nettime's_roving_reporter on 25 Jul 2000 02:03:02 -0000 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
<nettime> Can France Ban Auction of Nazi-items on Yahoo!? |
[Since Yahoo! is located in the US, the French court cannot ask the items to be removed, it can only demand that access from France (or for French citizens not matter where they are?) is blocked. It seems very complicated to be an ISP in France.] Yahoo! pleads its case over Nazi auctions By Jane Wakefield, ZDNet (UK) July 24, 2000 1:34 PM PT URL: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2606851,00.html Yahoo! puts its case to the high court in Paris following attempts from anti-racist groups to have its American auction site blocked to French users. The case brought by the Union of Jewish Students and the International League Against Racism claims that Yahoo!'s auction site is an offence to the collective memory of France because of the large collection of Nazi memorabilia available -- 1163 items at last count. French law prevents the sale of objects with racist overtones. Yahoo! claims it does its best to "comply with the laws in the countries that we do business with", but in a report submitted to the court Monday, claims it is "technically impossible" to comply with the blocking. "In order to render access impossible we would have had to identify the geographical location of individuals, identify whether material was racist and then block access," says a Yahoo! spokeswoman. "The report, with the backing of independent consultancy EdelWeb concludes this is impossible." Fines of up to £100,000 a day The high court has until Aug. 11 to consider the evidence submitted by Yahoo!. If the court finds against Yahoo! the portal could face fines of up to £100,000 a day. Yahoo!'s French site has already blocked access. The case bears remarkable similarities to a case brought in Germany in 1995 against CompuServe in which the former head of CompuServe was accused of aiding and abetting the spread of child pornography. Yaman Akdeniz, head of CyberRights & CyberLiberties is shocked that courts are still showing a lack of understanding about how it is impossible to govern the Internet via domestic laws. "If the French court understood the Internet it would realize that it is technically impossible to block French users from accessing its content," he says. "What they are doing is applying national laws to an international medium. The nature of the Internet needs to be taken into account." Akdeniz thinks the outcome is obvious. "As far as I understand it will go against Yahoo!," he says. He believes there will only be one move for Yahoo! to make if the case does not go in its favor. "Yahoo! will leave France, there will be nothing else they can do." Yahoo! believes the case has significance to the future of Internet jurisdiction. "It you follow it through to its logical conclusion, then every site would be subject to the rules of every country it has a presence in," says the spokeswoman. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net