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French Court Rules That Facebook Can Now Be Sued in France (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A Paris court of appeal has ruled in favor of a French complainant whose account was suspended, because he linked to an image of the 1866 Gustav Courbet nude 'L'Origine du monde', currently residing at the Musee d'Orsay. The appeals court not only agreed that the user's suspension by Facebook constitutes censorship, but the ruling itself negates Facebook's insistence that all legal challenges take place in its native California.
Much like Italy covered up all those naughty Renaissance and classical nudes for the Iranian delegation, because, you know, genitals are EVIL!!!!!!!!!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is one of those extremely rare times where we hear about someone outside of the U.S.A. suing a company.
At a very basic level, here's the deal. If you're going to operate as a multi-national company, and you're going to offer and promote your services around the globe, then you need to be responsible for and liable to the laws of the land in each of those territories. If you operate in France and you violate the law in France, then you should be subject to penalty in France.
You don't get to shuffle all of your American tax liability through a double Dutch Sandwich with an Irish muffin, or whatever the hell it is, and simultaneously force French legal complaints to be arbitrated in California. You can't have it both ways.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Women should not be treated as sex objects. This isn't 1866 anymore! Grow up Gustav. Put some clothes on her and teach her to code!
Lawyers always show up. Thats how they get paid.
Always ahead of USA on giving people freedom.
They do have servers and offices in France.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
According to the article, the court didn't say anything about the alleged censorship. It just ruled that the clause in Facebook's terms and conditions that all lawsuits had to take place in California was invalid.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
They have more than 20 millions users in France. Facebook is probably better off paying a few lawyers to modify their ToS.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
Facebook could have just put a fig leaf over the offending parts...
For the puritanical Americans and for the Middle East.
For everyone else, they could have just left the image as is.
The only principle here is, if a business is generating revenue in a country, then that revenue can be targeted in a civil suit. The company can not turn around and claim somehow that it should be allowed to make money in a country but simultaneously not be held accountable for how it makes money in that country. To pretend to claim so is just so much legal bullshit. It is bad enough when you have global tax fraud on trillions of dollars of income and the pain, death and suffering that causes in the crippling of social services and the break down of infrastructure, now they are corruptly fighting to not be held legally accountable for their actions when they are done by remote control. All the money and no responsibility, corporations are behaving like out of control toddlers, screaming for more all of the time now.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Shielding employees and stockholders is the entire POINT of a corporation.
This WHY a corporation should never be considered a person. It exists primarily to avoid the moral awareness and responsibility that an actual meat bag has.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Fuck sensitive morons who are offended by reality. Kill all those fuckers. Being offended is for victims who deserve to die.
Yes. Let's kill all intolerant bastards. Anyone who wants to kill other people for their views deserves to die. Oh wai^#$%#@@ CARRIER LOST
A woman's genital area isn't in itself hardcore pornography in France? I mean, really, it's absurd the very picture of a nude person should in itself be consider pornography of any kind, no matter how much of a close up, how much "insertion" is going on, etc. But then that boils down to the point that it's a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more "close ups of a woman's vagina" are pornography, the more people will intend to make "pictures with close ups of a woman's vagina" for sexual arousal. Treat it normally and most (if not all) the effect is lost.
I mean, the whole point is you have to start with "obscene", move on to "intent", and it has to be about "sexual arousal" and all bits of that are subjective except the intent. Well, then, if intent is the most important part, we really should ban most people because a lot of people intend to invoke sexual arousal in others in merely being in public and prurient people view near everyone as obscene in dress. I mean, that's the insanity that created the hijab, not Islam.
I've seen this argument a few times now, but why would it be relevant where the content is stored or even served from. Shouldn't we look at where the content is consumed?
Your argument is like snail-mailing cannabis from a country where it is legal to grow and sell to a country where it is a prohibited substance. Should that country allow the goods to enter the country as it was produced and served from abroad?