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Yahoo! Not Protected From French Anti-Nazi Laws
snoopsk writes "An appeals
court ruled that Yahoo is not protected from French legal attacks
due to Nazi-related items sold on Yahoo's auction site. Backed by the
ACLU, Yahoo
intends to defend its First Amendment rights should a French court
try to enforce French anti-hate laws. This case could have huge
implications for free speech online if the French courts are successful
in forcing Yahoo to remove this content.
"
"
There's a simple solution: delete the Yahoo.fr site and shut down all French business units. If Yahoo has no presence in France, their laws won't apply. It's not like France is as imperialistic as America; they can't make their laws transcend their borders. Then the problem becomes the French governments' and how they might block Yahoo.
I think the most logical course of action should be for Yahoo! to withdraw its entire business from France by firewalling out all IP space known to be from France from all of their products. If France continues to enforce its policies against the American-aimed .com version of American-based sites (rather than their .fr spinoffs which were already Nazi-free-zones) such as Google, they'll eventually be left with a rather useless Internet...
It just seems to me that if Yahoo wants to do business in France they have to do it by the french book. Make perfect sense to me.
:)
And there are things France can do. They can block the Yahoo-site
But this makes the internet and the law problems very interesting.
Privacy is terrorism.
you completely miss the point.
there are frequent occurrences of anti-semitic vandalism in france. it's on the rise, so much so that israel's "move to israel" propaganda is having an effect in france.
I thought the same thing at first, but this is a lot more complicated of an issue.
Suppose I go to france, upon up my breifcase on the streets of Paris and start hawking my neo-nazi wear. When they try to fine me, it would be absurd for me to evoke my first-admendment rights. They don't apply to the french government, and when I'm in france I'm under their jurisdiction.
That's not what Yahoo was doing, and it's going to be interesting to see how the courts take this one. Even if yahoo didn't have any servers in france, the mere fact that the content was accessible to french citizens prompted the french government to levy the fine.
The argument by the french is not that yahoo servers based in france were responsible.less They're saying that anyone who sells nazi memorobilia in such a way that french citzens are capable of buying it is legally liable and subject to a fine. If the french government succeeds in fining Yahoo, then there would be a legal basis to levy a fine against any online merchant who sells nazi memorbilia, regardless of his location if he doesn't block people attempting to access his website from france. The argument could be extened even further - if a brick and mortar store accepts orders placed by phone, and they don't make sure no one from france orders nazi stuff, a precent set by the courts' ruling in this case could hold that US-based brick and mortar store liable to fines by the french for violating french law.
At first I thought yahoo's case seemed stupid for the same reasons you mentioned. But if you think about the possible results if this case sets a precedent (and when don't they) it gets really scary.
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And it was the French that saved the Americans from saluting the king. Your point?
most people spout off "I can say anything here in the U.S.! That's freedom!" But, you can't
My understanding is that you can say anything in the US so long as (1) you're not calling other people to do illegal things (read shouting "let's go kill some jews!" in public) and (2) it doesn't contravene the law (like you say, lying in court). Also, those rules are the same for everybody.
In France, saying "I think Jews own the press" can land you in court. That's wrong. Also, saying "I think Catholics own the press" won't. That too is wrong, because the rule is biased towards one group of people, usually a minority.
France admits that. They say jews have suffered during the war and deserve to be especially protected. They since have extended their "special protection" to people of north african descent, and pretty much most ethnic minorities. The problem is, it's counterproductive because people who are not in one of the specially protected minority resent that, and also people are attracted to forbidden things. Which explains all the antisemitic acts going on in France right now.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
was that the US courts ruled that basically since even Yahoo.com (as opposed to .fr) was accessible from France, French courts could indeed prosecute Yahoo (.com) if it broke French law, but that Yahoo would have to be prosecuted in France, not in the US. French courts have asked Yahoo to at least geo-filter the "nazi" parts of Yahoo auctions .
:
The press also remarks that Yahoo was quite happy to sign-up to the Chinese government's rules even while battling French ones, and attributed that to the larger potential of the Chinese market.
This is indeed a free speech issue, and we in France restrict it
- one may not "promote hate", such as anti-jew, homophobic , anti-immigrants discourse
- one may not divulge the private life of someone else (movie stars, politicians...)
- one may not advocate substance abuse, or any other law-breaking behaviour
On the other end, nudity and sex in particular are very much less frowned upon. We are bemused be the drama in the US over prime time tits, especially since prime time murders are so common.
I think the "private life" part does make sense, and we were quite bemused by Monicagate, both by the fact that Americans made such a fuss about something so private and personal, and that they thought it such a public scandal. We for example learned a few years before his death (couple of years after Monicagate ?) that our previous president (Miterrand) had an illegitimate teenage daughter by a regular lover. The main debate was on whether the newspapers shouldn't have held their tongues.
The "hate speech" and "law breaking" aspects are more debatable. The law aims to avoid the promotion of hate and such, but the net result is that these issues can barely be discussed publicly, ie rationally. It does give a weapon to sue neo-nazis and far-right groups though.
This is all pretty funny. If the argument is that Yahoo is a US company, and the French laws shouldn't apply, think about the effects of the rest of the countries' e-commerce firms on the US.
Should Dutch companies be allowed to ship pot to the US because in Holland that's allowed?
Should Canadian e-commerce pharmacies be allowed to ship cheaper medical drugs to the US? The US isn't very happy about that right now...
An enlightened court. The reasoning really is simple: If they claim that US law can hit you everywhere, like in the DVD case, where dozens of non-americans were sued, then quid pro quo and french laws apply to the US.
Of course, the other solution (every country's laws apply in that country and nowhere else) would make more sense, but there are these darn precedents and the US desire to rule the world...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"These laws are here to protect history..."
History is always written by the victor and will always favor the author, but obviously only a "history" so off-base and incredibly untruthful needs laws protecting it. Usually it is businesses that are protected by laws, and in this context they are called shoah business or holocaust industry.