelling in their hearts as it is read, and five minutes later procede to kick it to death.
Hopefully the French will be allowed to buy any white flags on auction. I hear that their military is always in high demand of them.
Happy people make bad consumers.
One of the problems with enforcing a law like this is determining when to stop enforcing it. Case in point: What constitutes a "Nazi-related" item? There are some obvious examples that everybody would probably agree on .. for example, an authentic Swastika flag used by the Third Reich would doubtless be classified as Nazi-related.
However, what about something like Hitler's book Mein Kampf? Is it Nazi-related? Inasmuch as the book is about his youth and his early days in the Nazi party, the answer would probably be "yes." But does it fall under the same general category as general Nazi memorabilia such as flags, silverware, etc.? The book arguably has some value to society because it serves as a window into the soul of one of the sickest, vilest human beings ever to walk the planet. You can't effectively battle what you don't understand, and so you might make the case that the book's intimate portrait of Hitler's mindset and thought processes are more important than its objectionable content.
What about Raiders of the Lost Ark? Is it Nazi-related?
The problem here is no different than it is any other time a government or group attempts to censor or "protect" its citizens/constituents from material that it deems harmful, offensive, or dangerous. "Harmful, offensive, and dangerous" are not black-and-white litmus tests that can be applied equally in all situations. When a government or group takes it upon itself to decide what people can see/say/read/etc., they are engaging in the intellectual equivalent of book-burning. Ironically, the Nazis were very much into book-burning.
I think the real cause for annoyance here is not a legal issue (whether one country can demand that another country censor something) or a cultural issue (whether France should have the right to do things the way it wants).
The real problem is how incredibly simple it is to get around any kind of block that Yahoo could impose. Any number of anonymous redirects will get around blocking very easily.
A ruling like this doesn't make sense because there is no way for anyone to implement the ruling. I think the general opinion around here is that we can't start to do anything useful about these issues until the judicial system takes some time to understand what is and isn't practical, what will and won't work.
-Zakk
Yahoo's failure to see this is one of the shortcomings of having a global communication device (the internet, obviously) while we still have borders and different laws for different regions of the world. The bonus to this sort of fight is that it might, if egos allow, begin to break down the borders worldwide and move to a global government with the same rights for everyone. I have my doubts though.
TheGeek
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
So some nimrod-judge doesn't like something an American Corporation with a french subsidiary is doing. All he has to do is threaten Yahoo! with "sanctions" to exert some control, trappings of law be damned. If Yahoo! has buddies in the US Government, they can threaten back. It's all about fear. Replace every occurance of "judge" with "terrorist bureaucrat" and you'll understand what the french dude is trying to do.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Without knowledge of the forbidden symbols, how do you know what symbols are forbidden?
I can imagine the makings of a short sci-fi story. In the future someone realizes that nobody living remembers, and no records exist of what a certian forbidden symbol looks like. So how can we enforce the law, as we don't know the forbidden symbol when we see it?
Well heck, after embracing this kind of thinking, we could extend it. Let's just make illegal saying certian bad things about the government. We won't say exactly what bad things, because we wouldn't want to say them ourselves. Or like a parent or child -- you can't say bad words, but I can't say the bad words myself in order to tell you what they are.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
And fuck the americans as well, in their small no-thinking brain.
Hey Jurri, how are things in Metz? :)
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Cuz the United States rocks the house, and is the best country in the entire world (USA! USA!.. hehe). But I think the point is that how is this enforceable? If Yahoo does not have any operations in France how do they force Yahoo to do something?
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
I have no respect for any government that doesn't respect basic rights for its citizens.
Like the USA?
Censorship on Slashdot
Just when I wish I had some moderation points...
Thank you for this intelligent and thoughtful post.
Someone please mod this up.
What I find particularly disturbing about this ruling is that the judge said that simply letting someone in France look at the material is illegal. A ruling like this lends legitimacy to a government like China or North Korea forbidding access to material it deems unsuitable. This ruling says that goverments can limit access to certain types of information, and I consider that unacceptable. Access to information is a fundamental underpinning of liberty, and anything that would block it is dangerous.
Criminals shouldn't be allowed to profit from their crimes by selling their stories or artefacts of their exploits. I believe some US states prohibit people convicted of felonies from making money from this way. So, the concept is not unheard of in the US.
Furthermore, purchasing memorabilia is more of a behavior than a right. Education, self expression, nourishement and shelter, these are rights. The French have, quite rightly IMHO (or not so HO), have decided that the rights of survivors, memories of victums, and contemporary minorities out weigh those of Nazi enthusiasts (to put it kindly).
I'm all for banning hate speech, in the interest of the constitutional rights of minorities and sensibly minded denizens.
I love it when people think that if they just ban/ignore/whatever else something that it will just go away.
Do you honestly think that whether or not Nazi memorabilia is for sale on Yahoo will affect in any way the number of Nazi sympathizers and imitators in Europe or anywhere else? Do you think that a budding neo-Nazi recruit in France is going to change his beliefs solely on the fact that he cannot order an authentic artifact or two?
Yes, the Nazis were responsible for many atrocities in the past. But PRETENDING THINGS DON'T EXIST DOESN'T MAKE THEM GO AWAY. In fact, all too often it increases the mystique as perceived by the minds of those who are already easily lead into such things.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Absolutely... It is legitimate for the French to have their own laws about what freedom of speech covers in their country, and while I may not agree with it, I understand and respect it. (My family was slaughtered in WWII, so let's not say here that I agree with Nazis... I just feel it is less dangerous to let them air their views openly and in-front of equally legal public criticism
... tags so that no Frenchman will ever accidentally see anything about Nazis... If that's their desire...
than to encourage them to hide in back rooms in self-righetous indignation...)
However, it certainly should be up to French sites to block such auctions. It was correct of them to remove the items from www.yahoo.fr in order to meet local standards and continue business in France, but Yahoo! should not be obligated to pay to protect the French from access to their US site. However...
Jurisdiction issues ecome blurry on the Internet. Unless Yahoo! blocks all French sites from www.yahoo.com, then it really is NOT just a US site... So maybe they SHOULD block the French sites, and it gets more complicated if you figure in that French people could get access through non-French sites... You begin to see why governments fear the Internet as a potential threat to their soverignty...
What would be prudent of Yahoo!, though, would be to put a tag in those auctions that the French sites could read and block. At least, then, they can be seen as cooperative and giving the French the opportunity to enforce their national laws.
And as for the French government, they should subsidize the standardization of an XML DTD that allows sites to be marked with
However, expect issues like this to increase as governments figure out how to enforce their national laws overlaid with a truly international communications medium...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
(Another example of cultural difference is obvious these days with the US presidential election: in Europe, it would be a great scandal to see the candidates go to court to win the election. Everybody would scorn the winner; in America, it's perfectly legitimate.)
What makes you think the U.S. election is not a scandal, or that the (eventual) winner will not be scorned?
I'm horrified by what's happening; so much so that I'm telling my friends and associates to look into "third parties" for the '04 games. I'm done with the two-party system, and the only way they're going to get the message is if there exists a credible challenge (or lots of smaller challenges). I would love to see the combined "third party" vote get, like, 30% of the popular vote in 2004.
Everyone should be forced, at gunpoint (OK, not really at gunpoint) to watch the archived news coverage of the 2000 election when the political ads start running in 2003...
Jay (=
---
---
It is not illegal to burn a the US flag
The bible is not a "Roman Catholic Religous Book."
The fact that this information is stored on a server located in the US is the only relevant fact. It does get a bit ify since Yahoo does have an office in France, however, I think Yahoo did all that could be expected by removing the links from yahoo.fr.
A foreign country cannot force a website hosted in another country to remove content. If this was true, there would be a lot fewer sites out there. Think of all the porn sites out there, especially those that deal with child porn, beastiality, etc. In a lot of countries, this is illegal. However, since they are often hosted from sites where this is legal, there is nothing that can be done to remove this, since it is published in a country where the laws allow this type of content. Where its visible from is irrelevant.
Companies that ignore the will and laws of other nations can expect great hatred. Sure, it's not Yahoo's problem or mine, yet but it can be tommorow when someone decides to retaliate in meat space.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I knew some french foren exchange students last year, and they all used Yahoo IM. Yahoo has a pretty big presense in FR, and if the FR government tried to punish them, they could cause a lot of problems...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Yes, this ruling is stupid. But that does not make the whole french people stupid. Who has the silliest cyber ruling ? Think about it.
:)
In France, distributing DeCSS and reverse engineering are legal.
What about US ?
If you could do this then you are a better man than I am.
Makers of the finest handmade furniture now use veneered MDF in their pieces for their own use.
Why? Because it is denser and harder to penetrate with a dagger than any natural wood board. It's so dense and hard that carbon tools are needed to work it without ruining the blade. It's also stable as all hell.
Only a handful admit to this practice, and an even smaller handful, say a couple of fingers, offer such products to their descerning customers
who realize that MDF, properly handled, makes a superior product.
Oops. Sorry for taking your joke seriously. It WAS kinda funny.
We simply need to have yahoo put a big button up on it's site to get in, asking: "Are you french?" (Yes/No). If they answer No, then everything is fine. If they answer yes, then it takes them to pokemon.com or something.
If you can believe it, yahoo offered this concession to the French. The French version of yahoo doesn't have the nazi stuff. The French court said that this did not go far enough, and that the English site must also block out French users.
Someone you trust is one of us.
...they should just ban all accented ip-addresses...
Something like this should be taken very seriously. Rulings like this mark the beginning of the censorship of Internet content, it sets precedence and destroys the essence of the Internet. Yahoo may not be worth more than France yet but if I were in the CEO's shoes over @ Yahoo I'd tell France to suck my butt!
Okay, so who's rule of law shall govern the Intnernet?
This is not about France telling Yahoo what to do! This is about every country that has different laws and different standards on the books. Some places it's legal to buy drugs, in other countries you might get the death sentence; which country's laws prevail when the world is your market place?
How do you keep everything in perpective?
This has been hashed out a few times here and in other places; Does anyone have a link to what was said then?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Ok. Say I'm in France. I can't get to Yahoo cuz all the IPs france are blocked. Fine. I'll just dial out to my US ISP and browse from there.
I know, this would cost a small fortune in phone bills, but the point is - if people want to see it, they will.
Pha
Um, I believe the French people would revolt if their government, or judiciary, thried to tell them they couldn't watch Jerry Lewis.
You think your big time?
You think your big time?
I'll kick your ass so hard you'll be unbuttoning your neck button to piss!
All you need if your Neo Nazi Frenchmen.
Time is Change.
After having read the English translation of the Judge's decision, it's not clear to me why Yahoo! was selected as the perpetrator of these crimes, when there are so many entities involved:
Are they just the biggest, shiniest non-French target?
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
if you're going to put the word in bold capitals, you might want to have the correct word in place.
THERE should be THEIR
there refers to location.
their refers to possession.
we will continue to see these sorts of demands from various countries as the internet becomes more pervasive outside the U.S
Unless every government in the world wakes up and starts thinking like us soon
Hmmph, kinda makes me gald to be living in the US
(Mike, do you copy?)
Another US citizen who can only think one way: According to latest studies, the US of A are not in a constant state of perfectness which only waits to spill over to the rest of the world. Just think of the preposterous attitude towards Cuba
Nazis actually occupied France and murdered people. Lots. Try to change your point of view to judge the situation.
Censorship on Slashdot
First : I'm a french citizen.
(OOoops : am I going to be modded down because this is a flamebait ???)
Anyway, just to put that into perspective.
I agree that technically this decision is stupid. But as someone said before, NO, it's not a governmental move : the french government has no saying in any judgment, and the independance between justice and government is trigerring at least an important fight each years in France.
But the judge is applying the french law, and specially the one that prohibits you to promote anything that will talk in favor of racism.
Moreover, the plaintiff in this case is a Student Jewish organisation. So no, guys this is not a government trying to blindly apply censorship to a medium they do not understand and control. Rather, this is an open-minded young people organisation (UEJF) that's trying to defend its interests. And the french justice is trying to do something about it, with unadapted weapons.
In fact, all really burns down to : is selling nazy items nazi propaganda or not ?
It's you to answer : the french judge has his own opinion. Remember as well that the french justice is relying far less on precedents that the american system, so the next case might have a totally different outcome.
And for armpits and other spicy details on french people, I'm now leaving outside the french territory, so any joke is going to be wasted on me : I already heard it !
[Pruneau
Oh, so these examples are "demonstrations" of political backwardness? Could you please elaborate on that? Cause, quite frankly, you haven't demonstrated anything. What is the problem with the fall of the 4th republic? What is specific in the '68 crisis as compared to what happened in the US in the same time? What is "backward" in the French revolution, and what followed (did you notice that most of your examples are 100 or 200 years old)? Where is the "backwardness" in the fact that a defeated country could not avoid having a puppet government at his head in WWII?
Now, seriously, what was this enumeration for? To show that you've opened a book? To avoid making a similar enumeration on the US? May I suggest that you study the political rhetorics in America, as compared to European (French included) counterparts? Did you notice at what insane level of populism the Presidential campaign was? And the children this and and that, and let me bestially kiss my wife while cameras are watching, and I trust the people while he's for big government, and I want to restore dignity, and I'm gonna fight for you, and , blablabla... Also, what about the incredibly stupid things that you can hear from Congressmen on C-Span when the cameras are here?
No wonder there is no strong far right party (actually, there is, it's about one half of the Republican party...), as there was in France with the National Front. In the US, pure populism is the mainstream.
Let me start by pointing out that your scheme for prventing French IP addresses from veiwing NAZI Auctions is totally unworkable. Have you heard the term "Proxy server". They allow people to effectivly make their IP address the same as that of the server. Their are public ones all over the world. You log onto the proxy server and ssuddly your computer is coming to Yahoo from the US or Japan or anywhere else that a public Proxy is available (Non public proxies are alos available. Basically any fool with a static IP and a little knowledge can set one up.) As to your rather degradational comments about the US, responding to a hot head by acting hot headed simply does not raise anyone's opinion of you. Are there contradictory laws in the US? Certainly. The drinking age is very silly, when compared with the age of majority. Censorship in some areas is worse here than in Europe. US policy's attitudes regaurding sex and nudity are very silly. I tend to argue just as strongly against the forms of cencorship practiced here as I do against those practiced elsewhere. The purpose of historic doccumation and relics is to remind us of the past. Both the good and bad aspects of it. It pisses you off to NAZI menorabilia and NAZI groups marching through the street? Good. That means you haven't forgotten. You will remember the next time someone tries to take similar power. Your family was hurt by the NAZI's and they (and you) reminded of that fact when you see some dick in a brown uniform marching around. Will they let that dick hurt them like the last one did? Hopefully not. All censorship accomplishes is to put the dick behinf closed doors where everybody forget about him. That is where he is really dangerous. As to the War in the Pacific being "Purely US interest based". I must assume that you have forgotten about the Dutch East Indies (Holland), Austrailia and India (England), South East Asia (Umm, well sorry, but your very own France), plus China (Self goverened but in the interests of most of Europe and the US). There is not a major country on Earth that has not caused incredibe amounts of suffering in the world at some point in history. France too fought her share of near genocidal colonial wars. What we should be working on is not censoring pieces of history, but making DAMN sure that EVERYBODY remembers the parts that suck the absolute most, so we can have a hope of avioding them in the future. As to beating the shit out of the first Klansman or NAZI you see, what have you proved? You now know without a shadow of a doubt that you are like them.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Having grown up in America, that's an easy statement to make. (Not that I've ever been out of the country) However, censorship isn't a holy (or unholy) thing, it's just a "lesser of two evils" - running on the theory that completely centralized approval of content on the basis of moral guidance, is slightly worse than letting anyone say/do anything they want. It's an imperfect solution, since a perfect one was never found. Read some Plato and you'll see examples of how total censorship could actually solve a LOT of social problems.
Next, we're not talking about banning. Banning is not the topic of discussion. Nazi memorbilia is still legal to display and sell on Yahoo! Auctions. Cooperating with a government to help them uphold their own laws is the discussion.
I know, it's all pretty touchy, but kneejerk reactions don't help things. =)
So, just let them figure out HOW to do it, both legally AND technically... Why should Yahoo bother? French law doesn't extend past the borders of France anymore than american laws don't extend past the USA's borders...
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
Canada also considers "boot-licking" illegal pornography, eh? In fact, it's probably illegal for you to read this comment.
This convention will have very profound impact on the 'net (and ecommerce in particular), as jurisdictional matters on the 'net are such a tossup. For more info see the Consumer Project on Technology's page on the Hague Convention.
What he's banning is something he considers offensive. Is that right? Not in my opinion. But as a German I honestly think that Nazi memorabilia is more offensive then naked humans.
I still wouldn't want to have it banned, but I can sympathize.
although I do notice that many french bring this on themselves. While they spend all their time being upity egotistical morons, looking down on other country's lack of "culture" while their women have more hair than a bear. I guess that annoying attitude really gets on American's nerves. Perhaps if french would quit being french, then they would not get so much crap. Now please take your turtle-neck, silly artists cap, latte drinking, socialist self away
I don't frequent many sites so I have to assume it was here... wasn't this already posted a few months back? Maybe I read this somewhere else...
If only censorship filters worked, we could filter out the French.
Someone you trust is one of us.
That is why we have this outraaaaageous accent.
=)
By the way, a little known fact is that American submarines rely in a large part on French sonar technology. This should make the nukes somewhat more unpredictable...
-- Colin
I give it a two Grande Latte rating.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
So what? It says that not only is Yahoo expected to filter it's packets (at it's own trouble and expence) but to pay a fine!
Yahoo is primarily a US company. The french-based Yahoo has already complied to French law. You think the American-based servers should to? What's France going to do if Yahoo simply says "No."? Stomp thier feet? What if Yahoo simply pulls up stakes and moves thier Paris office to London? Or closes it all together and handles things from thier home office?
France has no authority to demand anything from US web sites. If they want to block content from reaching thier land, well that's thier own problem not Yahoo's.
People get all upset if American polititions think they rule the Internet But it's OK if France does it?
-Andy
P.S. : If elected President I'll pass a law that says all French servers must play "The Star Spangled Banner" on thier internal speakers every time they serve a page to an American IP.
Typical French government action. They believe by censoring everything related to the Nazis, maybe people won't realize how cozy the French Government was with the Germans.
A good friend of mine owns a Nazi dagger. He is certainly no Nazi. He also owns a British commando knife and several other pieces of WWII equipment. He is a history buff and nothing more.
From a technical standpoint. It may be possible to block sites coming directly from French domains, but it is impossible to block anyone who truely wishes to get through. I can think of several ways off the top of my head (e.g. use an anonymous browser site).
-- Will program for bandwidth
What would you say if some Yahoo was selling cocain or heroin ? Just the exact same thing. And the only thing I don't understand is why Yahoo is authorizing this in the first place. What the fuck, none of you had history lessons some day ?
Because most of them were/are complete idiots.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that most people in my country are complete idiots too. maybe it's just something with the human race in general.
But at least we kicked some Nazi ass instead of taking it in the rear and then trying to ban free speech later in hope people would forget the Nazis existed or something.
and in case you are wondering, yes this rant was brought to you by monday.
European governments have become pretty good at suppressing free speech
.COM TLD? The whole bloody lot is a flood of marketing and advertising - at least Europeans are talking about reality, history, hurt and other REAL events and not living in some quasi-euphoric state of consumerism and vapid mind control. Did you know that the rest of the world works much less than Americans? That people actually have time to visit people - ON A WEEKDAY! That when they come home from work they are not so unbelievably stressed that they cannot deal with their spouse/children. People outside of America actually know their neighbours. They have dinner with their families.
American Gov/Biz has done a very good job of suppressing Free Thought.
Ever turn on your TV and radio? What about the
Im not condoning censorship by France by any means - but America has serious problems of there own with regards to "Free Speech" they should start thinking about...
Here is my non-exhaustive list of 'breaches of freedom' currently endured by Americans:
The 'war' on drugs - and the illegality of reasonable recreational drugs (marijuana and derivatives)
Prostitution is illegal - What are you people thinking?
Censorship of the Internet at Libraries(!)
DeCSS/2600/Judge Kaplan ring a Bell? What about DMCA? What law was Napster really breaking? Humm?
What about the prison industry? Do you really like being jailed for profit?
Rights of Same Sex couples.
Backwards Sodomy laws.
The growing 'What about the chiieeeldrreen' sentiment in America (wait for that to finally pop)
Age limits to drink alcohol.
Swearing in front of children is illegal (cant exactly remember the case/details)
What about the corporatist control on your Radio/Television airwaves - not much 'freedom' going on there would you say?
I seem to remember your not being allowed to visit or trade with the wonderful people of Cuba - why would that be? But China is 'ok'... puhleeze
My point is simply that America very wrongly believes it is 'Free'. That is one of the basic principles exercised by those who seek to control you: "Trust America, Trust Us, We have it the Best, Everyone else doesn't have it as well as we do. Sure we have problems - but just look at these poor fools... ha ha *receives a pat on the back* Now why don't you go down to the Mall and buy a new Tommy Hilfigir Tshirt."
Take a look around - what seems normal/reasonable/'ok' to you (because you are so close to 'it') looks like horrible oppression and breaches of your REAL Freedoms. What all the worlds citizens have to realize is that we must band together and protect everyone's rights - and assure that the world is organized for the benefit of all.. both France and America has problems to deal with.* But relatively speaking - who do you think is really 'Free'?
*Steaming from Corporate control of the Worlds Democracies. (but that is clearly outside the scope of this post).
when will those in power realize the power to control what their populace hears and thinks has been irrevocably lost?
Amorphis
You Wrote:
Slander and Libel are both civil crimes, meaning you can be forced to pay damages but can't be thrown in jail for them. For all three, you are punished not for your speech, but for the results of your speech. Sure, it's a thin line, but it's a line. (Regardless, I think all three should be legal anyway.)
Since you feel libel, slander and "yelling 'fire!' in a crowded theatre are acceptable forms of free speech" I think we should write slanderous and libel statements about you, and place you family into a theatre of crowded overweight slashdotters and yell "fire!", thereby having your family crushed under the weight of slinkybean the 400lb. slashdotter.
You'll have no legal recourse since, of course, it will all be perfectly legal for these events to take place. Then, while you sob and moan about having been falsely imprisoned by those of us slandering you and stating you are the head of a child pornography ring, we'll inform you of your dead family. Of course in then end we'll all get a good laugh about how you were sodomized in prison and how you're now the bukakke bitch of some overweight prisoner with HIV.
Have a nice day!
this kind of bullshit has been going on since the beginning of time. German/French relations have always been at ods and this is just the French getting back at it one more time. Get over it guys. WWI and WWII is long over. The problems of the past are done w/. Mend old ties! DO NOT take this crap out onto the Internet, it isn't worth it, really.
The Internet is a place of free-trade and free-expression of ideas, not a battle ground over land expansion 50 - 75 years ago...
they're still amateurs compared to the austrailian parliment though
I'm told in some parts of the world it is illegal to even mention the hollocust ... does anyone know if this is true?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
P 2 P___H U M O R
great comedy company.
Perhaps the Frech should think about making every peice of memrobilia come with a copy of "The diary of Anne Frank"?
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
If anything was ever worthy of a +5, this is.
The most sesible and cost effective solution for yahoo may be probably to adopt the most restrictive legal standarts in the rich world. The loss of income from Nazi propaganda will be smaller than the combined cost of selective cesorship and litigation.
This may seem not so bad to many non Americans who lack the absolute 1st Ammendment commitment. But, ask yourself, what will happen when a country with an important enough market tries to impose restrictions than no democraticly inclined person can tolerate ( No sale of nativity scenes in China?) As much as I understand French consternation, i believe that the benefits of a legally unified Internet are greater than the loss to France's ability to effictively censor what it considers reprehensible. I thus suggest that such issues are better not left to national courts to resolve at all.
The Internet is global, and it would thus be apropriate to seek relief from the French ruling in a number of global venues that may be more sympathetic to yahoo, such as the WTO, and the EU supreme court. Since mosts losses from such rulings will be incurred by US based companies, it might be possible to get some positive US bullying at these institutions, with the apropriate lobbying.
Most likely, we will see countries pushing more and more for effective censorship. And I predict that most big corporations, including yahoo, vill just cave in. There is not enough money in being controversial. The pursuit of global standards of openness and access are thus left to NGOs like the FSF (and all of us ;-).
as an adage, I believe that Nazzi memorabilia and its prohibition in Europe both serve a very worthy goal, reminding yet another generation that the road to hell is just one right turn away.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
I hearby invoke Godwin's law and demand that that Slashdot immediately cease all postings related to France, Nazi's and little talking furry toys.
Burn Hollywood Burn
and i also realize I'M one of the idiots in my country considering i can't spell "french" correctly.
Just ban everything coming from the direction of France. It would work. And the judge would probably change his mind pretty fast. Oh, and howcome the intercontinental telephone companies are not ruled to make sure French people are not dicussing nazism? hm.
deal with it. you don't like the internet? turn off your computer. we don't need censorship and filtering and all that mumbo jumbo. we need a fundamental shift in the human consciousness towards accepting that the world isn't perfect and trying to color it as such never works.
...it was I wave my private parts at your auntie! You silly english Ka-nig-its!
You're using her as bait, Master!
More seriously, you should keep in mind that the law that bans nazi material in France has been voted by a democratically elected french parliament. It's the choice of the french people. The real challenge here is technical: how can such a law be enforced in our new interconnected world ?
Hitler was democratically elected. That does not exculpate the doctors and generals of the 30's and 40's who devised the technical "solutions" sought but Nazi Germany.
Democracy is good but it does not relieve you of moral obligation.
I think I learned something about the french being part of that...
Very funny! For a change!
Perhaps they are taking lessons from the MPAA?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This kind of stuff annoys the hell out of me.
Which stuff annoys the hell out of you? The nazi stuff or the censorship stuff?
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2B1ASK1
I develop webpages for the company I work for, as well as a couple sister companies, one of which is an ISP. We don't have any nazi symbols on the pages, but this raises the question of whether or not I/my company could be susceptible to French law? After all, our users could post pictures on their personal pages.
Is this happening just because Yahoo has an office in France? Wouldn't it be easier to make all the ISPs in France reject Yahoo's IPs. That way they could easily censor other nazi related sites.
I would just hate to think that they could mandate that my company go through the hassle of programming the routers to reject ALL the IPs from France.
The French vox populi on this issue would cause half the /. population to retch. The judge really nailed the general French sentiment in his ruling.
We don't want this content.
We understand it's difficult to filter, but...
If you want to do business here, figure it out.
This is no dangerous precedent; this isn't the top of a slippery slope; this is how things are.
It's not America's business to 'liberate' people who are not asking for 'American' liberty.
This is basically what the evil French censorship law says : you're allowed to sell "My Kampf", but you can't sell it without a proper disclaimer.
The two organizations who sue Yahoo have never considered such a solution. They're not honestly trying to fight the Nazi ideology, they're seeking publicity.
Next time Germany invades France... let's help the Germans.
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"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
Just because people in the US and Canada don't have many laws like this doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense for other countries. Lets have a little respect, ok people? However, the problem again comes down to how a country can both accept the Internet and apply their current laws.
...
Canada, for example, has very strict laws about child pornography (which are being debated right now in our Supreme Court). How do we then handle the issue of child pornography coming into the country from other countries where it is not illegal? This is perhaps a more interesting version of the question this legal argument is trying to propose
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I agree with you. I don't think french government can do anything against Yahoo, as Yahoo stands in the US. And I don't see how they can restrict the connections to Yahoo. They won't cut all connections with US servers, will they?
~moofbong
~moofbong
If 'con' is the opposite of 'pro', what is the opposite of 'progress'?
...I'd be sitting at the console right now typing something like "route add france bitbucket metric 0"
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Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You can calm down: you are not related to that story. French people - and only them - couldn't connect anymore to Yahoo auctions that sell pro-nazi stuff. It's illegal here in France, that's the reason why some solutions must be found. It's the same thing as for pedophily: if a US website was selling pedophily stuff, there would be a lawsuit to prevent that from being seen by French people. You - American people - can hardly understand how bad Nazism was for France, Europe and more generally for the whole world, so please think a bit before posting aggressive stuff against French people.
Unless you are French, you don't have any gripe in this regard. Though the Internet is "global", that doesn't mean that all local laws should be thrown out to make way for the Universal American Truth(tm). America has already done enough to homogenize and sterilize world cultures.
Forget the technical issues for a moment. Let the French make their own laws, as ridiculous as they may seem. If they don't want Nazi memorabilia as part of their culture, then so be it. More power to them. Censorship may be Unamerican, but we are talking about France after, which to my knowledge has never signed on and pledged to uphold the constitution of the U.S.A. Let it go.
Can I post the picture of your mom having sex with hitler that I made in photoshop, or is regulation only of things that offend *other* people ridiculous socialism?
Go for it. I'd consider that to be freedom of expression. Have a party.
At the same time, however, recognize that I'll post that picture I have of you banging a sheep.
Socialism is evil, like communism, it doesn't work. France is a socialist country. And *I* live in a socialist country.
If you want to be taxed all to hell to pay for silly protectionist policies and the stupidity of the proles, that's fine with me: just leave me the hell out of it.
I prefer a capitalism, which rewards those who work hard, and punishes laziness.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Before French citizens can access anything on the internet, they must first be licensed by their government and then the site they are going to visit must also approve of a French visitor coming to see the site's content.
I truly understand the very logical reasoning behind France's objection to auctioning off Hate paraphenalia, but I feel a bit more secure knowing it is occuring in the open where this behavior can be noted and used as an example than hidden. Because you know that moment it is outlawed at least three sites will pop up (members.tripod.com/naziauction) to fill the demand. What's worse is these sites will operate without the watchful eye of ADL or other HateWatch groups.
Welcome to the global economy France. You either play along or become extinct.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Obviously, this is not the case, as I access both child pornography and snuff films on the 'net on a regular basis. Plllt.
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Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
... has provided me with more comedic material than any other source.
"Je suis American!"
The French government is completely unjustified in attaking Yahoo! about the merchandise.
They could simply regulate it themselves by umm.. enforcing their damn laws... okay, so if some sick bastard wants to buy Nazi crap from Joe Schmoe, let him. Unless of course he lives in France, and is violating French Law, then don't let him. But its not Yahoo!'s responsibility to enforce this, its France's.
~ The Irony is, The only reason I'm not at Berkeley right now is because I was on acid during my SAT's..
I agree with you that French views are not everyone elses views, but...
There happens to be this guy named Napoleon, who just happened to be French. I am not an expert on the Napoleonic Age, but from what I remember, he was not a nice man at all (in fact, I seem to remember him slaughtering thousands on a beach after promising them that he wouldn't). I don't see any countries affected by Napoleon telling people to ban French Culture. And if you have ever seen Napoleon's Tomb in Paris you would see how the French worship this man. He is their hero. It is not like when the Russians tore down the statue of Stalin.
Who do these French people think they are?
"I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."
"French people piss me off!"
As justification, we could argue that the French mindset is a danger to the common sense of the rest of the world. :-)
It's things like this that make me forget why exactly the rest of the world pulled France's ass out of the frier in WWII. Comic relief, maybe?
Humorless sig goes here.
Didn't Germany want Compuserve to ban some stuff several years ago?
Didn't the USA kill Sharon Tate and four others in 1969?
Country != person, even outside of the US. The ruling was said to be against the law and easiliy appealed right after it was passed. So it happened.
Censorship on Slashdot
Well folks, it's been just lovely to see the racism on display. (For those of you who have little understanding of the previous sentence - this is sarcasm.)
So much for the internet promoting tolerance and understanding between people and nations.
Nazism is abhorrent. The law in France forbids the glorification of Nazism. Which is entirely justifiable considering what happened in Europe just 50 years ago.
The French are a democratic nation. This means that they (and their judges) are can make whatever law they wish to, and we should support them because laws applied in France to French residents are entirely reasonable. In this sense, a law requiring Yahoo employees to balance boiled eggs on their noses, to display Yahoo pages in green type in French when displaying those pages to people in France, or to perform any other action is ENTIRELY REASONABLE. (Yes, I meant to shout.)
There may be a problem implementing the decision. You may be living in the USA where you don't have the first clue about the effects of Nazism. But nothing at all can excuse the frankly vile racist commentary that this issue is generating.
I can see where personal _possession_ of such items would perhaps be problematic. This, however, is not about merely preventing possession (unless much was lost in translation) but about preventing viewership, eliminating knowledge of the existance of the items.
While the US First Amendment does not carry legal weight in France, the principle it is based upon is worth considering: That the best treatment for bad speech (thought, etc.) is to counter it with good speech, not to try to ignore it and hope it goes away by itself. It never goes away by itself.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
y'know, now that I think of that, this might not be a bad idea at all. Imagine the headlines:
I swear, this is ripe for something on the Onion, if anything was..
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem"
(as seen on a bulletin board in Fermi lab)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Bull. The French are obsessed with the past when it comes to the collaboration. Most of our historians, philosophers, intellectuals and even politicians are spending much of their energy on this issue to understand and study accurately what happened. Many powerful Frenchmen are now in jail for having been collaborators. This is a permanent debate on the French intellectual scene. So, no, we're not trying to escape what happened, not at all. And your own vision of the resistance and the collaboration also seems to be slightly biased, isn't it?
As far as the Vichy government is concerned, it was nothing but a puppet government, chosen by the nazis who were omnipotent in France after their victory, and serving the nazi's interests.
PS: May I suggest you to read "Trading with the Enemy", by Charles Higham? It has some interesting information on the (excellent) relations between Nazi Germany and American business. It seems that, in every country, people are tempted to collaborate with the (even temporary) winner, whoever he is...
If there's anything our good friends the French should have learned, it's that building an impenetrable defensive line is ludicrous. Why? Because you'll just have them go around your defenses through Belgium.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that blocking IPs by region was in its infancy, at best. And now this lunatic is ordering Yahoo to essentially wave a magic IP wand, and make all the nasty Nazi paraphernalia go away.
The French used to scare me, thanks to their insistence on continued nuclear testing in the Pacific. Now they terrify me-- if this man is any indication of how far out of touch with reality their government is, we could be in for a whole heap of trouble.
Five tons of flax.
Yahoo makes a nice centralized target as the source of the transmission. Without looking at the law I would suggest that the other end of the message is more likely to be in violation. 1) from a physics and philosophical point once the message has been sent to anyone it has been sent to everyone. The only issue remaining is resolving the message out of the universal background noise. 2) French law does not apply to transmissions from A to B where neither is in france and the direct transmission path is not through France. 3) infomation is only present when resolved at its destination. So the violation of the law is being done by the recipients of the message. Yahoo makes a large and incorrect target for the application of the law. Yahoo may be in violation if it becomes difficult for those in france to avoid receiving the message.
I don't have an answer to this question, but it seems to me that the Internet (Arpanet back when I first encountered it!) has become antigressively (as opposed to progressively) less "free" over the years.
There was a time when there were *no* rules: anyone did *anything* they wanted. Naturally, there were consequences for doing stupid things, but there wasn't any legal involvement: the system took care of its own.
These days, it's not that way at all.
So what's going to happen?
Is the Internet going to become controlled and regulated by the Legal System?
Is it going to become controlled and regulated by Big Business?
Is there any difference between the two?
Will a secretive undernet develop, once again allowing no-holds-barred information exchange?
Will we savvy geeks rise up against the burgeoning restrictions, or will be lie back and take it up our collective brown buttons?
Frankly, I think the worst will happen: this remarkable opportunity for freedom of information sharing will be subverted to the needs of business. Most of the public doesn't know what it's losing, and the rest of the public is dominated by selfish short-term interests that simply aren't compatible with long-term societal gains.
It's the End of the Internet as we know it... and it's going out not with a bang, but a whimper.
:-(
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I think we will see more of this in the future. Although this may be very impractical to implement, the laws of any country will be upheld on the internet.
Or are we going to stick to the only law that's applicable now, i.e. the law of the United States?
I guess there will be some international treaty covering these kinds of situations in a couple of years.
The consequences of this situation may be enormous for the internet. And as for your anonimity, it will at least decrease again.
Your right, the argument is not wrong, but what he should have said is your argument doesn't apply since Yahoo has a French subsidiary.
Not that I'm all for Nazi paraphanelia, but this just brings up something that's interesting to note.
.fr domain and then boom, they've done everything in their power. (They also should take away the "research further on yahoo.com" link that the legalese mentions.)
Pretty soon we won't be able to have a "World Wide Web", because there will be something everywhere that violates a law in some other country. I'm sure the sight of an American flag could violate a law in some country we don't know about, should we no longer have websites that have an American flag on it just because it violates the law in that country?
Now, if you read the legalese, it says that Yahoo.com must do everything IN IT'S POWER to block the French from it's site. It doesn't say that it MUST BLOCK ALL FRENCH. So all they need to do is to block the
If we're so anti-censorship, why aren't there naked chicks on prime-time network TV in America?
France should simply require their providers there to filter out connections to ebay. Why is it ebay's problem if France has some silly laws allowing censorship? Are they a French company? :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does not your soon-to-be president-designate, George II, has a plan to implement a mandatory filtering of all government funded internet access ?
This is a comment on their leadership of the time, of course, and not on the French people either then or now; certainly there was a great deal of suffering under the occupation, and not all frenchmen were collaborators. The ambiguous history with regard to the Nazis does, however, help to explain French attitudes and sensitivities in the 45 years since their independence was restored.
So, if France as a nation has a need to be a little more stubborn and vociferous than most in asserting its sovereignty and independence against the rest of the world, maybe it's understandable even if a bit silly at times...
The other question is if Yahoo knows what they are sending at all. They should have their auctions catagorized and therfore know.
The best they can be expected to do is to not knowingly transmit this memorabilia to France. To not even try would be rude. To err, would only be common carrier.
If the French have a problem with their laws, they should change them or leave. This kind of suppression only glamorizes that crap and makes it seem more valuable, but that's not my bussiness. Now if someone wants to limit what I see and hear, they can go to hell.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Fifty years after the Nazis were beaten (without much French help) and 10 years after Communism was beaten, the European bureaucracy clings to its habits of omnipotence and oppression. This judicial ruling is the reason why we have an army in Europe: let's use it!
If money doesn't buy happiness, you're not spending it right.
Silly frogs are at it again. First they passed that law about all websites (main page) hosted in France have to be in French. Now this. Whatever. I say let them bellow and moan and shake their fingers at Yahoo! and whom ever else they are mad at this week. The rest of the world knows it's silly - maybe someday they'll understand the futility of their position and come around. Until then I ask but one thing of all French people, and Parisians in particular: TAKE A BATH!
Well, For starters, would you REALLY want the government of Communist China to be able to put you on trial just because you posted something critical of their government here in the US? After all, just because saying that China has a corrupt government is legal here in the States, it does not mean that it's legal in China.
If we were to say that if something is illegal somewhere in the world that it should be removed from the net, we might as well pull the plug on all of it.
+++++++++++++++++++++
The Digital Sorceress
Go boil your bottom, you stupid son of a silly person! I fart in your general direction! I empty my nostrils on your aunties! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries! Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second tim'e!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
you mean like America did with icravetv.com?
right....
An Example:
Here in Boston about two years ago a college student at MIT died from drinking too much. (Voluntarily or In-Voluntarily leave for the courts to decide) So our well meaning General Court, and "officials" in Cambridge and Boston, legislated "tougher" standards on under aged drinking. From what I can tell it hasn't changed a thing beyond making a few politicians sleep better at night, and creating a few more pages of laws.
An addition to your comments, _xeno_ ...
Firstly, we're not talking about blocking the -sale- of these items, we're talking about the ability to view them. Blocking the sale of items is considerably easier, because mechanisms for that sort of thing already exist. It's probably already being taken care of and is by no means Yahoo!'s problem.
Next, Yahoo! isn't selling anything here, they're providing a service. You already knew that, but I just wanted to point it out. Yahoo! isn't selling Nazi artifacts.
This ruling pisses Americans off (generally) for various reasons, but I only want to discuss two of them here.
"Business Imposition"
Now, the traditional problem with a ruling like this has been "it can't be done." "It can't be done" in the Internet industry directly translates into "it hasn't been done, it will cost a lot of manhours to research and develop a way to do it, and we don't want to spend that money."
France is replying to this claim (which Yahoo! made way back when the ruling was first passed down) by saying "too bad. Do it or else." Yahoo!, an American corporation, isn't going to take lightly to a foriegn country's government imposing regulations that they ordinarily wouldn't have to deal with.
Don't be surprised if this becomes yet another of the long strain of drawn-out legal battles over the Law of the Non-Land. Don't be surprised if it gets delegated to the WTO or some other non-aligned organization. Don't be surprised if the final ruling is a least-common-denominator solution - web content must be acceptible to the law of any area from which it is accessible.
"Cultural Imposition"
This goes both ways. France claims we're imposing on their culture by providing their citizens a way to break the law. Most of the Americans in this discussion contend that Yahoo! is following every law that applies to them, and France is applying legal rulings where they have no jurisdiction. Who bends?
The Solution
Technically speaking, the most sensible configuration for blocking these "illegal" internet requests to pages containing material pertaining to Nazi artifacts, is for the blocking mechanism to be a part of Yahoo!'s network. The reasons for this are obvious.
In terms of financial requirements and responsibility, however, it makes more sense for the French government or related organizations to develop the technology required to perform the block. They are the ones who WANT this imposition to happen, so they should impose it themselves. In turn, Yahoo! should, as a responsible and respectful member of the global community, agree to put these blocks in place and allow the French to maintain and administer them.
Finally
We're not trying to piss anybody off. America's culture may be younger and far more promiscuous, but it is -our culture.- We have the right to broadcast whatever our law permits us to, under our regulations. No foriegn government has any say in the way that right is interpreted. The French, on the other hand, are responsible for enforcing their own laws.
If the pissing contests can be abandoned, Yahoo! and the French government, and any other parties with vested interest, can solve this problem together, since it is obviously a matter that needs a solution. If not, well, let the flaming commence!
right?
folks, just because the US thinks they own/control the world, does not mean that we have a right to ignore laws in other countries. What the heck is the problem here? Why is it that we appear to think the internet can cross all boundries and leave all laws in ruins? I think it is the responsibility of all companies that wish to sell/provide services on the web to be sensitive to the laws in their target areas. just an anonymous coward's opinion.
I guess the judge must nogt have heard of proxies. You know proxies? Those things that some countries require ISPs to have to censor content?
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I think US citizens won't have nothing to say about nuclear testing in the Pacific (that don't happen anymore by the way) while they still apply death penalty in many of its states and will soon have a new predident that is in particular the governor of one of the most criminal american state.
The American law was done pretty much as a joke.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
that a country which worships Jerry Lewis as the god of comedy would make this kind of ruling. Heck, if it weren't for the fine wines, spirits and cheeses which come from France, I would say nuke the idiots!
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
In French, as in most parts of EU it is ILLEGAL to display or buy fascist memorabilia, or to deny the crimes commited by Nazists during the war.
If the memoribilia is sold in a shop in Paris, it is illegal, if it is sold on the internet, it is also illegal, even if it comes from Yahoo!.
Some US citizens, and some non-US, would claim that this is against free speech, my position is that free speech doesn't mean that you can freely say "let's go kill all the jews out there". US companies like Yahoo! should understand that if they want to operate outside the US they should do it accordingly to the laws of the foreign countries where they are.
Fortunatelly, not everyone in the world shares the idea of law and freedom found in the US, where you can buy Nazi memorabilia or a gun freely, but you cannot smoke in public.
French bureaucracy is horrible. It's a shame France belongs to EU. http://www.co.jyu.fi/~np/hate/FranceHate.html http://staff.semel.fi/~kribe/mielipid/ranska.htm
I think you got a few things wrong:
America restricts the rights to see nudity and drink alchol from all minors.
And all majors as well, to a degree. Can you see people having sex at 3:00 PM on any public station anywhere in the USA? Can you buy beer on Sunday in Georgia?
Once you're of age, have at it! Download
porn off the internet, get those smutty DVDs, watch Pay-Per-View sex show.
Except that lawmakers have traditionally tried to heavily regulate that as well. There are still laws on the books regulating how, with whom, and with what devices you are allowed to have sex.
The official reason that TV and radio is censored is that children can view it without restriction.
But the real reason that TV and radio is censored is because people want to use the law as a club to beat up the things that they think are immoral.
So while I agree with the spirit of your post, I feel like some of the details are not quite correct. America is still very backward when it comes to sex. Spend a few weeks (or hell, even a few days) in Amsterdam and you'll see what I mean.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
forbid the New York Times, for instance, from publishing such material in France
But Yahoo Inc isn't publishing anything in France. Yahoo.fr removed the links, so its only being published in the US. The media in this case is irrelevant. Be it TV, Newspaper, radio, or the Internet. This is a Government trying to impose restrictions on a foreign company on the chance that one of its citizens might see something considered by some to be offensive.
If I were Yahoo Inc. I would refuse to obey. If the issue was pressed, just close up shop in France. If they don't want to lose the advertising revenue, setup something like fr.yahoo.com as opposed to yahoo.fr. Then see how far the Gov't of France can go with it.
I mean imagine that you start a business. You're selling harmless doodads. Then, a foreign country sends you a registered letter saying that you must ban all people from our country from seeing your website. Would you comply?
Now then, as for the charge that this has a tremendous impact on American cinema, I don't really think that's as accurate as you think. Often times, studios intentionally throw in unbelievably bloody scenes in order to allow the stuff they actually want shown to slip by. Much of the "censoring" is actually by design. I agree, it's stupid, and it is an abridgment of rights, and I think the current Supreme court probably would have struck it down if they'd been the ones to decide it, but they don't feel like overturning an established precident. It sucks, but I still prefer economic disincentives to creating "obscene" movies to an outright ban on viewing certain things. Or for that matter, a national committe which sets the standards for my language (newspeak is doubleplus good!)
As for the topless bit, now you're just being silly. I can see your point on the movies, but countries are allowed to set their own standards of decency. The fact that we consider toplessness similar to bottomlessness is just what we're used to. Now, I'm a libertarian, I believe that people ought to be able to wear as little as they like (and the rest of us have an equal right to shout lewd comments :), but assuming that a country is going to pass laws concerning indecent exposure, the fact that our laws include tops and yours don't hardly makes us less free.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
...does that mean Slashdot is officially 'dead'? Guess we're all off to kuro5hin!
Concurrent with an American controversy about the WWII memorial on the Naitonal Mall, some French citizens are upset about the French memorial: enormous statue of a white flag on a baguette. www.ridiculopathy.com
Furthermore, what if we told you that your laws are in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution? Would you feel in any way compelled to change them?
We thought not. Point proven.
I can see the fnords!
The real "culprit" is the French ISPs, or anyone who allows French citizens to access this illegal data. How can the American company Yahoo be blamed, or even its French presence, (yahoo.fr) which has already removed the auctions?
The government should prohibit ISPs from displaying this data, if it wants to censor anything. And then make it illegal for French citizens to connect to foreign ISPs.
When someone reads this post they must remember that the holocaust, and the legacy left by World War II and Nazism has left a very different mark in the history books than it has here in America. Which would have an influence on decisions such as there. I'm not supporting or advocating this ruling, but I'm saying that people need to understand cultural context when criticizing other nations and their policies.
er, mine doesn't
.oO0Oo.
guess you can't drive
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Seriously, look at what's happened to Yahoo. Once upon a time, it was a decent search engine. Now, Yahoo is anything but; there still is a Search field, but now they send your query to Google. The rest of yahoo.com is just auctions, the Yahoo!Messenger, and e-mail. Yahoo turned into another GO.com (or is it the other way around? Hmmm.).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
You fucking religious scum are all alike. Go ahead and pray, but you'd better pray that I don't find out who you are while your at it, asshole.
You think your big time?
You think your big time?
I'll kick your ass so hard you'll be unbuttoning your neck button to piss!
France has full right to pass laws against its citizens from trafficking in Hate symbols. But in trying to enforce them on a global scale, France has fallen into a myopic point-of-view that by tweaking a parameter, its citizens will magically be spared the hate symbols on the internet.
Fascism is on the rise in Europe. Yahoo auctions aren't going to impede or help at all. Anti-Hate legislation in these countries will.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
"Man is lower than the angels...and higher than the French." --Mark Twain
Here is the website
...that France is basically a useless country?
Bunch of whiners who still think sprinkling perfume on, is the same as taking a shower...
Shave those armpits already!
what me worry?
> Well, you said it. You prefer being irrational.
Oh, really? Interesting. Well, it seems that I have to be a little more explicit so that everybody can get it:
I'd rather live in a country which is irrational about nazism than in a country which is irrational about sex, alcohol, and stuff. Is it clearer now?
Last, no, I DO NOT support this ruling (even though, deep inside, I wonder why the hell is Yahoo selling such crap), as I thought I had made it clear before. I'm only reminding a few Americans out there, who have immediately jumped on te bash-the-froggs bandwagon as soon as this story appeared, that they have similar problems with much more far-reaching consequences (banning nudity/explicit language/etc., for example, on THE mass-medium, aka TV, has a somehow greater impact than banning nazis-related items auctions on a website...).
For that reason, despite the nausea I feel every time I see a swastika, I think it is valuable to have tangible reminders of the history we do not want to be doomed to repeat. On the other hand, having lived in France as well, I don't think that that is a problem facing most French adults.
But what about the children? Won't somebody please think of the children?
Seriously, the younger generation coming up who by now do not have parents who lived through that era are the ones who need to be shown the history. They need to have tangible evidence of where bigotry can lead.
It's for the same reason I oppose hate crime/hate speech laws - In addition to the loaded first ammendment issues and the setting of subjecting precedents. It's better to know what's out there than to be ignorant of the violent aspects of society.
When Nazi paraphenalia is outlawed, only outlaws will have Nazi paraphenalia.
__________________________________________________
Now one more (actually more) questions. As Yahoo! auctions content is prohibited from viewing by French citizens does it mean every French tourist visiting other countries should explicitly disclose his origin every time he access internet in other countries? (just to turn on all the blocks etc) Will it be illegal to dialup ISPs from other countries to gain access to those pages? Using proxies? Will an US citizen travelling to France be provided with controlled access to prohibited content? If not then why? It's his right to access the information as he's not French, right? Will somebody sue French government on those grounds? Will AOL europe co-operate in providing location of dial-up customer to blocking systems? :) )
Oh well... It's all somewhat likely to conflict in Canada about being required to have web sites in English and French in some areas (hm... French again... is it me or just de ja vu?
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Hyperom.com
To Keep French Out, Yahoo Creates "Fine British Wines" Category
Paris, France (SatireWire.com) -- To comply with French law and keep French Web surfers from attempting to view Nazi memorabilia on its auction site, Yahoo today said it will move Nazi artifacts from their current category -- Antiques > Militaria > WWII -- to a listing under Home > Food > Fine British Wines.
The announcement came only hours after a French court ruled the Santa Clara, Cal.-based company was in violation of France's anti-racism laws, which it make it illegal to sell or display anything that incites racism. French culture minister Catherine Tasca accepted Yahoo's proposal, noting that "No self-respecting French person would dignify such a category by clicking on it." However, she added, identifying British wines as "fine" was "unnecessarily vulgar."
Hammer of Truth
What do you mean hanging? We should behead them! Guillotine style! Isn't that the French way of doing it?
Cheers,
Costyn.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
People in general are stupid, France knows this and america knows this. Besides, we are not taught the past, only parts of the past that serve to reinforce our current moral stance. Do people in this country know hitler is bad or do they just repeat what they are taught. German school children sure did think differently. How could a country follow such an "evil" man? America restricts its people more than you know, only that it's subtle and acceptable. It's the reason that god is working so many maricles down in the bible belt. What are impressionable young youth; is it sinful for them to turn out at all different from their parents? As far as repeating the past, we only have a glimpse of it; it's forever lost. Freedom in this country is a joke when everyone wants you to be an american.
Damned socialists
Damned corporatist.
Take a look at Canada and Sweden... as socialist as they come. Were not evil 3 eyed commies are we?
Thank our Christian God were not Communists like those filthy Cubans - Ewwww.
Open your mind. Turn off your Television. You've been polluted. Try READING a little - it may aid in achieving a more balanced an informed opinion.
Sorry Yahoo, but you are violating French law. It doesn't matter whether or not the law is good or not (I personally think it's bad, but then again, it's not my country so I don't get a say), Yahoo is sitll in violation. Just like it is illegal to mail order fireworks to be shipped to a state where they are illegal, its illegal for Yahoo to provide a means for French citizens to buy Nazi junk. It Yahoo's responsibility to not allow the French to buy the stuff, and and no amount of first amendment bullshit is going to get around French law.
As a clue, unless you are referring to the Polish jokes as Racist (which they are not RAC(E)ist, but rather just bigotted) then you are a moron. I am tired of seeing "racism" and "racist" thrown around like censorship and intollerance from a "well meaning" liberal. Most people who accuse others of racism do not understand what that term means.... which is evidenced by how they pursue their attacks on their alleged racist aggressor. They themselves become the most hateful and bigotted monsters that they claim to be against. The idea of France being able to do what it wants is fine. They are sovereign... but to be LOGICAL you must follow that line of thinking to others as well. They CAN NOT require any other country or company in another company to make special ammends for them.
Furthermore, the whole sovereignty issue begs further analysis. The people of France are sovereign too, and if their goverment is trully a Democratic Republic like they claim it is, then that government is violating its boundries. Well intentioned grey haired government individuals are at the heart of every tyranny the world has known. The irony of the situation is not lost on those who have developed self awareness, and THINK with their brains without becoming overemotional.
Perhaps you should read your history books before you burn them!
Most absurd cyber-ruling of the millenum!
www.enthea.org
Right. In my state, it's illegal to do anything other than missionary position for the purpose of procreation. Which is why I think organizations like BR are so damn cool, providing the illusion of sexual freedom for one weekend a year. *sigh*
/."
"I'm not a bitch, I just play one on
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Yes, that's absolutely true.
But don't throw stones if you live in glass houses. Americans are guilty of genocide against the native Americans, a fair proportion of the country believes that the wrong side won a war that was fought (in part) to end slavery. (Do these people then still believe that perhaps a bit of slavery would be good now?) The English as a nation are responsible for the deaths of millions during the Irish potato famine, the effects of which are still felt hundreds of years later. The Belgiums let their King run amock in the Congo; chopping off hands isn't a new African tradition. In Africa a few years ago we allowed the UN to withdraw from the developing genocide in Rwanda - subsequently more than a million people were hacked to death. In Bosnia we promised the people of a UN safe haven that we would not let them come to harm, and then sat by while the haven was overrun, and then denied culpability when 16,000 (?) men and boys were lined up and machine gunned. During World War 2 almost all western countries denied that the holocaust was happening; some denied access to Jews.
And in each of these, and many many more cases, I am absolutely certain that good, ordinary people sat by and either were not goaded into action, or were too scared, or couldn't understand what was happening.
Lesson: Not all French collaborated. A few did. Others were too scared or confused to resist.
Jeff
Trying to force Yahoo! to comply to their local laws seems equally as dumb as the whole iCraveTV fiasco (as iCraveTV, based in Canada, were complying to the Canadian telecommunication laws by rebrodcasting television caught with an antenna). The US is free to set up a nationwide firewall, also.
Gack! I hate people !!
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
It's ...funny how this is marked 'interesting' and the one above it (titled 'french v. freedom') is marked 'insightful'.
Seriously, how can the french gov't have ANY say over a company located in another country? They can prevent them from doing business in france, (maybe revoke yahoo.fr?), but other than that...I personally hope yahoo just blows them off.
Is this really a problem that needs to be handled by the content provider?
For example, if I am the publisher of Penthouse magazine (which I'm not), and 7-11 decides that its patrons shouldn't be exposed to my content, it isn't my responsibility to police who my magazines are shipped to. It's the responsiblity of 7-11.
If the French government doesn't want its citizens to view Nazi items, then that's their choice (and hence, their problem). It's not something that should burden Yahoo.
Does this mean that if /. is banned in China, /. has to spend time and money making sure their content isn't displayed there? I think not.
Those who do not remember history are forced to repeat it.
Allow the selling of Nazi memerobilia(sp?), but make sure that it is sold with the correct connotations. "This Nazi dinnerware was from the personal collection of the man who mercilessly slaughtered over 7,000 jewish women and children. He was later executed for his war crimes." Does anyone see a problem with that?
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Whereas while permitting the visualization in France of these objects and the eventual participation of surfers of France to such an exposition/sale...
Now admittedly this is translated from French to English, but does anyone else see any problems here? Did Yahoo permit the visualization? My first guess would be any ISP offering service in France. However, how far along this path can we go? Maybe the manufacturer of the NIC/Modem should be held responsible, or the monitor, or even the PC. How about the phone company for allowing dial up?
And how about this...
Orders Yahoo France to warn all surfers visiting Yahoo.fr, and prior to making available the usage of the link which permits them to pursue their research on Yahoo.com
Now why is just Yahoo getting nailed here? Are thy the only site hosted in France that has a link to Yahoo.com? This gets back to the idea of if I link to a site with illegal MP3's, am I legally responsible? How many jumps do they make here? Yahoo is a pretty big site, but just linking to the front page without a warning is now illegal for yahoo.fr.
I'd be just a little bit upset about this ruling.
I am sick of seeing the whiny French government demand that everyone do the dirty work for them. Yahoo! has already blocked access to Nazi material through its French web site, what more is there to do? Anyone across the world could find Nazi memorabilia through another service, if not through Yahoo (kind of reminds me of that whole Napster debate). If Big Brother doesn't want its poor defenseless followers viewing Nazi material, then it should require that all French ISPs block Yahoo!
So I guess you're not a mime type?
:-)
Mike
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
<em>
Once France had spured democratic progress
in Europe and in the whole world. These times
are gone long ago. What remains is the belief
that the world has to follow their "lead".
</em>
<p>
Now wait a minute. What is this country you're referring to ?
<p>
Is that the one whose wicked electoral system has just blown up and whose media pundit are boasting they are actually giving a lesson of democracy to the world ?
<p>
First get to be able to pick something else than the son of a former president or senator that is not backed even by 50% of the voters as a leader, then turn back and see how wonderful were the regimes that the US have promoted in Chili, Salvador and God knows where.
This is just more of the arrogant French attitude that says that the world revolves around them.
This isn't the only case of this, either. The French forced all Airport networking products (from Apple Computer) to run on a totally different frequency than any of the other Airport products sold around the world. Why? Because it just so happens that the French military uses the same spectrum for their radio communications. They said that it could "interfere" with communications. Why the French military runs on this frequency is beyond me, as no one else in the world needs different Airport networking equipment, only the French. Just ludicrous.
I wouldn't be too surprised if a French judge decided to rule that the sky is green, or 1+1 equals 3, or war is peace. They can say it all they want, but that won't make it happen.
(end rant)
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
I don't remember the Japanese armies parading on Manhattan's 5th avenue while you're looking them from your window hearing your wife or your mother crying, slaughtering entire villages in Texas because they had heard there were resistants around and coudn't find them even after torturing most males, nor enforcing an important part of the American population to work for their own plants, nor stealing most of the wealth and agricultural production, nor putting a puppet government in Denver trying to implement a system copy/pasted from the Japanese one. All this during 4 years. I actually don't remember seeing the Japanese armies on the American soil...
In other words: for the French, the nazi era has nothing to do with other wars in which we've been involved.
Oh...I know -- let's ignore the past. That will make everything much better.
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
It's stuff like this that makes me happy that we have (although biased) a free press that although it may be unpopular, we can talk freely about things, and that in these days of electoral re-counts and court mandates, that we the people still have some say in what we can or cannot do.
We should take a moment and respectfully remember the rights that the framers of the U.S. Constitution put in place for us.
AF-Design, web development.
I fail to see the difference between this and the time ebay took off the ad for a bale of dope. Substance/item made illegal in some jurisdictions being advertised in a lot more....
...no, wait, that was for a US law, how silly of me.
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
I think the US needs to set a precedent by not requiring websites, or webhosts to censor at all. The internet should be under a worldwide jurisdiction and not required to obey every country's local laws. It is going to require far too much work, and too many lawsuits and be way to messed up to have different censoring for IP's in France, vs IP's in Amsterdam, vs IP's in the US.
If countries want to censor material they should do it on the client side be either making browsers or applications that dont allow certain websites/images or whatever OR simply make it illegal in your country. I am not suggesting that the US make it illegal to view certain webpages, but certainly we can't stop other countries (China).
Maybe this is too optomistic of a scenario, maybe we could have a little island in the middle of international waters that we load up with servers that way they arent restricted by any laws, we could put whatever we wanted on them.
This is just my suggestion, I am frustrated by the fact that france is even considering this, and if Yahoo complies then who knows what other countries will require.
I live in France, no I'm not French!! I use the Yahoo (US) page as my home page as a convenient way of getting international news and such like. Recently, I noticed that the ads showing up on that page were all in French (and incidentally mostly for HP). Now I do not believe that all Yahoo users are seeing French ads for HP so presumably Yahoo already filters location information and uses it to target ads. Since it works for them on a commercial basis I don't see how they can argue that it can't be done for legal reasons. Having said all that, I am as disgusted with the decision as are most folks here. Just some comments: It was a judicial decision, not a governmental one The suit was brought by a couple of jewish groups here in France who obvioulsy don't understand the error of their ways. The judgement was suspended for three months while a panel of experts (including Vin Cerf) gave their opinion as to the feasibility of the blocking. They were the ones to suggest this method AFAIK. As to how the French courts can attack a US compnay I can only imagine that the suit was brought against Yahoo France and that any punishment would be exacted against them.
Even though we went over this back when the FIRST french judge ruled this, I still have to wonder:
Why are they stopping with Yahoo? I'm sure that there are other sites, accessable from France, which show nazi parephanalia. Is it just that Yahoo is big, and they want to make a statement? Are they just that clueless? I have to admidt, that I consider it extremely unlikely that the entire rest of the internet will kindly decide to censor itself in favor of french sensibilities...
Oh well, if the french REALLY want to make sure that no innocent frenchman sees anything offensive on his computer, there IS a very easy solution:
Walk around france with a big pair of clippers, and snip every internet line running into or out of France. Seriously folks, if you don't want to see anything offensive beyond your control, don't leave home.
I agree with almost everything you've said, but that simple truth is that the best way to counter such ideologies as National Socialism is not to drive them underground, as this ruling attempts to do, but to listen, and thereby craft counterarguments to refute them.
Such ideologies can rarely withstand the close and careful scrutiny of the general populace. For further reading, I would recommend (it really ought to be required reading for everyone in a free society, but there you go) "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, a fellow way ahead of his time.
Mill makes the case that even offensive speech serves a purpose in a free society, if for no other reason than to provide a horrible couterexample. By driving such things underground, you guarantee that they continue to fester. Nazism is morally abhorrent, yes, but sunshine is very often the best disinfectant....
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
The french judge then went on to demand that yahoo build a device called the Maginot Firewall to filter out all offending users. The Firewall is very difficult to circumvent directly, but incredibly easy to circumvent via ISPs in Belgium and the Netherlands.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
More importantly the French want these auctions banned, yet history shows that the French were colaborators with the Nazis, something that they try to forget in a swirl of how magnificent the French Resistance were. Of course the Resistance was a tiny proportion of the population and only really started to become a force when the British started dropping SOE (Special Operatios Executive) agents into occupied territory to arm and train them. The French forget how culpable they were, its like a whole country has amnesia, and so people who were part of the Vichy government in France during the war went unpunished as did many ordinary colaborators. This judge in France just wants to keep anything that might remind them of their own guilt out of reach, its too uncomforatable for the French to face up to the truth. PS this is not supposed to be flaimbait, its supposed to be informative.
It would make a lot more sense for the French government to install censorware rather than make Yahoo! do it. They are putting an unfair burden on a corporation, to enforce morals that don't make sense (aren't we supposed to learn from the past?)
Also, shouldn't the French government also have to block out sites like Anonymizer? It would seen to me that if they didn't, they would try to hold Yahoo! liable for it. That wouldn't be fair to Yahoo! because it is would be impossible for Yahoo! to block every redirect surfer on the net.
The first link is to an article about about the Germans trying to get US isps to refuse to host any nazi material. France kind of seems reasonable in comparision.
http://www.cnn.com/ 200 0/TECH/computing/08/29/hate.sites.idg/
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/09/06/germany .neonazi.ap/
http://w ww. cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/08/12/germany.extremism/ index.html
That is some funny shit! Ha! Thanks!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
God bless the WTO...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Censorship is a bad thing, regardless of who is being censored. Yes, the atrocities that happened during WWII should not be allowed to happen again. But if we silence one group of people, who is to say that *you* won't be next?
Freedom of speech is not about being able to hear what you agree with, but allowing somebody to say what you don't agree with.
If you take a look at what the Nazi's did, you'll note that one of the first things they did was silence the jews via fear. As a result, they were a silent people, and a silent person might as well be a dead person...
Personally, I think Yahoo should pull their .fr site from French soil and set it up in the United States rather than let some foreign government tell it to censor itself.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Okay, If the French courts or government want to stop their citizens from accessing Yahoo, let them go at it. Let them censor their net access until the cows come home, but why must they insist that Yahoo do this?
If Yahoo France has a physical presense within the country, then I see no problem with rulings and regulations of them, but for a French court to order Yahoo Inc. to do ANYTHING is absurd. If they truly feel that something needs to be done, let the French Government order all French ISPs (which are probably government owned anyway) to block access to Yahoo and any other offensive content they wish.
With the global nature of the Internet, and with vastly different standards of legal / illegal speach, the only sane way to handle the debate of "illegal content" vs "legal content" is for each country to say what kind of content can be physically hosted within its borders, and what is legal/illegal for people within their borders to view.
Hopefully, Yahoo, Inc. will have the backbone to fight this stupidity... I mean, what if it is also against French law to say that the French Government is a bunch of IDIOTS?? Now, I am an American citizen and I have posted this statement to a site hosted in the US from a computer located within the US... Who here would argue that it would be just for a French Court to find me guilty of that crime. IDIOTS... ya hear that? IDIOTS!!!!. There, see you in 5 to 10.
+++++++++++++++++++++
The Digital Sorceress
We don't like your boring historical set pieces anyway.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Last time I was in Paris (around 3 years ago) all the major gay clubs had been closed by the French government. Not because they were gay (or so the government officials said) but because they just happened to be doing liquor inspections and drug raids on clubs, and all the clubs they decided to check out just happened to be gay. What an amazing coincidence!
Please!
...and become the supreme ruler, the first two things I'm going to do are:
1. Give France to Germany because it will really piss off the French.
2. Give Texas to Mexico just to see the looks on their faces.
-- Will program for bandwidth
We're not broadcasting Nazi icons on French TV.
And we are not going after French websites that make it possible for Americans to view auctions of pornographic items. We are not going after any websites that make it possible for Americans to view auctions of pornographic items. We are not going after any websites that distribute pornography. We are not (with localized exceptions) going after video rental places, bookstores, and newsstands that deliver pornography. We are not (with localized exceptions) going after clubs with nude entertainment.
When French "irrationality" about the Nazis is low enough that one can buy a book named "Nazis" full of pictures of Nazi memorabilia in a mainstream bookstore, your "irrationality" will be of the same minor quirk level as American "puritanism". In the meantime, I'll enjoy Madonna's "Sex".
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
They'll surrender any day now!!!!
--And sektor spoke and said unto the people. Hey, buttwipe hand me the cheezeos.
How can these be the same people who fashioned that proud lady in New York's harbor?
Have they learned nothing? The most powerful weapons the Nazi's possessed were not fashioned of steel and gunpowder, but crafted of words. Words that carefully rewrote history in the minds of their people. They so realized the power of this weapon that they quickly moved against those who offered words of truth or opposition.
The French are starting down a dangerous path that may leave their view of history distorted and risk having their children relive the tragedies and evils of the past.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
> your lambasting CmdrTaco for saying this stuff annoys him, is unwarranted
Why? He's trotting out the easy line that all censorship is bad and evil. It takes more thought to consider whether something is justifiable.
>France has full right to pass laws against its citizens from trafficking in Hate symbols. But in trying to enforce them on a global scale, France has fallen into a myopic point-of-view that by tweaking a parameter, its citizens will magically be spared the hate symbols on the internet.
Are you saying that countries have no right to control the use of internet in their country? That because you have had the de facto right to post illegal or defamatory material on the internet one should always have that right?
The internet *needs* to be controlled - and just because you've [speaking in the generic - no malfeasance is imputed on you] been able to steal software, to copy mp3s and to distribute illegal material, and, understandably you enjoy this freedom, that's no reason why this should continue.
No one would suggest that newspapers should have the right to publish child pornography; many would not disagree with the restriction of the iconography of a regime associated with the slaughter of millions; and therefore the internet must not be any different - to suggest otherwise would mean the disintegration of the rule of law.
Free Anne Tomlinson!!
Instead of pointing fingers as to "who killed who" maybe just being rational and recognizing the problem as just that... a problem all around is the first step in combating it. The best way to combat ignorance and fear is with education and reason. True, many prefer not to listen, but for every 9 people that censor you (censorship is so hypocritically applied) you reach 1 person who is enlightened. Like in America with the never ending story that is the presidential election, you see many people taking sides in name, but not in substance. They will claim to have EVERYONE's best interest in mind, yet only want to hear who they approve as being worthy of being heard. I don't like what the US has done on many occasions, just as I don't like what other countries have done. I will not play favorites and defend the "home team" and change my views just because "my country" did those things. Perhaps instead of making excuses, perhaps we could make solutions. In this case it becomes clear that yahoo really can not do anything to censor those products unless they instigate such a large task force of people (or idiotic filtering software) that many other decent things would end up being censored. If your view of nazi trinkets is that it implies sympathy towards Nazism, then choose not to support it. If you censor it from others, you cover up the deeper problem that is apparent in your area/country. Not to mention, that someone else will later find something else offensive that you do not, and then you will be restricted. THAT is why it is bad. To accuse those who are against censoring this of Nazism, is the same as accusing people against racist government policies (i.e. affirmative action) of being racist.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
French judge has upheld an earlier ruling ordering Yahoo! to ban French users from buying Nazi memorabilia from its auction site. Even though the content is not accessible from www.yahoo.fr/ the ruling insists that even "the visualization in France of these objects" on the www.yahoo.com auction site constitutes a breach of French law and orders Yahoo to bar all French IPs from accessing it despite Yahoo's assertions that this would not guarantee that nobody in France would be able to see it.
Okay. If *anyone* here can sew together a Nazi uniform for a GI Joe action figure or something, you *need* to do it, and you *need* to put it up on Yahoo Auctions.
I dunno. In France, do the judges wear silly wigs like the British? There must be some sort of attire that can be comfortably merged with a red swastika armband as a freedom of speech protest.
Damned socialists.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This is, alas, the usual response to this sort of cruft. Don't go after the problem, go after someone/something else...
.... the french courts then went on to rule that other all other countries should stop sending their pollution across French borders. Any air that is scheduled to pass over french territory should have all contaminants removed from it before it gets there, and cleansing plants should be set up on the borders of waterways ....
Mythological Beast
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I like, and agree with most of what you say Commander, but call me a traitor, I think the french found having their country and citizens taken over by the Nazi's a bit annoying too.
Of course they are taking it a bit far this time...
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
"Let them use Minitel."
--
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Note that the French court was not banning the Yahoo pages in question for all internet users, just French users. This is perfectly within the jurisdiction of national courts; in this sense Internet is not any more special than other media, such as the TV, radio, or newspapers. There would be no big outcry if French courts would forbid the New York Times, for instance, from publishing such material in France -- even though the New York Times is based in the US (for New Yorkers: that includes the area outside city limits).
I think the problem people have with the ruling (apart from the usual reflexive furriner-bashing in any US-vs-Europe story), is that it is a lot easier for a newspaper to enforce a publishing ban in a given country ( just don't , to quote Nike), than it is for a dot com company, given the technical structure of the internet.
It is not a question about the evil of the items sold, they, and the people who buys them, are indeed evil. But that is not the question. The question is whetever it is practical and ethical, to, in order to stop this auctions, have the american website ban french IPs, or have staff enought to censor the auctions. It will probably NOT decrease the number of nazi-items sold - nazis are not stup, just evil, they'l find a way around, while normal french sitizens who wants to buy other things from the US, will not be able to do so through the american website.
This is a question whetever the common carrier, or the individuals using it, are accountable for illegal acts performed by the individuals.
I opt for the individuals.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Thats the 20,000franc fine in US Dollars. I don't know about france but in the US disputes of that magnitude are usually settled in small claims court without a lawyer because legal fees almost would certainly exceed the amount of the claim.
If Yahoo cared enough about the matter to go to court over (instead of settling) I can't see how the threat of any judgement less than say $10M is going to change their actions.
No, I don't think so. It is my opinion that the ruling in question has no basis in any sane reality. For one thing, it is technically impractical (as far as I know) for a web site to deny itself to certain countries. Two (as has been said so many times) nobody owns the Net, so this kind of unilateral action is at best legally dubious. Never mind that preventing people from accessing a site just because of where they are could well be grounds for a discrimination suit... and we all know that those are no fun.
On a larger issue, this knee-jerk reaction to Nazism that seems so endemic in Europe is hardly constructive... more like sticking one's head in the sand rather than facing history head-on and coping. Oh, and did I forget that you can't on the one hand claim democracy while on the other suppressing ideas you don't like?
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
Does anyone remember, "The treacherous French! Who crippled our once-great economy and wrecked our telephone system!" from the movie 'Death Race 2000'...
a ce.html
http://www.stomptokyo.com/badmoviereport/deathr
Sorry. I just had to get get that in here, for some reason...
Likewise, since Yahoo cannot prevent packets leaving its website from going into France, they are not responsible. And since when does France have jurisdiction over a website hosted in another country? (Though they can (and presumably do) hold Yahoo France hostage against Yahoo US's good behavior, of course.)
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
I was going to say the same thing, but you were much more eloquent than I would have been, plust you speek with more authority because your family expierenced firsthand many of the horrors of war. READ HISTORY OR SUFFER HISTORY. A sad thing about your comment is that those who either don't know history or have not 'learned the hard way' cannot realize the value of history. Hopefully, they will listen to you.
~~Apathy alert: Approaching the Point of No Concearn
I wonder why the hell is Yahoo selling such crap
They aren't... They are a third party company that simply lists auctions. They can choose to ban it I guess, but they aren't illegal in the home country (US).
I honestly think it's absurd that a judge thinks that s/he has jurisdiction over sites where the servers aren't in their jurisdicion, whether the judge is French, German, Japanese or a New Yorker. Can anyone say arrogance? I believe I can. Arrogance from anyone is arrogance, from myself or others, I don't care the reasons, nationalities or motivations, the truth still is.
Your points on the US are right, but I also believe that ruling against symbolic imagery like this is equally absurd. To me, either way people are running from reality.
In the US, we are "running away" from the fact that some people are just crude, or running away from what the human body really is. In France, the people that support this ruling are running away from the truth what happened in history. I do not believe owning some small amount of Nazi memorabilia implies that one is evil. The swastika itself isn't evil, Germany simply stole it and perverted it. The swastika and its mirror image has religious meanings for the indiginous people of the Americas, as well as to most Asian cultures. Why not ban images of those as well?
I had a teacher that was in the German army in WWII. He hated the war. He hated the Nazis, didn't want to fight the war, but he keeps some historical props around for his educational classes.
BTW, does any country have such a ban on symbols of the old USSR? IMO the Communists (big C) of the USSR has done more against humanity than Germany ever did simply because they lasted much longer to perpetrate such things. I think China is high on that list as well, but in those cases they for the most part kept all that internally.
In short I am against banning something simply because someone is offended by it. Covering up something doesn't negate its existence.
Didn't Germany want Compuserve to ban some stuff several years ago? My memory's a bit foggy...
Personally, I'd say the proper response by Yahoo is to request that the court provide them with a definition of 'French IP address' that the court will accept ( ie. if an IP address fails to meet it, it is deemed not an French IP address for purposes of obeying the court's order ). Barring that, apply the Compuserve solution: request that the French backbone providers block all traffic to and from all of eBay's servers so that nobody served by or through a French provider could access any eBay content. Then let the French judge and government deal with the backlash.
Sorry, I meant "American ground", not "American soil".
This position is anathema to the traditional american concept of free speech.
My country has extensive hate crime legislation that is, in my opinion, overbroad. Not because I disagree with the concept of hate crimes as harassment, but because such legislation is often used in cases like this one, where the alleged hate crime is only tangentially related to the feelings of anyone involved.
How is the viewing of information about goods once owned by the nazis a hate crime? How is buying such an item a hate crime? (Obviously selling it or listing it can't be a hate crime, because the perpetrator would be outside of France's jurisdiction).
Was the movie American Beauty banned in France?
NB: This is about Yahoo, not ebay. Read the damned(heh) article.
The concept of applying borders to a massively globalized network is next to impossible at this point, however we will continue to see these sorts of demands from various countries as the internet becomes more pervasive outside the U.S.
Unless every government in the world wakes up and starts thinking like us soon, one of two things is going to have to happen:
1) Very accurate seographic source/destination verification will either become commonplace, or
2) National firewalls, with the support of a country's tier 1 ISPs.
Obviously neither one of these is a very attractive option, nor would either be very efficient, effective, or easy to do.
The next issue we run in to are services such as zero knowledge, open proxies, or any open multi-point browsing method that would circumvent one of the above. Would a sufficiently worried government outlaw the use of these services? They obviously can't regulate their usage, because, well, that's the point of anonymous browsing services.
Hmmph, kinda makes me gald to be living in the US - even if we can't elect a president (ever wonder if we'd run better without one?)...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Please present me with evidence that Europe has a higher fascism number than other parts of the world, please. And don't start talking about some of the political parties that have this kind of attitude, since these are the kid of parties that yell a lot, get elected by the people that are sick of the current establishment after which they have a certain amount of time to screw up while shouting their nonsense, before they end up in oblivion permanently. Oh, by the way, where you from any way?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Do the French have a problem with this as well? Or have they just not gotten around to issuing an order against EBay as well?!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
"The French are an annoying race." -- Winston Churchill
"The wogs begin at Calais." -- Lord Nelson
"Belgium is a country invented by the English to annoy the French." -- Charles De Gaulle
"Screw 'em." -- Andrew Jackson
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
...hearing that Yahoo! was prepared to fight "any legal attack issued" by the French courts, France immediately surrendered to Yahoo! and invited shareholders to establish a secondary government in Vichy.
I've got it! It's all so simple!
We're going about this ALL wrong!
We simply need to have yahoo put a big button up on it's site to get in, asking: "Are you french?" (Yes/No). If they answer No, then everything is fine. If they answer yes, then it takes them to pokemon.com or something.
But wait, it gets better.
Under the DMCA, they could claim that this is an access control measure! And since american corperations have already demonstrated their willingness and ability to go after people in foreign countries, any evil French 1337 h4x0rz who got around the protection and offended themselves by accident could be hanged by the Yahoo mafia, as an example to others!
And if anyone in france complained, we could just say something witty like "if you expect us to adhere to your ridiculous laws, then you have to adhere to ours. And ours are riduclouser."
That's it, rather than fight all these annoying, yet legally powerful examples of absurdity in action, we should just get them to fight each other! I imagine that it wouldn't take more than a few hangings for french judges to get the point...
If the French government thought this one through, they could earn a tremendous amount from the "taxation" of speech on the Internet. Their fines aren't nearly high enough to dissuade global media companies from doing whatever they want.
Witness the actual fines levied against Yahoo! (From Juriscom.net):
Condemns Yahoo! Inc. to pay to LICRA the amount of 10,000 Francs on the basis of article 700 of the New \code of Civil Procedure;
Condemns Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo France to pay to UEJF an amount of 10,000 Francs on the basis of article 700 of the New Code of Civil Procedure;
Declares that no further measures are appropriate at this juncture;
Awards the costs of LICRA's action to be borne by Yahoo! Inc. and those of the UEJF by Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo France.
Yahoo! should chalk this up as a "cost of doing business" and keep doing whatever it is they've been doing.
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
"Feu!!!"
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooo...."
"Zat will teach those stupide américains some manneurs!"
* Mad Cow (disease)
---
Inanimate Carbon Rod thanks you for your support. See you in 2004!
... if all a French court could do was to order FRENCH internet access providers to lock out certain sites ...
Wow, that post looks awfully familiar.
:)
I wonder where I've seen it before.
Give me a minute... I know this one...
Also, I feel it is my duty to note that LittleNicky is an impostor: the real Anne Marie has UID #239347.
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Somalia ? The 3rd world country where US forces had a very bad time in front of poorly armed and badly structured guerilleros ?
BTW, California already has the majority of its population speaking spanish, but there is still no n-tilda or diacritics on keyboards.
The USA had (and still has) a big advantage raised by a previous post -- a large land mass bounded on the east and west by wide oceans, and on the north and south by (this century anyway) militarily weak, somewhat tolerant neighboring nations.
That being said, the USA has shown a remarkable ability to forgive its enemies even after learning of the atrocities they committed against US military people, as well as civilians found to be within their midst. The Japanese probably enjoy a more respected position in the world due to losing WW2 compared to if they'd won it. Similary, the Germans, and now the Vietnamese, don't find their contemporary or historical literature strictly forbidden on US soil to anywhere near the degree the French reject Nazi memorabilia.
(If only the US government was as willing to unilaterally disarm against its own populace as against its own sworn enemies abroad, but that's another topic.)
In a sense, the USA has a strong record of implementing the cultural equivalent of "embrace and extend", and with a high degree of success -- making friends out of enemies in situations where, historically, that sort of thing has been unthinkable (such as in the Middle East, Northern Ireland...see a pattern there?).
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
The irony is that the only way he would know of those tragedies (tanks in street, etc.) is by having the resources to study history.
If Nazi tanks are cruising down Paris, I would say that the Nazi's account for at least 50% of that history lesson.
Don't ignore the past, that's very dangerous!
Your missing the point
The french have always tried to impose their view of the world onto everyone else. In this they are very like the US, double standards and an inability to empathise with the thoughts of others.
They believe that by censoring things they can censor ideas. You and I know this has almost exactly the opposite effect, but its less troubling to the french national mindset than admitting to their own citizens thoughts and crimes during the war. The Nazi's and their friends weren't 'the other' they were those still alive today. Much of Europe can't stand up and face what they themselves did, censoring trinkets is more acceptable.
Yahoo are a business, they will do what is required to continue to trade in France - however abhorant that is to notions of free speech.
The parallels shouldn't be surprising. Those who attempt to forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
The net will always be a haven where this information will be available. If you don't like it don't surf it out. If you feel so passionately about it then hunt it down and come to the realization that you will only succeed in making it move somewhere else. It won't go away. (Sad but True) Yeah, the people who are into the nazi stuff are ignorant or possibly hate mongers. I can't say any different about those who have gone to the extremes that others have gone to to hunt them down or remove any information of thier existense from history. Will we always be in a situation where one side is more correct for thier vendetta than the other? Does the eradication of this memorabilia change what happenned? No. So as all of these items being of historical value should be gone? No. Hundreds of years from now they will only be of more value whether its Nazi SS pins, letters, Enigma machines, Tattoo skin lamps or the horrific daugerotypes of the genocide occuring at Aushwitz. Then what will France really have accomplished by censoring them from your fellow citizens? Nothing. Oooo some are offended that this is for sale... Stopping thier sale will not change history. Eradication of information/items will not do that either. If anything by doing so you are setting yourselves up for it to happen all over again.Before you flame me. I am not a Nazi sympathiser or anything like that. I don't hate the french either. I know history will always be written by the 'victors'. It has happenned that way before and will only continue to be that way. Pick up any history book and see for yourself. Personally, I think it should be easy enough for Yahoo to filter out IP ranges from France in some way so that the 'objectionable' material will not display. That would/should be the end of the story. Maybe if france continues to be such a pain in the ass then it will censor itself from the internet and we will not miss it.As for the US being hypocritical...well... I may agree with you on some (not all) of your points but please be sure to point that fine microscope of observation back at yourself and all the wonderful hypocritical things France has done before you scream hypocrit at us. The freedoms we enjoy versus the 'freedoms' you have in your socialist regime are wonderful things that you will never be able to fully appreciate.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Well not quite. What I think is ridiculous about the USA is that it's illegal for an 18-20 year old to drink alcohol, but they can be drafted to die for their country.
IMHO, if you're old enough to die for your country (in actual fact, be forced to die for your country by being drafted as cannonfodder - witness the destruction of a significant number of American teenagers in Vietnam), you're old enough to drink beer.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
While it's rediculous for the French court to try to regulate what Yahoo! does on it's .com site -- a point which I imagine everyone at Yahoo! agrees with -- Yahoo! is a corporation, and the role of a business is to make money, and not philosophical points.
The fact is, Yahoo! employs people on the ground in France, and brazenly dismissing the ruling of the court could jeopordize Yahoo's ability to conduct business in that country. encheres.yahoo.fr, after all, is partly supported by french companies buying advertising, and they, too, might not want to associate with such a company.
While I'd love to see Yahoo! "do the right thing" by not doing anything at all, My money says they will deploy a simple IP filtering screen and worry about adding new features and trying to beat eBay, rather than take a stance.
Blatant Advertisement: If YOU want to work for a company committed to TAKING STANCES, check out www.agoby.com. I started it to solve problems similar in nature to this...
--tom
It's the France government that will then get all the bitching from the folks that can no longer get their emails.
AC comments get piped to
Better? I don't mean to sound derisive or insulting (apologies, it just comes naturally), but why do you keep on bashing everybody who disagrees with this law as misofrancic (is that a word? if not, it should be), then quietly insert your own disagreement with it?
This has nothing to do with hating the French or any nationality. It's about the effects of a really stupid law passed under a very dangerous premise. This poppycock about the American hang-up with sexual issues is rather irrelevant, don't you think?
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
This seems to be a rather alarming trend between this, the DMCA, UCITA, DeCSS, etc. developing of governments (US being the worst) enacting laws about the internet that are totally and wholly unenforcable. Let me say that again incase anyone missed it. DeCSS cannot be stopped no matter how many lawyers you throw at it, Information cannot be contained in such a connected world. It doesn't matter whether it's "right" or "wrong" or "legal" or "illegal". If it cannot be enforced (Can you say drug war, kiddies?), then making a law is wasted effort. I mean, hell! Don't the people behind SDMI have a single consultant among them who is rational enough to realize that if you can play music, you can copy it.
JoshuaTerradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Well this is the first time I've heard of a dot com site being visible only in the US. yahoo.fr and yahoo.com are domain names and have nothing to do with location. The machines hosting the dot com and the dot fr sites could be sitting in Timbuktu for all it matters. What matters is that the dot com site is visible in France and the French authorities say that it is Yahoo's responsibility to make sure it isn't. The site name itself means squat. Whether this is reasonable is another matter; I don't think so personally, but the judge has ruled otherwise.
If I were Yahoo Inc. I would refuse to obey. If the issue was pressed, just close up shop in France. If they don't want to lose the advertising revenue, setup something like fr.yahoo.com as opposed to yahoo.fr. Then see how far the Gov't of France can go with it.
The name is irrelevant. fr.yahoo.com, yahoo.org, yahoo.co.uk -- you name it, it doesn't matter. The ruling is irrelevant as far as domain names go, because -- get this -- a domain is not the same thing as a country. Re-registering your site to another domain name is not the same thing as crossing state lines. Registering a site to a dot br domain, for instance, does not make a US company Brazilian all of a sudden -- it remains USan, and subject to US law. The main jurisdictional problem is that Yahoo is a US company, and thus subject to US law, not French law -- unless they wish to do business in France. Domain names have nothing to do with it. This leaves Yahoo with two choices: do nothing, and hope the trouble of dragging this through to the WTO is too bothersome for the French; or comply;
Yahoo has rules regarding what can be auctionned. The judge is just asking Yahoo to enforce its own rules... "... you may not list or sell under any circumstances... any item that is illegal to sell under any applicable law..."
- France:
Way to go for standing up for what you belive in. Be prepared to implement blocking on all international telecom connections that you care about, because this might not work.
- Yahoo:
Yes, you're outside their jurisdiction. Ignore the order, because it is invalid. You might want to shut down yahoo.fr so that they lose their leverage, or at least move it to some other country and get another domain name.
The french political system is abysmally crooked. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that AOL France had tipped the scale with a golden franc in the right place... I mean, AOL really can control who can go where and who can't. But don't be disappointed about not finding the link, the french are also very good about keeping information from the public eye. Oh, and my folks (I was born in France) did suffer during the war, but thanks to American GIs, I didn't have to learn German in school, and I am immensely grateful for that. On another note, this whole polemic on the inherent incapability of countries to regulate content (information) on the internet is simply wonderful. It outlines the need to reform what people consider to be "countries".
"Piter, too, is dead."
What if America passed a law outlawing the French language? Would all French servers suddenly have to stop serving to the US? Would the ones that didn't imediatly install packet-filtering software be fined? Would they pay the fines?
What if some Americans used a proxy or other method to access those french-language sites? Would the sites be again elligible for fines?(or worse?)
-Andy
This AC is either an ignorant buffoon or an agent provacateur. As an American myself, I assure you that there are some of us who are willing to discuss these issues with courtesy and respect toward the French people. Our opinions may differ somewhat, but I assure you that this AC doesn't speak for us.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
How old are you, dude? Unless you're over 55, chances are you don't remember tanks breaking into your nursery or parading down Paris streets either. All you have to go on is the stories of parents and historians. Don't personalize a war in which you took no part.
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
On the other. . .
Not only is the French law stupid and unenforcable, ( when such laws exist the people ALWAYS simply create a black market following free trade principles, they did this even in the USSR), BUT. . .
I am a Jew. Much of my family died in WWII. I know people with tattoos. None in my family though, my family wasn't quite so lucky. My family was not only killed, but their villages were destroyed and * all records that they had even existed were exunged from maps and public records.* I myself only exist because a few members had managed to emigrate between the wars. This was not easy for them, they were slaves. They were white, European, living in the 20th century, and slaves. They went from being slaves of the Czar to being slaves of the politburo.
All of this is just to lay some background for my opinion on the matter at hand.
The ONLY way to fight the rise facism and nazism in the future is to remember.
* Those who forget the past are condemed to repeat it.*
This quote is attributed to George Santayan, but dear George only made a memerable phrase of a sentiment that goes back in the written record at LEAST as far as Sun Tzu, and Napoleon once spoke almost the exact same words.
Here's what everyone who is concerned about such matters SHOULD do. Buy a dagger. One with SS prominantly displayed on the hilt. Pay whatever you have to get it and treasure it.
Now, take that dagger and stab it as hard as you can into your desktop, or your mantlepiece or perhaps your doorframe, someplace where you have to see it many times a day.
Everytime you look at it, stop. . . and make the mental climb up to the top of Masada and repeat to yourself:
"Never again, never again, never again."
THAT is the way to deal with the legacy of Nazism.
Hide your head in the historical sand and someday you'll wake up to find a bayonet stuck in your butt because you never saw it coming.
Um...DUH. Since when was yahoo.com in France?
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Isn't this obvious to the french?
They can't fix it. But an impromptu petition like this is the best way to get the fuss into the news and enact some probable change.
...If I lived in a country stupid enough to censor such things, I would most definatly use: http://www.anonymizer.com/.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
...just shut down www.yahoo.fr/ and tell em to piss off. It's a US company, and as long as no one from the company ever travels to France, tell those damn frogs to piss off cause they can't enforce shit. PS- Q:Why are the streets of Paris lined with trees? A:So the Germans can march in the shade!!!!!
Spazdot-1 in 10 insightfull articles, and 1 in 10,000 insightfull comments ain't bad.
Nah, I think this is more a case of the big mommy type government trying to protect her poor innocent children (er citizens) from seeing that naughty stuff. It's been long enough ago that the current government probably doesn't feel guilty over that period of time (if they ever did) and it's much more probably that some moron decided that it would be best to 'protect' people from knowing about the naughty things in history.
This goes along with the principle that it's much better to never teach anyone about sex, at all, and avoid allowing any nudity, or sexually explicit materials (like the films we were forced to sit through in school) to be viewed, and not allowing prono in your country (or trying to restrict it) and then wondering why teen pregnancy is totally out of control. Half of it is the fact that some teens just don't know what's going to happen when they stick that little thingy into the other little thingy, and the other half is that the only way they find out anything about sex is to get together with someone of the opposite sex and go to town. The same sort of thing happens when you restrict access to materials like historical artifacts from the Nazis. If they can 'protect' you from hearing about it, you won't know it happened. Great, let's wipe that memory from humanities collective mind, that way we can garauntee that it will happen again!
Typically simple minded government thought. If you can't see it, you can't do it. Stupid.
You think your big time?
You think your big time?
I'll kick your ass so hard you'll be unbuttoning your neck button to piss!
What the french government is doing is not wrong and further - not a threat to free speech. Hate crime is the most discusting form of 'freedom-rape'. Remember that nobody has the right to say whatever they want - only to feel whatever they want and express it. This is the ultimate context of our way of life. That means that we must never hold each other accountable for how we feel - but must demand accountability for how we make others feel. If we don't, our freedom was never there to begin with. Ebay should be ashamed of themselves - karma points be damned.
"Hey, where am I going -- and why am I in this handbasket!?"
...and then when they came for me there was nobody left but the French.
People at Yahoo are not consistent with themselves or worse they are hypocrites.
The have been condemned for incentive to racial hatred
On one hand you can read in their terms of Service : You agree to not use the Service to : a. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
And on the other hand in what am I not allowed to sell you can find a whole list of stuff that is banned from listing or selling : Alcoholic beverage, Cigarettes, Used Underwear ...
Tell me what is worse selling used underwear or books like Mein Kampf or the Protocol of the Sages of Scion !?
The funniest part is that they don't accept the French ruling and jurisdiction but that you can read in What I am allowed to sell, that it is forbidden to sell Any item that is illegal to sell under any applicable law, statute, ordinance or regulation
Yahoo, get your act straight before going to court !
How very appropriate.