FC: More on what Yahoo ruling in France means to businesses

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[I've talked about this at some recent conferences: If this is a trend that 
continues, or broadens, it will leave globe-spanning corporations like 
Yahoo at a competitive disadvantage. Since they have physical presence and 
assets in France, they can't afford to ignore a court order. But a smaller, 
more specialized site that's in only one nation can thumb its nose at 
censorhappy foreign officials. In fact, back in 1995-1996, I mirrored on my 
web site material that was illegal in France, Germany, and Zambia, among 
others. No repercussions yet. --Declan]

*********

> From: "Jones, Greg" <greg.jones () qci net>
> To: "'declan () well com'" <declan () well com>
> Subject: RE: What Yahoo ruling in France means, from Silicon Alley Daily
> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 11:54:37 -0500
> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
>
> The implications of this ruling are pretty staggering.
>
> The ruling gives an American company the responsibility for the actions of
> French citizens in accessing material that is proscribed there, but not
> here.  If a book store in New York sells a French national a copy of Mein
> Kampf, and that foreign citizen takes the book back to France, won't this
> ruling be applicable in making the book seller guilty of violating the
> French law forbidding racist speech?  Or more aptly, won't this ruling
> potentially make the landlord of the bookstore guilty of the violation,
> since Yahoo may only be the access to the material, and not it's actual
> retail source.
>
> The most disturbing element of this ruling, to me, is the assignment of
> guilt, of illegality, to Yahoo in the United States for the behavior of
> French nationals in France.  Isn't this a contravention of international law
> in that it attempts to override the sovereignity of American law within our
> own borders?  Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez' jurisdiction must be limited to
> ruling  against any French nationals who are violating their own laws by
> seeking to acquire material that is proscribed there.
>
> By reducio ad absurdum argument, in order to comply with this ruling, we
> must deport and forever bar any French national from entering the United
> States, to ensure that we do not provide them with access to such proscribed
> material.

*********

> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 12:10:16 -0500
> From: Bennett Todd <bet () rahul net>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
> Subject: Re: What Yahoo ruling in France means, from Silicon Alley Daily
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.4i
>
> What I find bizzarrely puzzling is why Yahoo is worrying about
> keywords. Seems like the most reasonable and balanced response
> would simply be to block all connections from .fr sites, and all
> connections from IP addrs whose netblocks can be shown to reside
> within France, to all of yahoo.com. Have the webserver screen on
> whatever http headers it finds with domainnames (e.g. referrer), and
> have a background process (on a separate server, with separate
> internet connectivity) doing reverse DNS lookups on IP addrs of
> connecting clients, and updating router blocks when
> previously-unblocked .fr sites are found. The implementation cost
> should be a lot cheaper than trying to restrict access to only parts
> of the site.
>
> For a fancier handling, instead of simply dropping the traffic at
> the router, they could route it to a server that simply states the
> facts of the case, how France has decided that Yahoo needs to be
> obliged to prevent its citizens from accessing their site,
> presumably for their own good.
>
> -Bennett

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> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 09:04:25 -0800
> From: "Maurice Tate" <TATEM () hdcdojnet state ca us>
> To: <declan () well com>
> Subject: Re: FC: What Yahoo ruling in France means, from Silicon Alley
>         Daily
>
>
> A couple of thoughts:
> -------
> BB:"[These] kinds of decisions, rulings, can be interpreted as the
> beginning of an ID card on the Web, possibly to identify people
> wherever they are and to create a new kind of identification on the
> Internet. And that is something that can be very disturbing in the
> long run.
>
> "Even now, there is a cultural shock between Europeans and Americans
> on freedom of speech. In France we do have rules, regulations and laws
> that prevent such kind of content to be distributed on the Internet.
> -------
> Fine, Professor. But why should I, as an American, care what laws France
> has, or why they have them? They *do not apply to me*. I am not in France,
> nor are Yahoo's servers. It seems to me that the French are responsible for
> the enforcement of their laws, where they apply. In France.
> -------
> BB:"[Freedom of speech] is important to American people, I understand it.
> At one time, I thought we could have a kind of collision between those
> two rules. We are deeply rooted in France on those issues. And what we
> say about Americans, about religion and content, about World War II,
> the Holocaust, the Shoah [is that] they don't know what it's like to
> be invaded on their ground, so to prevent some kind of content to be
> distributed, they don't have the same view.
> --------
> Indeed we don't. Freedom of speech is not just important to Americans,
> it's damn near a religion. I, as an American citizen, manifestly have
> the absolute, god-given right to think and speak as I please, with only
> minor exceptions in cases where that speech might directly cause injury
> to others. And even that exception is limited. The famous example of
> yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre is *not* illegal if there actually
> is a fire, although both cases would probably result in almost identical
> levels of casualties. Truthfulness counts.
>
> The French court is asking me to accept the premise that French citizens
> would be injured by the mere viewing of Nazi artifacts on a website.
>
> I do NOT accept that premise, and I utterly reject the court's supposed
> jurisdiction. Judge Gomez can (in the vernacular) take a flying leap.
> He may, if he chooses, order French citizens not to access the "offensive"
> site, and penalize them for disobedience, but he has *no* power over the
> site itself, nor over me.
>
> Admittedly, the US is a big perveyor of the questionable itself.
> American courts have an annoying habit of extending their jurisdiction
> to foreign persons and places, as for example in the Lockerbie bombing.
>
> That's wrong too, in my opinion. But perhaps more understandable, since
> American citizens were killed in that attack.
>
> Who exactly was killed by viewing a "classic 1939 Hitler Youth Dagger"?
>
> Yours, etc -
>
> M.D. Tate

*********

> From: "D Whitehorn-Umphres" <dawumail () progarts com>
> To: <declan () well com>
> Subject: RE: What Yahoo ruling in France means, from Silicon Alley Daily
> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 23:19:00 -0800
> X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0)
> Importance: Normal
>
> What?!?  Boy, they's sho' nuff sophisticated, que no?
>
> French Weasel-Unit says, "And what we say about Americans, about
> religion and content, about World War II, the Holocaust, the Shoah [is
> that] they don't know what it's like to be invaded on their ground, so
> to prevent some kind of content to be distributed, they don't have the
> same view."
>
> Oh, right.  Except for: the First Nations peoples, Americans descended
> from slaves, the Irish, a dozen religions, Jews (duh), Mexicans in what
> is now New Mexico, everyone in the South (black and white), Texans
> (black, white, brown, etc.), ... Gaahhhh...they just don't get it, or us
> (USA).
>
> If I only spoke French I'm sure I'd be able to come up a some other word
> than "idiot" for this kind of idiocy. (Irony intentional.)  Culture is
> what people do, not what some group of people-hating academics say it
> should be.  Fortunately for the 'net, these people will get routed
> around in a jillion ways in about two seconds.
>
> On a more serious subject, if I sell some German a collection of GIFs
> with "Mein Kampf" steganographically embedded within it, what's the
> story?
>
> -D Whitehorn-Umphres
>
> p.s.  Thanks for your good work and excellent writing.  It's a rare week
> when I don't find something that needs forwarding to all my friends
> (those who don't already subscribe).


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