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U.S. Judge To Hear Yahoo! Web-Blocking Case
BlueTurnip writes: "In this story, CNN reports that a U.S. federal judge has agreed to hear a case involving foreign courts to rule against U.S. companies doing business in the U.S. A while back, a French court ruled that Yahoo! must remove Nazi-related materials from its online auction sites. Yahoo! removed the items from its French web site, but left the items available on its U.S. site. A French judge ruled that wasn't good enough, and Yahoo! was forced to remove the offending materials from its American site as well. Now, a U.S. federal judge has agreed to hear the case and decide on foreign jurisdiction over U.S. companies." Yahoo! already decided to block many types of auctions, but at issue is here is who gets to decide what a web site may carry.
yah, nazi's suck. Unfortunately, they are a part of history, and history is something you cannot sweep under a rug. As objectionable as this content is, it is historic.
Yahoo should not be forced to remove their content on American soil. Period. If this was to go through, and be ruled that this is a perfectly legit thing for other countries to force on us, then pretty soon, we will be answering to more of this behavior. The free speech of the United States WILL be scrutinized (such as in the parody cases). It's a pretty low blow to use something as Nazi memorabilla against us. We are witnessing the end of the "freedom" the internet provides. Sure it may take some years, but its coming.
(A site in the US, for example, could tunnel onto a French network, and act as if a French server. In such a case, does US or French law apply? After all, although it's physically in the US, it's logically in France.)
Because of this one fact, it might not be provable beyond "reasonable doubt" that server X is in one nation or another. In future trials, all a defendent would have to do is cast doubt on which country the server was in, and the prosecution's case would be dead in the water.
Whilst I doubt that politicians are astute enough to see that kind of problem, it certainly implies that some kind of International treaty on Internet law enforcement is essential, if the courts are to have any meaning at all.
In this case, the banned items are banned in France. Since the French can access a US site as easily as a French site, the French courts seem to have felt that simply moving the connections overseas was not satisfactory. To be honest, I can certainly see their point. They ARE, at least, acknowledging that the Internet extends outside of national borders.
However, I also have to say I sympathise with Yahoo!. They're doing their best to provide a service, in an increasingly complicated environment. Unless they want to walk on egg-shells, for the rest of their existance, they have to do something to sort this mess out.
This is going to be a nasty one for the US, too. Remember, a certain GWB is over in Europe, right now, up to his armpits in condemnation. (Steve Bell's cartoon in The Guardian pretty much sums up European feelings, when he makes GWB out to be some cross between Yoda, a Redneck and an idiot.)
If the US legal system is -seen- to be anti-EU, right now, GWB is going to be in BIG trouble. France is a dominant player in Europe, and if they feel the US is dictating what each country can do or decide, you can wave bye-bye to any co-operation with the ABM system GWB is pushing.
(At first, that doesn't sound too bad. The US is big enough, and tough enough, to go it alone. On the other hand, Europe isn't so small that you can kick it around. Don't underestimate them, just because they're 4,000 or so miles away. They can be nasty, too.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Imagine some banana republic sets up a data haven and says, kiddie porn isn't illegal in Gamboonia. The question is, can the US (and decent people everywhere) shut the site down? Should we be able to?
No. Although I think kiddie porn has no place ANYWHERE, to protect the nature of the web we shouldn't be able to shut it down. It's not a matter of what I think about the content, but that if something's legal in the country of origin, then that content should be able to be published. Should China be able to sue and shut down US websites that discuss anti-communism and freedom of religion? No. They shouldn't be able to. Instead they block that content to the best of their ability. That's the way it should be. Leave it to those who disagree with something to block it.
On this specific matter though, yahoo does operate in France. The French can kick yahoo out of their country, or try their best to prohibit their citizens from accessing US servers. Yahoo.fr should be governed by French law, but that's the only place French law should have a say on what the company does.
Jeremy Fogel presided over my divorce proceedings six years ago. My case was nearly last on the docket and I was able to watch him run his courtroom for half a day (unfortunately @ $200/hr). Some very ugly and bitter domestic situations were presented to him and I was fascinated at both the objectivity and the compassion he showed in dealing with each. I was worried that by the time my case came up (ultimately settled) he would be burnt out and not at the top of his game. I was relieved and quite impressed, however, with how he was able to treat each case as if the two sides and himself were the only people present and it was the first case of the day.
Six years later, my new wife was granted U.S. citizenship. By random chance, Jeremy Fogel, now a federal judge, presided over the swearing in ceremony for her and 1100 other people from 187 different countries. It was quite funny to look around the visitors gallery and see how many men in the audience registered a shock of recognition.
His customary opening speech talked to the rights and responsibilities these new citizens were assuming. For someone as bitterly cynical about the U.S political process as I am, I was surprised to find myself feeling the long dormant stirrings of patriotism in response to his utterly sincere and thoughtful comments about the role of individuals to effect change. He even acknowleged the abuses of corporate power and lobbyists yet was still able to demonstrate how in the end it was up to "us" to make a difference.
Political granstanding? A calculated performance to show off his oratory skills in a public forum? A voice of calm reason and deliberation in a world where thoughtless knee-jerk jingoism is the norm? I don't know which, but I left there knowing that the broad brushstrokes I normally use to paint U.S. federal government "bureaucrats" were just intellectual laziness and Jeremy Fogel was an existence proof to the contrary.
Now as I read this story about Yahoo! and the French courts, his name pops out at me, and once again some aspect of my life has intersected with this judge. I don't know his personal politics and I've never bothered to review his judicial record, but somehow I know that this hearing has at least some chance of justice being served.
Babies are cute because they have to be.
This is probably the most significant online-freedom case, ever. Sure, it's about a company selling Nazi crap, not some hackers trying to [insert DeCSS/reverse engineering/etc here], but don't let that fool you.
What this case is really about is this: when publishing content online, do you have to comply with your own country's laws, or every country's laws? This ties in with RMS's recent Harm from the Hague piece that Slashdot ran. If you think the DMCA is bad, just wait until you have to comply with 50 different versions of it.
I know the geek answer--cyberspace is global, nobody can regulate the internet, information wants to be free, etc., but I don't think the rest of the world is ready for that answer. They're not willing to take the plunge into some sort of cyber-anarchy (damn, I hate the word "cyber"), and there's no chance in hell everyone will agree on a uniform set of laws (god help us if they do). I don't have an easy solution. I understand the reasons for IP laws (promoting innovation), and I can also see how broken they've become, but I don't see a magical fix. I don't know how jurisdiction conflicts should be resolved over the internet. The same treaty that would allow the US to go after child porn in Amsterdam would allow the Taliban in Afghanistan to censor half the non-porn sites in the US.
One more thing--if you think things are messy now, with the internet and computers, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Biotech is going to shake things up even more, and nanotech is going to make or break the human race... We have to get our act together before it's too late.
Since the mainstream US media outlets don't seem to cover this story very well, its time to add a few facts to the discussion.
:-)
Yahoo has a commercial presence in France, both a web site (yahoo.fr), and a sales and marketing group based in Paris. This makes them liable to French law.
The French court heard that Yahoo was telling customers they could target banner ads based on IP address blocks, serving up French banners to French surfers, as well as target specific markets based on keywords.
The court ordered Yahoo to place a disclaimer on auctions when the IP block matched a French IP address, and the auction contained certain words mostly associated with nazi memorabilia. By placing a warning on the web page telling the potential bidder that such sales were against French law, Yahoo would have absolved itself of any further legal implications of such an auction. If a French citizen continues to bid/buy nazi goods, then the criminal act is being performed by an informed citizen who has chosen to bid even after being reminded of the law, not by Yahoo.
Yahoo lied to the court, claiming it was technically impossible to add a disclaimer based on IP block and keywords, despite a number of witnesses telling the court that was exactly how banner advertising works. The court didn't even require 100% accuracy, merely a good effort to inform French citizens who might happen across such an auction.
Now Yahoo has been ordered to cease all commercial activity in France, although I believe they are still operating in defiance of the court order. And they hope that by appealing to a US court they can ignore other countries laws.
The corollary to this is a French business operating in the US, but trying to claim they don't have to obey US law. If the court rules that a foreign based business doesn't have to obey the laws in other countries, could the US become a major dumping ground for toxic wastes? Oh, wait, with Bush in the whitehouse, the US will become the favorite toxic waste dump for the world
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
ust wait until Joe Blow dicovers that his favorite US pr0n site has been shut down on authority of Saudi Arabian decency laws.
The second something like that happens it's easy to force them to decide if they really want to allow it to happen. Just find some people from another country where discussion of Christianity is illegal, and try to have ALL Christian web sites shut down on the basis of the other country's laws.
Should take all of about 5 seconds for the gov't to decide that we're not going to allow other countries to dictate what can be posted on the internet in the US.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
That was a bold ruling. We should be following in that noble tradition, following our heritage, and leading the way in free speech. I wrote once before, in another forum, and I still believe:
Of course, I fully expect the court to rule in Yahoo's favor. But it is up to us to lead the way in cases like this, and others, to show that the best antitode to Free Speech is, in fact, more Free Speech.
Do they ban only Nazi related items, or anything with a swastika on it? As you may know, the swastika was an ancient symbol with positive connotations before the 3rd reich.
There are people trying to rehabilitate the swastika as a symbol.
Here we are over 50 years after the war, and the swastika is still taboo. With France's action to stifle commerce in the US, will this help rehabilitate the swastika? Will a symbol of oppression be turned into a symbol of freedom?
Maybe, maybe not. People still have a hard time separating the symbol from nazism. Case in point: A neighborhood "family" restaurant near where I live has old WWII and WWI posters on the walls (mostly WWI). One of the US WWI posters actually had a small swastika on it (about half an inch accross, so you almost had to look for it). I would occasionaly point this out when eating there and tell people that the swastika was not always bad. Some people are still surprised to hear that.
Well, after a few years, somebody magic-markered over it, which was OK because they only magic-markered the plastic cover over the poster, not the actual poster. Later, the poster was removed. It was a World War I poster. Obviously there was no connection to the nazis, but try explaining that to people who get upset.
I don't condone what the nazis did, and you are a troll if you suggest so. The whole point of this post is to raise awareness that Swastika!=nazi. However, I also believe that people have a right (subject to IP constraints) to post what they want on the net. Remember, if they yank Aryan Nations stuff off the web, they can yank your stuff too. That's the price we pay for free speech, and it's a pretty small price since I can easily ignore that crap.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I have no idea how the courts and nations involved will end up resolving these questions, but here's how I think they should resolve it...
There are typically two parties involved in a commercial transaction on the Web: the buyer and the seller. I think each party ought to be subject to the laws of their native country. If the U.S. wants to make it illegal to gamble online, so be it - there won't be any gambling sites hosted in the U.S. If France wants to disallow the sale of Nazi memorabilia, so be it - French citzens purchasing Nazi memorabilia will be subject to fines.
Of course, this approach doesn't address multiple-party transactions, and it doesn't recognize "carrier" parties - the owner of an Internet backbone that routes some of the bits that enable the transaction or a credit card issuer that authorizes the transaction. Those are tougher to deal with because they can't really be held accountable for probing the exact nature of the transactions they are enabling.
The only other alternative I see is an internation treaty describing universal rules for Internet usage, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. - Jacques Bènigne Bossuet
Dude, take your pick:
- A country in which the sale and purchase of Nazi-related items is strictly forbidden; or
- A country in which the public display of nipples is strictly forbidden.
I challenge you to find a country that doesn't have stupid laws. At least the French anti-Nazi law has some sense behind it.France can indeed face hitory, though. There is no lack of remembrance monuments, not the least of which is the Deportation Monument, at the very heart of Paris. Insinuating that a nation can't face history based on a single law of arguable merit is, well, pretty damn insulting.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Imagine some banana republic sets up a data haven and says, kiddie porn isn't illegal in Gamboonia. The question is, can the US (and decent people everywhere) shut the site down? Should we be able to? Is it functonally possible to prevent US citizens from accessing the proscribed content, and if not who's problem is that? Here in the USA we think it's okay to collect Nazi memorabilia. France doesn't agree and they want to make it the content provider's problem to keep French people from accessing the proscribed materials. The problem is, if they can't (and they probably can't) then France ends up getting to dictate policy to the rest of the world.
Yahoo is just trying to keep it's customers happy while avoiding tangling with foreign law. If you're doing business with/in a country you have to deal with their laws even if they are disparate from you home country's laws.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Many types of gambling are illegal in the US, so companies move their servers offshore to countries that have unrestricted gambling. If the feds rule against Yahoo, does this mean that they also have the right to demand that the courts in the offshore nations force the gambling sites to close up or to restrict US access? Ditto for the hardcore pr0n sites.