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French ISP responsible of "all content"
Farid writes "
This has ben published by one one the major french news papers.
A court has ruled against www.altern.org, a free hosting site, because someone put in his site nude photos of "Estelle Hallyday" a famous french model. The court thinks that the provider is responsible for "all the content of it's site", the provider say he can't control 30 000 sites !
Iris a french association for the promtion of freedom on the net has lauched a campaign against this
ruling."
I hope this is a copyright issue, because otherwise I think we should hold France responsible for all the nude people on their beaches.
Babelfish (linked above) can, although it is hard to read
Translation
Quelques photographs of Estelle Hallyday to hair on the
Internet are likely to call into question the freedom of
publication on the Web. The provider of lodging of free
Web sites Altern, which shelter more than 30 000 sites
amateurs, was condemned by the
Court of Appeal of Paris to pay
405 000 francs of damageses to
the daughter-in-law of Johnny. A
sum claimed to have lodged in
an anonymous way the site of
a Net surfer partagor proposing
of the stereotypes drawn from an old number of Here. It is thus
Valentine Lacambre, the technical shelterer of the site, which was
blamed, and not the author of the litigious pages. A worrying
jurisprudence for the shelterers, who fear a multiplication of the
judgments and a setting with the severe step of the Internet in
France.
With this judgement, it is the debate on the
responsibility for the contents put on line on
the Internet which remakes surface. In the
tread of the setting in examination, last
December, a shelterer of Rennes, the
Village, shown to shelter a Web site fed in
extracts gore of films of horror. The
arguments are well ground: according to
Gilles Galvez, the lawyer of Estelle Hallyday,
a shelterer of Web sites is responsible as
well as the director for the publication of
a newspaper. For a number of lawyers,
the technical operator must thus assume in
front of justice. The providers of lodging
are responsible because they must organize the protection of the
right of others, judge Jacques Bitoun, lawyer specialized in new
technologies. They must check the contents, to engage people to
control or take insurances.
Specificity. The shelterers, alarmed by the judgment of Altern,
refute these arguments, pointing the specificity of the Internet, and in
particular its differences with the ultra-framed model of television.
Not long steps of declaration: any person eager to open, free, a
Web site in order to cause exotic, political kitchen or motor can do it
since at his place, in a few minutes. The simplicity of the procedure
and the number of sites make controls impossible. A free shelterer
cannot be responsible for the sites which it shelters, estimates
Michel Meyer, the owner of Multimania. Its service lodges more
than 70 000 Web sites amateurs, and 300 new appears each day.
Each one can modify its site at any moment, it is impossible all
to control, humanly and financially. According to him, to engage
the responsibility for the shelterers, it is to choke the creation of Web
sites. If I must control all the new pages on my site, estimates
Valentine Lacambre, I died.
Precedents. The judgment of Altern surprises. Admittedly, in 1996,
two providers of access had been put in examination because illegal
images had been found on forums of discussion that they lodged.
But, since, the situation had been calmed: the majority of the
providers of lodging had set up deontologic charters, and removed
of their own head the contents porn, pédophiles or revisionists, as
soon as they were informed of it. It is besides what did Valentine
Lacambre, while cutting the access to the site accused before even
the arrival of the complaint of Estelle Hallyday, in April 1998. The
problem of the anonymity of a number of pages exposed on the
Web, like those exhibant it plastic of Estelle, had been regulated
before with friendly, by reconciling justice and freedom to publish on
the Net: when a site posed problem, the shelterer was not blamed
and justice was turned over directly against the author of the pages.
The providers of access have average the techniques to find
the trace of the author of contents and can provide them on
request of the legal authority, points out Meryem Marzouki,
president of Iris association (Let us imagine an interdependent
Internet). Thus, there are about fifteen days, the font carried out a
searching in our buildings, tells Michel Meyer, of Multimania.
They came to seek infos on the account of a user who diffused
illegally files of music on his site.
Petition. For the moment, Valentine Lacambre has cold the opening
of new sites on Altern. A petition to rise against the decision of the
Court of Appeal was put on line on its Web And Iris association
launched another petition of solidarity, and calls with a broad
international mobilization on this case. As for the images of
naked Estelle Hallyday, they are always available, according to
Gilles Galvez, on more than twenty other sites in the whole
world.
Hey, the phone company must be responsible for all avtivity on their wires just like the ISP is responsible for all the data on its site. Both tasks are equally doable. Just have monitors listening to all calls and if all monitors are busy, then callers have to wait for a free monitor before they can place a call. Same for the ISP. just spool all incoming traffic unitl it can be reviewed by a monitor. So what if communication grinds to a halt? Everyone wants children to be safe from internet smut? Who's against that?
Uh what do you expect from a court system that declares women wearing tight jeans to be immune from rape.. because the attacker couldn't remove them without their help!
I wanna see the naked French model.
Me too.
You guys are dorks.
go to www.google.com
type in her name.
found some nice pics. she's pretty cute.
okay, better get back to work.
Italy you moron
Altough nothing like this has gone to court(so far), in the constitution of my government, Portugal, it says ISPs are responsible for its users, networks, and what can be found there.
It has been legalized just recently, and of course this will only bring ISP`s to Panic as they try to rid all of the ilegal or "less right" content on their servers. Fortunally, so far only the largest portuguese IRC server, partially owned by the government, has acted on the new law and shutdown the channels #warez and such, started logging all conversations on-line(!!!!). In their opinion, and it was really said by them, we were in their "house" and should behave as anyone would if coming to our house. Of course, this is ridiculous, because it IS our house, since its a government project and so belongs to all its citizens.
As you see, stupid things are happening here in old Europe. I could go on, and on... If anyone could help us:)
Eduardo
go to http://jump.altavista.com/translate
and type in the URL...
700 years of art. (No, Linux is not art) :P
Existentialism.
Nubs on rubbers.
Damn good cheese.
A refined culture to counter your unsavory ass?
I think that a better analogy then the court used was to ask whether a newspaper is responsible for ADs published in it. Articles were written by Newspaper employees, Ads were given by an outside source.
Ouch this hurts!
This part of our history is still a big collective
trauma, although an unspoken one. Not only France
but the whole of western Europe crumbled before
the german might in WWII (the UK was saved in-extremis by some stupid Hitler error of Norwegian campaign that left him a few ships short of acheiving invasion of that island).
We have our shortcoming, granted. Your society is
far from perfect either. It is founded on the
slaughter, displacement and reduction of native
americans, it prospered on the blood and suffering
of countless african slaves. Let's call it Even?
Sign here to register support for the free Web hosting organisation, altern.org:
http://altern.org/defense/petition.html
Nom = Family Name
Prenom = First Name
Activite' = Profession
DO IT NOW!
Wrong.
Estelle is the wife of David Hallyday, the son of the Rock singer, and they are about the same age.
First you confuse France with Italy, now this...
What's next ? China is a democracy ?
For all France's faults, at least they do not cower at the feet of uncle Sam like the Brits do. They seem to have a capacity for independant thinking.
And if you cared to read the whole story, you'd find that the jeans issue was only one of many reasons why the Italian judges came to their conclusions. Of course, it makes much better copy for the news organisations if they only print the "juicy" bits.
Granted, it's a nice tool, but
this translation is still hilarious to
a native french speaker like me.
I read the original then the translation
and couldn't help ROFL...
Take this post, for example.
I think that if someone is to be responsible, it should be the person in question, not the server administrator.
Thats the same as making the phone company responsible for what someone says to me.
The problem is that they think the Internet as a giant TV.
How misforunate.
Where are the photos?
I don't "get" your post. What is bad about lots of nude people on beaches? :)
That was italy. And quit picking on other countries. Every country has SOMETHING to pick on. Except Christmas Island. I think they're OK.
Hey, the french aren't very nice when talking about Americans, you know. They bombed Springfield, for god's sake! Remember Le Neutron Bomb? Yeah, pretty funny, huh? Poor baby Maggie, exposed to all that radiation. You know what? You french people can take Le Neutron Bomb and shove it up le butt! Poor bart... he'll never write "I will not post pictures of naked french models..." ever again. You bastards! What have you done! AHHHAHAHAHAHAH!
Heh. sKroz
You can have your friggin statue
back, ugly ass green eyesore!
The bitch is waaayyyy ugly.
"yet I would safely bet 90% of these pro-life maggots have never spent a second of their lives helping foster kids or being a Big Brother/Big Sister."
yeah no doubt, or would much rather adopt a
lily-white baby (which there are a huge scarcity
of) than some abandoned slightly darker baby.
i have always wondered why most conservitave
religeous folk are the same ones who are racist
and sexist inthe extreme. thats living like Jesus
for sure!
Looks like the Europeans are playing catch-up in
the stupidity race.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
bablefish.altavista.com does a fair job of translating it.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Posted by Assmodeus:
umm...if the french fear expression then how come they have so many nude beaches?? i think they are just being french in this case... angry cause they have lost so many wars...who gives a damn...
--
--
=8^
American judges (and the Supreme Court, and Congress, and law enforcement, and the Drug Czar, and Clinto-Stud, and ...) could use a visit from the Clue Fairy, too :)
--
--
=8^
I wonder if pro-choice advocates might start doing something similar to let people know who the people are that are inciting people to violence and harrassment. Maybe if they started writing down the plate numbers of the pro-lifers and posting them along with a list of doctors and patients who have been harrassed or killed, the lifers might get the point that it's not so much fun to be on the receiving end.
If they want the law changed, then they need to take it to washington. Until then, the people they are harrassing and killing are law abiding citizens and don't deserve to be harrassed or killed. Yeah you can dislike them or even hate them, but you shouldn't be able to incite violence against them.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yeah, for the moment. It'll probably go away in the name of the war on drugs or common decency, or to protect the children or some other idiotic reason. Just give it time. I have lost most of what little faith I had in the government to get things right. If they screw up a few more times I think I'll have to find someplace else to live. That'll be tough. Too many screwed up places. US policy decisions seem to be contagious too.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Unfortunately, if you cannot express yourself anonymously, you can't be free of persecution. Governments persecute people for speaking their mind all the time. How can you be guaranteed the right to speak your mind freely without some way of protecting that right? I bet if someone decided they didn't like the French government and gave people a bunch of reasons why, the government would see that site shut down real quick. Again, it happens all the time. Maybe not as often in some countries as in others, but the point is that there is no guarantee of free speech.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This must be a reaction to the legalization of crypto in France. The French seem to fear free expression so much that they have to have a way to stamp it out. Since the leadership has gotten past the crypto boogieman, now they will use the "ISP as guardian of our morals" threat.
If upheld, it will do alot of damage to the smaller French ISPs. (Which may be what the French phone company wants in the first place...)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Yeah, right. Not to mention off topic messages :)
Estelle (nonstanding what you think of her) has the *right* to sue to protect her "image".
And someone *has* to be responsible for content. Just imagine another case, child porn or whatever. Do you think it should be allowed, since none is responsible ? Even libertarians among us should say no.
It seems that the problem is that you could open an account on the server anonymously. So since justice couldn't sue the poster (who is the real guilty man in this history if you ask me), they sue the hosting site.
Morality: now in France, you can open free sites, people can say what they want as far as they take their responsabilities, but you cannot open anonymous free sites if you don't plan de revue content before it goes online.
(And 400 000 FF is a huge ammount of money for a free site; I understand the motive, but it's one or two orders of magnitude too much imho; Valentin doesn't look like a bad guy after all, just a bit too naive).
From what I've read those were "private" pictures, and I interpret that as pictures of the person, not the model.
> (not to mention wife of Johnny Hallyday, no?)
Daughter, afaik.
>
Maybe it's just me, but I think one person can have many images; She's got a professionnal image (owned by her model agency ?), but that doesn't deny her from having the right for privacy, that is the right to protect her intimate image.
The case is not very clear, but again, I don't think it's that _specific_ case that is really important.
I hate this.
I say tax all religions for the mafiaso they are. That should keep them distracted long enough that we evolve into a Star Trek utopia of the future, rather than some depressing episode of Paradox.
I wish America got the criminals and Australia got the Puritans (and promptly burned them).
"If she weighs less than a duck, she's a witch!"
I can't read french. Can someone tell us poor unilingual slobs the general gist of it?
Cheers.
-- SG
Even so, since when has France *ever* made any major contribution to the world? Oh, right, they helped kick off World War One. And EuroDisney.
And let's not forget the Maginot Line.
"Hey! *This'll* keep the German Army out!"
Cheers.
-- SG
I can't believe this actually happened. I'll bet 10 bucks that the people who made this decision have never seen a computer before the trial.
Altern provided free fast email (POP3/SMTP) until some spamming assholes took advantage of them. They didn't show any ads on the web pages, they didn't add anything to email messages. Their admin pages didn't have any ads either. In fact, there wasn't a single image on any admin page. To open an account, all that was required was a username and a password. They didn't get a single penny.. err centime out of hosting lamers like me.
Just more proof that the world is ruled by assholes and flaming morons.
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scroll down to where it says translation services
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This is like busting a landlord because a tenant committed a crime in an apartment.
Or it could be viewed as being similar to a bar being responsible for people who drink teh the point of extreme intoxication on the premises. Since there is no expectation of privacy when you put up a web page there is nothing stopping the "landlord" from looking in to make sure you're not selling drugs out of your apartment.
If upheld, it will do alot of damage to the smaller French ISPs
Not at all. If anything this will hurt the larger ISPs. Small providers will have no problem keeping an eye on the content of a couple of hundred sites but a large provider (like, say, the phone company) would have to hire dozens of full-time people to monitor 30 000 sites.
should the owner of a bunch of high-rise apartments (or his/her hired security people) go from door to door each day, checking to see that the tenants aren't selling/consuming dope, cheating on their taxes, getting HBO illegally, abusing their kids, downloading warez, carrying illegal handguns, etc?
The difference is that when you rent an apartment there is an expectation of privacy which prevents the owner from doing searches for illegal activity whic is why they are not responsible in this case. If, however, the renter rented a street display window and committed crimes from it then the owner would be responsible. It may be difficult to police but then I suppose the point is that only responsible people should be in the business of providing - not just any dip with a trunk line.
Yeah, I guess he just didn't get teached good as you.
While an American is showing just how stupid he is...
Thanks for slowing the German advance for all of three weeks in WWII
Thanks for deciding to join WWI in the last few months and WWII in Europe in the last two years.
I'm a big fan of "Vichy" France
I'm a big fan of McCarthyism
Wasn't it an Exocet missle fired from a Mirage jet that the French sold to Iraq which almost sank the USS Stark?
Weren't the rest of Iraq's arms largely bought from the US?
Those Tomcat pilots really appreciated your denial to fly through your airspace on their way to bomb the crap out of Libya
I'm sure the civilians that were getting bombed because your president got his cock sucked really appreciated it too.
I don't seem to see where I goofed up.
The word "miseducated" does not exist - perhaps you meant "uneducated" or even "poorly educated."
What ever happened to personal accountability?
Where in the article is the line "and the person who put the page up is getting away scot-free"? Nowhere - that's because it's not happening. The person who put the page up is getting prosectuted, but so is the company that turned a blind eye (or didn't bother to turn an eye at all) to what he was doing with the public and open
Why not blame the phone company then for transmitting the images? It would make just as much sense.
NO, it wouldn't. The service that the phone company provides is one which is protected by privacy laws. Since the telco has no way to monitor what goes over its lines it cannot be held responsible under the law. Obviously something that is made public (like, say a webpage) isn't protected under privacy laws and the provider therefore had the responsibility to ensure that what was being made public was not illegal. It is exactly the same, under the law, as the owner of public advertising boards being responsible to make sure that the person who rents the board does not put something pornographic or hate-based on it.
How do you propose that ISPs should go about policing millions of web pages
How many ISPs do you know of that have millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of subscribers. Not too many - only the big suckers like AOL or MSN. They would suffer, but then they can afford to hire a dozen people to check out web accounts fulltime. The smaller ISPs wouldn't have a problem at all since the vast majority of subscribers don't even have web pages.
Do you have even an inkling of the magnitude of effort that would require?
Of course I do, you like tit. I own and operate an ISP.
Well, I sugest you check out the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive dictionary of the english language, and try to find "miseducate." I wouldn't hold my breath.
Perhaps the Judge isn't familiar with what it takes to maintain your own professional website, let alone trying to maintain and monitor all of their clients sites.
I think it's crazy, and the only logical explanation I can think of is that the judge doesn't quite understand how the deal works.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
Finally, a time and a place to stick it to the Frenchies. Atleast in the US ISPs are protected from such liability by the CDA (the portions that were not struck down).
We certainly have some weird legal judgments,but
we managed to suppress death penalty in contrast
with (most of) the US and that is an achievement
of another magnitude compared to the responsability of a Web site...
They must think the administrators there are some kind of gods if they can watch over all the content on 30,000 sites. That's just crazy. Hopefully this ruling will be reversed, I just can't see how this is 'right', then again, not everything is 'right' either. This is like saying that Rob would be responsible for all the posts on /., which I'm sure is why we have that little ' All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-99 Rob Malda.' disclaimer on the bottom of every page, sigh.
:)
My site contains 100% GPL'd source code
mcox.com - Useful Information re: IT, Running, Fitness, Finance, or Ann Arbor!
I just submitted this to Rob (forgot to this morning). It seems that a Florida abortion clinic is suing Compuserve because anti-choice demonstrators wrote down the license plate numbers of patients visiting the clinic, then used Compuserve to download personal information (telephone, address, etc) about the patients, and proceeded to harass the patients (and sometimes their parents who had not known their daughters had been to the clinic).
Now I'm as pro-choice as the next guy, but public records are public records are public records, whether you look through a folder at the DMV, or whether you do a search through Compuserve. Individuals ought to be able to opt out of having this information available. In fact, they can opt out in Florida, but Florida does not tell people that they can. In Massachusetts, they changed the law recently so that only cops, courts, and private eyes can get the info.
Is it the telephone company's fault when someone gets harassing phone calls? Only if they screwed up and divulged an unlisted number. Why should Compuserve, or especially little ISPs, get in trouble over content?
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
GOVERNMENT RECORDS in the name of STALKING is "free speech".
Oh, I absolutely agree that abusing government records and stalking in the name of free speech is apalling. But should the clinic be suing Compuserve ???
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
The web hosting service should get page owners sign an agreement that if the service is sued over the content of their page, the person responsible for the page will have to pay the damages, as part of the conditions for service.
French people piss me off....
This ruling goes to show that once again when you put a smart attack lawyer, a poor defence lawyer and a technology illiterate judge you are always going to have a result that is stupid.
I just hope that someone manages to over-turn this ruling!
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
French Fries.
Hey ! Those were invented in Belgium !
A Belgian citizen
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
Hey weren't the French slaughtering "civilians" in Vietnam long before the U.S. got the opportunity.
While I'm on my anti-French rant:
1. Thanks for slowing the German advance for all of three weeks in WWII.
2. I'm a big fan of "Vichy" France.
3. Wasn't it an Exocet missle fired from a Mirage jet that the French sold to Iraq which almost sank the USS Stark?
4. Those Tomcat pilots really appreciated your denial to fly through your airspace on their way to bomb the crap out of Libya.
5. We've been appreciating your nearly constant threat of your Security Council veto. I know you must have a buttload of military hardware your itching to sell to Iraq once the sanctions are lifted.
Hey, with allies like you, who needs enemies?
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
Thanks for deciding to join WWI in the last few months and WWII in Europe in the last two years. Hey thanks for throwing the party. My grandfather really enjoyed the party favors being passed out at that little shindig at Normandy.
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
According to this (which cites the Canadian National Defense Ctr), Canada sent 1,086,343 men to war in WWII. U.S. sent 16,112,566 to war. Assuming your "10 times the population comment", its a little obvious that we sent more than our fair share.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004619.html
Are you then telling me that the U.S. sent 15,000,000 men to the Pacific theatre for island hopping campaigns?
Geez.
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
Here's a little excerpt from the book World War II: The War Against Germany and Italy by Charles B. MacDonald (http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/BOOKS/amh/amh-22.htm):
Some indication of the magnitude of the responsibilities they carried is apparent from the fact that late in the war General Bradley as commander of the 12th Army Group had under his command four field armies, 12 corps, and 48 divisions, more than 1,300,000 men, the largest exclusively American field command in U.S. history.
#####################################
Hmmm. It appears the peak strength of Canada was only 780,000. Therefore, the Americans exceeded in a single command the entire Canadian contingent in World War II.
http://www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_16.html
I personally don't want to downplay Canada's participation in World War II, but I'm not going to stand by and let you spew unsubstantiated crap while trying to belittle the U.S's contribution to the war effort.
In fact, I didn't have to look hard to find out this information. I suggest you do so in the future.
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
You are rather thick aren't you?
Not only did I debunk your original assertion, but it is quite clear that I was only referring to a +single+ command.
Geez.
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
... the US was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
Are you saying that the U.K., Canada, remenants of the French, Dutch, Belgian armies, while leaving the vast majority of the heavy material behind at Dunkirk, could have successfully launched the D-Day invasion?
Give me a break, I think the U.S. represented one big friggin straw.
Please drop the Napoleon complex it just makes you look like an idiot.
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
Some guy mirrored the stuff and added a little ironical comment for the model.
http://members.xoom.com/est_hal/
In fact, this is a lawyer case. They are a pool of lawyers that know a bit about the internet (when their colleagues don't) and its "juridic holes", and they make money out of it.
Previously they sued and won a child who had put online a JavaScrip version of Raymond Queneau's "cent mille milliards de poèmes".
Now, my site is stuck here, as ftp's are down too.
:-(
ph1lx - FrenchOpenGroup
Sorry for any errors in this translation. Please support altern.org, as I also heve a web site there. The member who's site is in question should be held responsible, not the provider.
Ok, to clarify the issue: they were NOT nude photos. They were drawings/caricatures of Estelle nude.