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Twitter Sued For $50M For Refusing To Identify Anti-Semitic Users
redletterdave writes "After a French civil court ruled on Jan. 24 that Twitter must identify anyone who broke France's hate speech laws, Twitter has since refused to identify the users behind a handful of hateful and anti-Semitic messages, resulting in a $50 million lawsuit. Twitter argues it only needs to comply with U.S. laws and is thus protected by the full scope of the First Amendment and its free speech privileges, but France believes its Internet users should be subject to the country's tighter laws against racist and hateful forms of expression."
How long until posting anonymously on sites like Slashdot is forbidden? (I can see an upside to this)
France's nuclear power infrastructure can now be decommissioned, as they have coupled all the turbine generators to Voltaire's grave.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Twitter's official response should be "We fart in your general direction you filthy French canigits."
No, Twitter will show up halfway through the trial and the French will immediately surrender.
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Or he is from Australia and a their upside is equivalent to a northern hemisphere downside.
Sorry France you lose.
No surprises there.
Considering I'm equally anonymous on Slashdot whether I'm logged in or not
That's what you think, Steve.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Do you say the same thing about people from Brazil and Argentina?
Sometimes, but only if they're narcissistic dickheads with no sense of humor.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Luigi only like the Ferraris
Well yes, any country can outlaw anything, anywhere. But in almost all cases, they will have no power to enforce their law outside their borders.
For example, France could have a law that says anyone that wears their hat on backward can be thrown in jail, regardless of where they are at the time they commit the crime, and "must come back or be taken back to France to face justice."
But most sensible countries understand that it's arrogant, presumptuous, and more importantly, generally a waste of time, to tell someone in another country that they're actively breaking a local law, or to demand that another country hand their citizen over to their zealous justice system.
Unfortunately, now and then we see cases where someone does something that's legal where they are, but illegal somewhere else, and then travels back to the country where the prior action was illegal, and find themselves arrested. And in VERY extreme and rare cases thankfully, they are basically kidnapped (forcefully deported out of another country, and taken against their will to the other country) and then set on trial. (I think we could call this "being kim-dotcomm'ed) I'm very much against that practice, but it does happen from time to time. And sometimes they even get away with it.
Normally this wouldn't be an issue that France would be getting too ballsy with, but there's a LOT of money at stake, and nothing "greases the wheels of justice" quite like a fistfull of cash.
Bottom line here I think is it would be a very bad risk right now for anyone that could be considered "a legal representation of Twitter" to step foot in France. (board member, ceo, etc) It'd be unlikely to pan out in the end, but they definitely get arrested (or at least get their passport taken for awhile) and get things dragged out a bit before someone with authority started publicly lambasting and beating some common sense into the court that's trying to make good on their threat.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Dear AC,
You shall not talk about France that way. Identify yourself or deal with the full wrath and power of the French.
Q: How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Pairs?
A: No one knows.
Ahh, grasshopper, you only think there's a difference. You have taken your first step.
Learn how memes rule the world -- how they are about getting large masses of people adopting them, in order to force themselves onto still more people.
The content is irrelevant from this viewpoint.
In one -- kidnapping for ransom, people who want money seize someone until they get it. In the other, people who want money seize someone until they get it.
One thinks of themselves as dirty and rotten, the other as good-hearted and pure. The mechanism and end results are identical.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.