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Twitter Sued For $50M For Refusing To Identify Anti-Semitic Users

Posted by Soulskill on from the feeding-the-trolls dept.

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."

2 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I've been waiting for this... by KZigurs · · Score: 5, Informative

    USA has been doing this for decades... Especially with online gaming companies that might not even serve US customers.

  2. Re:I've been waiting for this... by girlinatrainingbra · · Score: 5, Informative
    Hey, it's already happened here in the USA for Dmitry Sklyarov when he came to the USA to give a presentation. Look at the details at U.S. v. ElcomSoft and Skylarov The case raised some concerns particularly since it involved an individual being prosecuted for activities that were fully legal in the country where they occurred.

    So Twitteronians doing twiittery things that are all legal in teh USA could get stopped, frisked, arrested, and jailed for having done things that are deemed to be illegal elsewhere in this great wide world. :>(