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Yahoo! Not Bound by French Court Ruling
Klerck writes "Luckily, a US federal judge has ruled that Yahoo! is not bound by the French ruling that demanded that all Nazi memorabilia be removed from its auction site. It's a nice surprise to have a sensible ruling come out of a federal court in times like these."
And the DMCA doesn't try and impose US law on non US Nationals?
Politicians can make bad laws whatever their nationality.
And no, I don't think this is funny!
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
Well, the French law only said they cant sell that stuff from French yahoo servers. It only applies to France.
And since this is US law, it's only going to apply to the US.
Neither country has any say in what the other's laws are.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So if an American website is not bound by a French ruling, then perhaps there's hope for a certain Russian Programmer accused of breaking US law.
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
So, I suppose what this does is make Yahoo move any business interests located physically within france to somewhere else. Which is fine, because I doubt all of europe wants to exclude large portions of the internet sector from doing business within their borders.
Does it apply in reverse?
Example: DeCSS is legal in France. If I post DeCSS on a US server and this server is a mirror of a French server, does French law and "backup copy" laws apply to the US site as well?
No? Then this decision is nothing more than US protecting its huge mega-corporation. Yes? Then free speech is really better protected.
Just my US$0.02... =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Nothing to see here, move along....
Who will take the bet with me that USA will go to great length to make it possible to extend THEIR laws to other counries in a purely unjust way for the rest of the world.
They already sue EU people for creating and publishing the DeCSS, try to have EU pass "anti-terrorism" wiretaping laws... What else?
I am a european citizen and the last thing I want is see those corporate bought US laws apply to me.... Hey, who wants to pay for other people's lack of action?
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
It is the same with the Confederate flag. You cannot bury or forget about history. The fact is the Nazis did very well in their efforts to turn Europe into one BIG Germany, killing millions in the process. Although the cause was wrong, it is a part of history that should not be forgotten.
The same is true for the Confederate flag and associated memorabilia. The U.S. was at war with itself on policies, state rights, and eventually slavery. These facts should not be forgotten either.
You will always have the Skinhead and Neo-Nazi types abusing the symbolism but, that is the cost of a free society.
Maybe, but there's nothing stopping someone in France from accessing the main Yahoo! site and getting the material, so the ruling still wouldn't be effective.
Isn't France itself a Nazi memorabila?
How can a US court make a decision regarding enforcement of a foreign court decision? Likewise, how can a French court expect to decide the practices of a US company that hosts a site in the US? I hope that somebody in the respective govts wakes up and realizes that these decisions make no sense at this level.
In a later ruling, the French court ruled that the US court ruling does not apply. (tomorrow) A US court ruled that the ruling of the French court that ruled that the us court ruling does not apply, does not apply. (next week) A French court ruled that the US court sucks.
Yahoo! is big enough to fight for itself, they are perfectly able to hire the best lawyers to represent them.
The same can't be said for independent software developers who are up againsts lawyers like the above, that is the forte of the EFF.
I am a U.S. Citizen that hosts 3 web sites on a server Based in Canada. Who's laws will I need to follow? Are my sites considered free speech? Or do I need to provide a french translation on the site?
This latest ruling, while all good in well in allowing operators to control their own content is just a baby step twords addressing the eventual evolution of laws governing the internet.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This sets of an interesting precedent and something that I do not know if the world is ready to accept. It basically says that I can do, say, sell and buy anything I want so long as the country where I am doing the transaction allows it.
So putting this into context. I could legally in US buy drugs so long as the transaction is carried out in Holland. Of course the comment would be "Gee Einstein how are you going to get the drugs to the US?". Well that is beside the point. What it says is that I can basically money launder because if the transaction occurs within a country that does not ask of the origin it is legal.
Consider it this way. I make drug money. The money is considered income in a country that does not ask questions. The country asks for a 10% cut and calls the money legal. At that point I have the right to take that money into my own country. Of course US citizens may have problems because they have special tax laws. But if I was a non-US citzen living in the US I would be exempt (I think). So at that point I have legal money since I paid tax at source.
Ok I may be over-simplifying some things, but the precedent is still set and freezing of terrorist monies may not be legal anymore. Interesting!!!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
If you've been asleep for six months, Skylarov is a Russian citizen who is charged with violating the DMCA by writing a program _in Russia_ and then demonstrating how easy it is to circumvent the Adobe "encryption" during a presentation in America.
I may hate the DMCA as much as the next guy, but try to summarize the whole story.
You can have the freedom to be a racist hate-monger all you want, as long as you don't play DVDs on Linux.
(This message has been brought to you by the US Government, owned and operated by the MPAA, RIAA, et al.)
Situations like this are going to bring about an eventual world government. the case being that there seems to be a need now for some sort of *enforceable* world law or common standard between nations. War will never unify the world, but you can bet petty lawsuits will.
Very true. www.shac.net, the website for animal rights group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, was removed from it's American based server (though later re-hosted outside America) due to a legal threat citing the DMCA against the host. The startling thing is that HLS (the swines invovled) are a UK based company, and they were objecting to "copyright infringement", and the said copyright was not protected under US jurisdiction. f00k that!
"We kill to cure, with cures that kill" - Skinny Puppy
So basically, the French can blow it out there asses or try to sue Yahoo interests in France, but that will likely lead to Yahoo AND every other significant internet entity ceasing to do business in France, and I think that would be fine. It would teach the whiny French a lesson about the real world.
It's funny to see this described as a sensible ruling. Well, the ruling is not surprising, and I'm personnally quite happy with it. But it clashes big time with the rules US courts have developped regarding the application of US law abroad, especially when it comes to anything Internet or telecom related.
So far, american courts have used the most far fetched factual elements to tie any dispute to US jurisdictions and apply US law to them.
Now what? All national laws are equal, but some nationality are more equal than others?
I know most people don't agree with me about the whole 'Nazi' issue.
With that said, let us get to the issue. If Yahoo! wants to do business in France, don't they have to abide by their rules?
Isn't this American-we don't have to-all your culture are-Pax Americanus crap getting us in enough trouble?
When you've got a company like Yahoo! something tells me that it isn't a free speech issue, but more of a money issue.
Everyone is trying to find DMCA loopholes, but what about other issues. Can I order pot seed from Holland? Nope. It's something that is illegal here, and I wouldn't expect the Dutch to rule that they can send seeds just because they want to.
It seems that we try to push our so called freedom on people so much and they end up wanting to kill us.
The American Dream: Growing up from the gutter and getting to the top, just to tell people Screw You!
Get your Unix fortune now!
No, the speech was just an opportunity to arrest him in this country. Arresting someone just for making a speech is such an obvious 1st amendment violation that even Ashcroft has to work up to it by stages... The basis for the charges seem to be that the program is sold by a Russian company on the web, therefore Americans can buy it.
I'm sure nobody will be fooled by this, but I really must point out that child pornography is not legal in Thailand, and that the Thais are actually doing their level best to stamp out the child sex trade, with next to no help from the legions of fat American and German tourists who agree with Slashdot that domestic laws can't be enforced overseas.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Perhaps it would be better if common sense would be applied in law...
Why should we be glad for this ruling ? It does not further our cause in free speech.. you can't explain things like Sklyarov did but you can evengalize nazi dogma's.. which one is worse for our youth, our FREE world?
This ruling is one of the many things that show us there is a gap between common sense and the law.
More and more i am becoming to see the US government as a subsidiary from a company.
Presidents are even campaigning with money donated by companies but yet people still believe they are doing things for the good of all... the companies don't donate large sums of money if the weren't sure they would gain anything..
Same with the law... Now Microsoft (which, through it's c*o's, donated large sums to the election fund of GWB)has been allowed to make a deal and Yahoo can go through with auctioning rejectable material. But if they convict Sklyarov
it is only because of one reason.. CORPORATE GREED!
Isn't it time that lawmaking should be done with common sense instead of money? Lobbying used to be a side thing people with similar interests did.. today you can hire a professional lobyist whether he or she has the same interests or not.. it has become an industry on it's own.. perhaps those who make laws should be made to publicize their agenda's and bookkeeping? Not just to a few but to all who want's to..
Then maybe we see common sense returning to our laws..
BTW.. this is not applicable to the US only.. it is the same for europeans as well..
On one hand, the US can go on and impose their laws (Helms-Burton, etc.) on other countries when these are just doing something that they simply don't like (like talking to Cuba or any other country on the US blacklist), something that does not hurt the US in any way.
On the other hand, when the actions of US companies have a direct impact on what goes on in other countries, go against the laws of said countries (like prevention the spread of hate litterature), the US entities are not bound by the laws of other countries.
What the french judge said, at the urging of jewish activists and other anti-racism groups, was basically "do whatever you want in *your* country, but abide by our laws in *our* country". In this Age of the Internet, where so-called "local" actions can have global consequences, this was not un-reasonable.
The only signal that non-americans get out of this is that the US thinks its above anyone else, that it can do as it pleases wherever it wants to do it and that it has little respect for laws and customs of other countries. That it thinks it has "the right" to interfere in other countries' affairs (Helms-Burton, their very active involvment in the recent Nicaragua election, etc.), while other countries can't say anything on the activies of US companies and/or can critisize (sp?) moronic decisions of the US gov't (Kyoto, etc.).
Then don't wonder why the US is so hated abroad -- and contrary to Dan Rather said on Letterman's, they don't hate the US because they envy it. They hate it because it can be such a idiotic bully, at times.
And unfortunately, Yahoo, France is not bound by the US federal ruling which claimed Yahoo! was not bound by the French ruling that demanded that all nazi memorabilia be removed from its auction site.
Except that wasn't what the court ruled. That is what Yahoo decided to do rather than attempt to comply with the ruling..
Actually yes , you could do just that, godhelp you if you did, I could see it now , every NY'er would be hurling flowerpots at you from 40 stories but yeah, you could.and like the KKK jerkoffs demonstrating at black rally's it would be protected, or the KKK passing out literature around schools , which has been done, and subsequently upheld.
>The freedom of speech does not mean that >everybody has the right to say everything:
Wrong, it does mean just that, as long as youre not preaching violence as a course of action, yes yes it does.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
I live in France, let me show you round... See that old guy over there ? His father was executed by the Gestapo... That old woman over there? She was raped by several SS when she was 16.. See that sign to 'Oradour-Sur-Glane', you should go and see that village, one day the SS cam calling and killed everybody, they say 640+ men, women and children died. Now imagine how some people who live here feel when they see Nazi sympathisers (and it's virtually always sympathisers that buy this stuff, which is why there is a law against selling it) parading swastikas, deaths head badges etc. Get the point?
They did, in fact, file suit against Yahoo!,Inc., a Delaware Corporation based in (then) Santa Clara, CA (now Sunnyvale), charging that because the US Auctions site "reached" France, it was bound by French law.
Know of what you speak before you speak it.
but it is legal fo the us to regulate the 'speech' for a russian resident outside of the United States, and like wise it is legal for the US to regulate the auction of the software just because some Americans were able to buy it?
---
"We find you offensive, and demand you pay us to relieve some of the stench of your offensive nature"
In other times, disputes like this have led to wars.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The US Court ruled that Yahoo isn't bound by the French court's decision...
So, then... is the French court bound by the US court's ruling?
It's a good ruling for information and freedom, but I'm puzzled by the international law ramifications, particularly jurisdiction issues. Maybe someone can help me out...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
So when US courts shut down ICraveTV a couple of years ago, they had no right to do so?
I think I'm going to Canada and opening an ICraveTV-like website. Now, when major networks take me to court, I'll point to this ruling and laugh.
Oh, wait. Major networks will sue me and win anyway. Money talks, and both of these rulings went in favor of US companies. The day when US courts actually recognize that people in other countries (and non-US citizens) should have the same rights (and responsibilities) as US citizens is far away. Right now, if you're an outsider, you already lost.
m
It's a nice surprise to have a sensible ruling come out of a federal court
I see *no* niceness whatsoever when it comes to spreading nazi shit around any piece of the globe.
(This is apart from the fact that I believe that, if the opposite was the case, the US would be bombing France by now....)
I think it is important to get a historical perspective on this. The French laws come out of Frances state of denial regarding collaboration with the Nazis and in particular the Vichy regime. When I have spent time in France and brought up the Vichy, no one of that era wanted to talk about it, and the young seemed rather oblivious to the amount of collaboration that really went on in France prefering to think that all of France was really full of Resistance fighters. Unfortunately the US doesnt come out whiter than white either, infact Roosevelt was on very good terms with Admiral Jean François Darlan one of the high ranking Vichy, fortunately while America was trying to do deals with those helping the Nazis with the Final Solution (the Holocaust) the Brits in the shape of the SOE got on and trained Ferdinand Bonnier de la Chapelle who went on to assasinate Darlan on 24th December 1942 with an SOE issued pistol no less, which lead to the rise of General Charles De Gaulle. So now more than half a century later we have dumb French laws that are there to help suppress the truth of what happened under Vichy and we have the Americans saying they shouldnt while blissfully forgetting that they were quite happy to deal with the same Vichy regime. Those who do not learn from history yadda yadda...
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Would you want French web sites to restrict sexual content according to what is acceptable in Saudi Arabia?
I'm so happy about this ruling. if yahoo in the US is not bound by french law, then surely /me in Germany is not bound by silly US laws like the DMCA, right?
uh, right?
why is it that I have this feeling that this knife doesn't cut both ways? or will I be receiving a court document soon (to add to the other 1000 or so pages) that'll tell me I'm dismissed from the California DeCSS suit?
not holding my breath. the ruling is, of course, obvious. at least until the hague convention gets passed, which will invalidate it and make all those silly foreign lawsuits enforceable locally. that will be a day! finally you can sue everyone, everywhere for pretty much every imaginable reason.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm not French neither do i live in France, but i'm curious:
- Have you visited France only or have you also lived in France?
The thing is, simply visiting a place is not enough to make an informed opinion about it's inhabitants.
Putting things in a different way:
- I would be the jerk if i said that all Americans are jerks just because i happened to had a bad experience with a taxi driver when i visited New York.
Oh by the way, i hope you are aware that:
- People behave differently as turists in a foreign land than they do in their own country.
- Turists are very easily detectable (and as such make visible targets for crooks) and especially so for a lot of american turists (many of them dress and act differently from everyone else, including turists from other nationalities)
- Other people's behaviour will be influenced by your own behaviour (i would expect French people to be very unpolite to me if for example i went around the Louvre commenting loudly to my wife that it was all a pile of crap)
Why? I have a collection of lots of WWII memorabilia from both sides (collected when I was a kid), everything from medals and documentation to ordinance and gasmasks, why should people not collect history? It has given me a very personal view of what was a terrible time in world history, and reminds me to fight to prevent anything like that from happening again, and it also reminds me that it is up to us, you and me, not the politicians, because they lothe to stretch their minds and see the bigger picture. Look at what is happening now, and imagine for an instant that after the Soveits had been kicked out of Afghanistan that the politicains in the rest of the world had not abandoned them, that there had been a Marshal Plan for Afghanistan, do you think Bin Laden would have had the ability to set up training / indoctrination camps? No, obviously not, unfortunately people in the rest of the world ignored the contribution of the Afghan people in helping to ultimately defeat a totalitarian regime that was at times as bad as the Nazis. So now there is a breeding ground for people like Bin Laden and Al-Quaeda, just like there was a breeding ground for Hitler and the Nazis after WWI, those who do not learn from history yadda yadda..
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Any evidence to support this? While I'm sure neo-nazis love to get their hands on original artifacts, there are a lot of people (WWII veterans & history buffs) who collect war trophies from both sides. Both my grandfathers served in WWII; and we have several family friends who are WWII vets as well. One gentleman in particular, a retired Army colonel, has an extensive collection of artifacts that he
acquired in North Africa and Italy. The barber I used to patronize (also a WWII vet) had a huge display case in his shop of war souvineers. I've met dozens of people who collect militaria, and I wouldn't dare call any one of them a Nazi sympathizer (at least not unless I was looking for a fight). A collector isn't necessarily pro-nazi because he buys German artifacts, any more than he would be pro-slavery because he buys Confederate artifacts, or pro-communist because he buys Soviet artifacts.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Consider a lower-tech analogy. Say there are phone-sex lines in France that would be considered obscene and illegal under U.S. law. Now say that a U.S. citizen calls from California and listens to one of those phone-sex lines. He may be breaking the law in the U.S., but the U.S. can't really expect to go to France and say "hey, you've got this service that my citizens are using, and even though it's legal there, where it's based, it's illegal here, and my citizens can get to it, so you must shut it down!" (Not that the U.S. might not try such a thing in one of its more imperialistic moments, but I really can't see any legal foundation for it...)
Remember that Yahoo France had already removed the illegal items from its site. This case was about whether a French court could impose its standards on entities entirely outside its borders. That makes no sense at all. (If France can do it, why not Afghanistan? What's to stop courts there from claiming that Afghani citizens can use their Internet connections to look at images of women who work outside the home and don't wear veils?)
If France is really insistent that its citizens shouldn't be able to get this stuff, it should take the China approach and just firewall the whole damn country. They could do it, much as I might find it despicable.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
You base your opinion on a one-shot event, that's ridiculous. You Americans tend to think we are undevelopped country. Come on, please visit us really. See the international figures about economy as well. See our social advance, see our advance in respect of human rights, see our advance in health. Come on, please know us before bashing us. By the way, do you know Concorde? do you know Airbus? do you know ArianeSpace? Please also stop to consider us as French only. I'm European. My culture is European and more and more I can realize that it's different than American. Once again, thank you for WWII. But we won't ever follow you guys.
The Nazis were alot of things....but i don't think they fit under that category of 'terrorist.' I hate what they did as much as anyone, but stop trying to blur word definitions. Thats just as retarded as sayin ANY hacking into a computer system is a terrorist act.
And i think it has always been legal for Eurpoeans to burn US flags; in fact its still legal here i believe.
The French ruling is similar to Helms-Burton Act where companies or individuals who trade in Cuban expropriated property outside of the United States are not allowed into the United States. Similarly, the French government is saying that a company that facilitates the trading of nazi memorabilia outside of it's country cannot exist in it's own country.
The judgement from the U.S. judge means nothing. If France wants to throw the French division of Yahoo out of the country, there is little it can do. If the french government fines Yahoo, then they either have to pay or pull out of France. All the U.S. ruling said is that if they pull out, France can't get them to legally pay the fines.
-no broken link
if (auction contains nazi memorablilia) and
(requesting IP is in France)
then (deny page request)
After all, there are (currently at least) a fairly limited number of IP addresses, and server side proccessing is not that tough.
Sure this is not a perfect solution (some way of deciding what auctions contain "objectionable material" would have to be devised, for one), but I bet that it would have been much cheaper (in the terms of both direct, lawyer costs and indirect, publicity costs) than this whole protracted legal battle.
Many people buy and trade those things for the same reason they buy and sell Japanese swords, pistols and such, brought back by American GIs as souveniers.
The cake is a pie
Which is what they SHOULD have done in the first place. (As deplorable as that may be) It's not up to the U.S. to enforce French internal political adjenda! If that happens then NOTHING would be safe on the net.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
...to know the details of a case before you shoot your mouth off about it? Let's do this again.
> Right, and that's why a Russian Programmer was arrested in the US for breaking US law in russia.
He was arrested in the U.S. for breaking U.S. law in the U.S., not Russia. Writing the program (which he did in Russia) was not his crime. The crime was that his company then sold the program to U.S. customers, in the U.S., hosted on a U.S. website. Since the program violated the DMCA, that's against U.S. law. Since he happened to be the guy who represented his company in the U.S. the U.S. grabbed him when he entered the U.S. for a conference. Unfortunate, perhaps, but he wasn't grabbed for breaking the law in Russia. If his company hadn't sold the program in the U.S., he wouldn't have been arrested.
The lesson here is to read the full story before commenting.
Virg
> The basis for the charges seem to be that the program is sold
> by a Russian company on the web, therefore Americans can buy it.
This is too simplistic. The charge is that the company used a U.S.-based site for the sales, not just that it was made available to U.S. citizens.
And not to pick nits, but it's Sklyarov, not Skylarov.
Virg
The reason to be against these laws is because they are dangerous. The government has no constitutional authorization to issue such laws. By creating them, they weaken the constitution, and reduce the protections that it offers all of us.
The constitution does say that the governments of the states shouldn't discriminate, and that is thus proper. And it's also desireable that the US govt not descriminate. And, I suppose, that one could stretch things to say that the states should not be allowed to have laws that descriminate.
The original "public accomodations" decision (Rosa Parks) was based on the states involved not having adhered to the constitutional provisions forbidding them to discriminate. And that was, thus, proper. I'm much less convinced that any decision coercing a lunch counter operator to provide "non-descriminatory" service was reasonable unless he leased or rented his place of doing business from the government (fed, state, county, or city). OTOH, I certainly support the action of people to make him uncomfortable about descriminating (sit-ins, pickets, etc.).
The problem is that the 14th amendment (or is it the 12th) is largely ignored. Local people are supposed to be the ones with the rights to make these decisions. The government has just promised to keep it's own part of the playing field level. If reparations are reasonable then there should be a civil suit, and re-writing the legal code is not a valid demand in a civil suit.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is it really worse to do it because they're black (for example) than to do it because they nailed your wife? Why is one cause worthy of different legal treatment?
In some cases it is different, and so requires different legal treatment. In a commutity with high racial (or religious, whatever) tensions, killing someone becasue they're black can incite riots, lead to civil wars (aka Kosovo), and much more violence down the road. This may not fit in with your "colorblind" value-system, but some crimes are more damaging than others. The shooting of MLK comes to mind. A country/community must work hard to try to enable/encourage minorities to participate in its political and economic life. High-profile racial crimes can set that work back by decades, and so are a greater threat to the society in which they are committed. That's why they (in some cases) receive stiffer punishments.
Having said that, most of the actual laws on the books about hate crimes are silly, dangerous and not applied correctly. Speech on the other hand, should always be sacrosanct.
btw, Yahoo is an American company, so a good case can be made that the French court was over-reaching it's authority. On the other hand, nothing stopped the US from invading Panama, kidnapping Noriega, and putting him on trial for violating US drug laws. I wonder how many americans would not mind, say, Nicaragua kidnapping Reagan and putting him on trial for mining the their harbors.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Sorry, obviously I didn't mean to imply that citizens alone were protected by US law while in US borders. As for the second point, such is the nature of the Internet - the information isn't getting "sent" or pushed on users, they are packets with HTTP responses. As for sending them, the sending of the packets is COMPLETELY LEGAL in the US, where they are sent. If France doesn't like those packets, then they are more than free to filter them like China does in their Great Firewall.