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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.
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
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
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.