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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.
"
"
Does this mean I have to buy all my Nazi gear on UBid now?
*shucks*
Yeah, those French anti-Nazi laws seem to be working real well.
Breakfast served all day!
I know we Americans are criticized a lot for being ignorant of other cultures, but this one might just take the cake?
Yahoo intends to defend its First Amendment rights should a French court try to enforce French anti-hate laws.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure France isn't bound by the United States Constitution.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Wow, slashdot has become waaay too liberal. I quit.
Better yet, I surrender.
Don't confuse the sale and promotion of Nazism and icons thereof with trying to cover up what happened. Europeans do not want that regime glorified. That's why some countries have laws such as this French law.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That, combined with communist control of many of the French journalist's unions, means that many stories [...] never get adequately reported in the French press.
I'm so glad CNN and Fox News aren't in the hands of those dirty commies, so we always get FAIR AND BALANCED reporting from the US press.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So the french are trying to take away Lance Armstrongs latest Tour de France win, as they found he had been using 2 substances banned in france.
Those substances, deodorant and toothpaste.
Thanks, i'll be hear all week, try the veal.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Something is happening in another country that is considered illegal activity within France (or where ever). Pot is sold in Holland, there are probably even places that accept phone or fax orders for said pot. But it's still happening in Holland! So if you as a country have a problem with this activity, you have two alternatives in my opinion: block all telephone traffic to said telephone numbers (or, in this case, all traffic to http://auctions.yahoo.com) and/or stop the pot at the border with your own customs service (or, blocking all traffic from http://auctions.yahoo.com).
In either case, it's not a problem for the pot house in Holland. It's not (shouldn't be) their job to enforce the laws of every other country in the world, that is what the police and customs services for each country are for.
You don't like something going on over there? Fine, make sure it can't get in here. Don't expect the people over there to give a flying #$% about your beliefs/laws/whatever (let alone take on the financial responsibility to ensure that your beliefs/laws/whatever aren't broken). It's up to your own government to enforce your own laws. If something is "skirting" the law and making its way into your country, simply cut off it's route into your country and everything is fine. You can't blame the pot shop or the government of Holland if Dutch pot makes its way past your customs service! It's their job to stop it from entering your country in the first place, else what is a customs service paid to do?
On an aside, if I were a decision maker within Yahoo, I'd find it abhorrent that Nazi stuff was being peddled by my company by proxy. I would do my best to make sure it was no longer peddled due to my own personal beliefs. Only governments can censor, private companies can decide what they will and will not profit from. Of course, this has no bearing on the case from a precedent point of view, I just felt it should be said.
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
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.
My blog
Yes, the 'offending material' was long ago yanked from yahoos french site. The French court is now trying to force them to take it down on their other sites as well. They asked the US court to tell the French court they couldn't do that, and the US court basically said 'we don't have the authority to give them orders... but if they ask us to enforce that order we'll laugh in their faces.'
The trouble, of course, is that Yahoo wants to continue doing business in France, and the French courts seem quite willing to seize everything they own in France and pull every dirty trick they can think of to force Yahoo to knuckle under.
Yahoo, and everyone else, should simply stop doing business in France until they come to their senses. It's a shame too, a great country in so many ways - but a country that doesn't recognise freedom of speech cannot be condoned.
You shouldn't forget that France has the largest Muslim arab immigrant population in all of Europe. Mutual dislike between Muslims and Jews is nothing particularly new, I'd wager.
There is a strong anti-Israel sentiment in France, but despite what pro-Israel groups would have you believe, that isn't quite the same as anti-semitism, because it is motivated by national politics rather than religious belief/ethnic identity. Many French disagree with Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and ignore PLO terrorist tactics; just as we in the US take the opposite view, condoning IDF atrocities while condemning outright PLO activities.
Neither view is wholly unbiased. France taking the PLO side is probably mostly due to domestic political lobbying by Muslims in France, just as our pro-Israel stance is mostly due to domestic political lobbying of Jews in the US.
Anyone who has looked at the situation over there in any sort of logical way will recognize that both groups are pretty shitty to each other and both seem to feel that God is on their side. Not a recipe for long lasting stability or peace.
At any rate, I am both Jewish and pro-Israel, American and of French descent (parents are French). When I go back to visit family I don't feel like I get any static from anyone about being Jewish, although I imagine (perhaps incorrectly) that some Arabs might have issues with it if they knew.
But I can say that as a liberal-minded individual it annoys me that some pro-Israel groups attempt to leverage the cultural fear we all have of being "anti-semetic" in order to increase support for Israel, a la "If you don't support Israel, you don't support Jews. Nazi!" This has worked suprisingly well on a lot of Americans especially.
I dislike it not because I don't want people to support Israel, but because I think people are beginning to realize that they're being manipulated, and equating "anti-Israel" with "anti-semetic" is very much degrading the notion of anti-semitism; if all you need to do to be anti-semetic is be anti-Israel, well, it doesn't take much, does it? And so suddenly we're lumping a lot politically-critical people who are otherwise not at all anti-semites in with the KKK. Kind of removes the utility of the term, imho.
Complete and utter crap. You really have no clue about how Europeans regard Hitler, the Nazis and World War II. Europeans don't try to deny Nazism, what they do (and this law is a clear example of it) is deny neo-Nazis the chance to use Hitler's Third Reich as a tool to spread hatred and evil today.
I'm European. WWII history was taught to me at school, just as it's taught to every schoolkid from Iceland to Russia. Delude yourself that Europeans don't learn about Hitler if you want, but don't try and dupe others into believing it too.
And, by the way, perhaps this is a great example of the pot calling the kettle black. Native Americans are so well respected and so well treated in the US today that the name of the NFL franchise in the nations capital is called the Washington Redskins. That's about as racially sensitive as having a team called the LA Niggers, yet nobody seems to give a shit outside the tiny minority of Native Americans still left.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Nothing to do with covering up Nazism. The history of WWII, the death camps and Adolf Hitler get a lot of attention in general education. You can walk around most European cities and find plates in the street saying "Here so and so were shot down by the German army", "There so and so was tortured to death by the Gestapo". History is present in everyday life at an extent most USians cannot imagine.
It's so present that professing Nazism today is now not considered as free speech. This ideology was given a try and resulted in tens of millions of people killed all over Europe. There's no more benefit of the doubt, no room left for public debate. The case is settled. Nazism is pure unadulterated evil. Its ideas do kill people and must not be tolerated in a civilized society.
There is one thing you must know about Nazism to understand why it is actively repressed in Europe. Nazism emerged from a democracy (while Stalinism emerged from a dictorial environment). Germany's Weimar Republic may have been dysfunctionnal and rife with political violence but it was a democracy nonetheless. Adolf Hitler came to power by the polls and gained a large following by convincing people far more than by coercing them. So there is no illusion in Europe on the ability of democracies to deal with this kind of ideas by the mere virtue of democratic debate. We know all too well how totalitarian ideologies can fall through the cracks and use momentary difficulties to impose themselves. Hence, the will not give those ideas any breathing space.
We know that democracies are fragile and must be defended. We learned that the hard way and that's a lesson I hope we'll never forget.
SNS Not Sig
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.
what the whites did to us was shitty, no doubt...
but compared to most any other invading race at that time, you pick, germans, french, chinese, english, even portugese... it was comparable. that is what tended to happen in that stage of history.
my only problem is that our genetic diversity is now large enough to support ourselves as a distinct race, but this is also happening all over the world in australia, africa, and south america.
but anyways, too many people try to play the victim. how far back do you want to go as far as grudge-holding?
as far as the sterilization in 1970, im not saying i dont believe you, but such things were not widespread past ww2. now before that, i have some amazing stories to tell about my grandparents and before that, but I've ranted enough. We have had 70 years, several generations, to get over it.
Now look at any other 'genocided' culture, jews, slavs, whatever. They've managed to move on. Look to the future, not to the past.
Turtle Mountain Anishinabe (ND), reservation land owning, casino money-getting, on the census as such.
Considering the fact that southern France was collaberating with the Nazis, I should think that they'd have not been that much more deprived than citizens of Germany during the war.
The average Parisian lost 20kg during the Nazi occupation. I could dig for something about southern France, but you get the idea.
Aside from that, you seem to be supportive of France's attempt at purging "bad thoughts" from the minds of everyone on planet Earth
No, I'm not.
I'm, to the contrary, opposed to jingoist who act as though this was somehow a French thing. First of all, right there, you claim they are trying to "purge" the thoughts of, as you said, everyone on the planet. Whereas we are talking about a law that only applies to, surprise surprise, France.
Your justification of your hatred of all things French is what I oppose.
My feelings about that perticular law or that perticular case are not involved, this is about you jerks attacking a whole country, a whole people and culture, and acting as though you were justified, as if this were right.
American courts and lawmakers will come to Yahoo's rescue and put the pompous French beaurocrats right back on their socialist asses.
Yes, they are pompous.
Its as though, you know, they want a company doing is business in their own country to obey the law of the land, and the company was responding by having the court of another country try to impose its own laws to a sovereign nation.
Because, of course, since America is better than the rest of the planet, it's laws take precedence over all other laws. That is not pompous, oh my no!
Otherwise, we may well see the content of the internet reduced to the lowest common denominator of PC-filtered non-offensive non-confrontational child-safe mind-numbing drool.
Because, of course, laws affecting content on the internet are only passed in inferior countries, the Almighty, divine United States of America are above, amongst other things, passing such laws.
So lets see, your opinion is that the French people did not suffer during WWII, that they are pompous, that they want to purge the thoughts of the entire world, and that they should submit to U.S. law.
My opinion is that you are a jingoist bigot.
You can't take the sky from me...
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...
"It is specifically targetted at the French market"
Doen't matter. If the servers are not in France, France's laws mean squat. Regulating web content on a server outside of France is outside of their jurisdiction.
If the French feel so strongly about this, they need to build a Wall of France like the one China has, so they can protect their subjects er, citizens, from all that nasty evil content.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
To a typical slashdotter this news reads:
.com means *nothing*).
Beware! French governement revokes freedom of speech of USA citizens.
To people who use their brain:
French government enforces local laws on companies conducting commerce in France.
If Yahoo markets itself to french citizens and conducts commerce with french citizens (to buy nazi related material), yahoo, *by choice* is subjecting itself to the law of France.
What would you have otherwise? Yahoo be immune from litigation in all countries bar the USA just because their HQ is in the US? Wake up, if you choose to do business in a country you are subject to the law of that country (having a website end in
But hey if you are too stupid to think, I have a large tower with great views situated in prime real-estate in the middle of Paris for sale...
I believe this is a cultural artifact. In many nations you can be married to someone as young as 10 or 11. In the US this is child abuse. You can try to openly justify and display your practice of the marriage at 10 years of age in the US and see how long it will take before you get locked up.
In France and Europe in general neo-Nazi movements are alive and well. Freedom of speech on the Nazi issue is not going to help. If you remember, during the last French presidential election Jean-Marie Le Pen came second behind Jacques Chirac. Le Pen is an outspoken fascist and the more he talks the better he does, to a degree. Remember that Hitler was an excellent public speaker.
If you have a solution to this very serious problem I'm sure a lot of French people would like to hear it. Just mumbling "freedom of speech" without realizing that in the US that freedom is also severly curtailed in some areas (increasingly so in fact) also for good reasons is not helping.
The idea behind this law is that there are some kind of hate speech that should be prohibited, and for better or for worse the sale of Nazi artifacts is bundled into this, presumably for the reason that collectors have more to sell than just artifacts.
I wonder what the situation is in Israel, I'm pretty sure that it's at least as restricted as in France. Would you complain if it was an Israeli court who was after Yahoo?