<nettime> Yahoo Ruling: "Don't Roll Your Eyes..."

["geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>]

from: "Xeni Jardin" <xeni.jardin@siliconalleyreporter.com>
date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 14:34:07 -0200

(reposted on nettime with permission of xeni jardin)

http://www.siliconalleydaily.com/issues/sar11232000.html#Headline6975

Don't Roll Your Eyes at the French This Time: What the French Ruling
Against Yahoo Means for the Internet Masses
November 23, 2000
by Kirin Kalia (kirin.kalia@siliconalleyreporter.com)

Any Internet business planning to expand beyond the U.S. border cannot
afford to ignore the French's court's latest ruling against Yahoo. And
those that only dream about international expansion but believe in the
freedom of the Net should take note.

A French judge ruled this week that Yahoo's American website must
comply with French laws that ban racist speech even though Yahoo.fr is
already in line with those laws. Two French anti-racism groups, which
filed the suit against Yahoo earlier this year, believe French people
should not be allowed to access Yahoo.com auctions, which include
sales of Hitler and Nazi memorabilia and documents, or any American
Yahoo site with Nazi information.

In May, Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez decided Yahoo was liable, but
postponed his order to see if filtering users based on their
citizenship was feasible with current technology. It's not easy or
efficient-the expert panel said filtering would work 70 percent of the
time-but it can be done. And so, as of the ruling this Monday, Yahoo
has three months to install a keyword-based filtering system to block
French citizens from accessing any Yahoo site with Nazi material. The
consequence if it doesn't: fines of more than 100,000 francs (nearly
$13,000) per day.

Ebay has already agreed to use a keyword filter and probably won't get
sued. In a similar situation, Amazon last year stopped selling English
translations of Hitler's Mein Kampf to German citizens following local
pressure.

The Yahoo case is more than just another case of those crazy French
government mandarins run amok, the ones who want to call e-mail
courrier electronique and start-ups jeunes pousses. In fact, the
ruling's implications extend far beyond France's borders, as many have
already pointed out. "The worry is more repressive regimes will use
this case as a precedent for their activity," British lawyer Jonathan
Armstrong told the Wall Street Journal.

And while Yahoo will certainly appeal the decision, with a resolution
possibly years away, one of France's top technology policy thinkers
shared his thoughts on the Yahoo case and what it might portend for
the future. Bernard Benhamou, a professor at the elite Institut
d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, believes a global discussion is needed
about the very local ruling that happened this week. Excerpts from the
interview follow.


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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.
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"[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.

"[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.

"The fact is that we can also be pushed to go too far in the reshaping
of the Internet.If we act too harshly, too drastically, and we take
drastic measures on the Internet itself, something that can modify the
architecture of the Web and the Internet itself, that is dangerous in
the long run.

"...We [the French] wanted to have an international opinion [on the
Yahoo case], not just French. The ruling was very cautious, very
prudent about the consequences of this ruling. At first he [Judge
Jean-Jacques Gomez] was thinking it was a very small case. But he
began to be aware after a time that it would be an international one
with global repercussions, not just local ones.

"The first [repercussion] is the idea of the users, that they first
need to be declared, that in the long run there will be a passport for
Internet users. That can be a real problem of a system. The nature of
the Internet itself could be changed.


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It's their own local victory, not a global victory for the future of
the Internet itself.
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"The other one is the global technical problem it can create. And if
it can be solved by a technical solution, it can be dangerous.

".A few years before, Americans and Europeans had a fight about the
way to deal with cultural content. Americans were saying cultural
content was also a commodity like every other commodity. We believed
and we believe cultural cinema and literature don't have to be treated
the same way as food or industry goods. And so we have a differing of
opinion, which was cultural and historical.We do not have the same
history, same culture. We don't want people.to spread such kinds of
content. It's logical because we know what kind of consequences it can
have on public opinion.

"In this [way], I understand the judge. [However] the way he acted on
it, the way he wanted the company to give IDs.this can be dangerous in
the long run.

".For them [anti-racism groups] it's a victory, but they don't want to
analyze the global picture. It's their own local victory, not a global
victory for the future of the Internet itself.

"[Answers question if a compromise that satisfies both sides is
possible today]. I don't think so.The problem is there will be a need
for a global, international discussion about those subjects, but now
it's only local..What I think, what I hope, is that such kinds of
issues, problems, cases can bring people to the same table. Like in
the past, there have been international regulations..But we need to
have international discussions, maybe the U.N., maybe [involving]
other places. There is a need for a global discussion, not only a
local one."

Feedback: letters@siliconalleyreporter.com

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