FC: French court gives Yahoo three months to yank WWII auction site

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Background:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01232.html
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01189.html
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> From: "Melinda Gierisch" <gieriscm () hotmail com>
> To: declan () well com
> Subject: Yahoo gets 3 months to comply with French anti-racist law
> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 14:48:21 EST
>
> Declan,
>
> See this yet?
>
> Melinda Gierisch
>
> http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=137489
>
> Monday, 20 November 2000 13:08 (ET)
>
> Yahoo gets 3 months to comply with French anti-racist law
> By ELIZABETH BRYANT
>
> PARIS, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- In a ruling with potentially far-reaching 
> implications for the Internet, a French judge Monday gave Yahoo Inc. three 
> months to ban access by French viewers to a Nazi-related auction site, or 
> face a stiff financial penalties.
>
> The judgment puts to rest -- for the moment at least -- seven months of 
> litigation against the U.S. Internet giant, which was accused of breaking 
> French law banning the display and sale of racist and anti-Semitic objects.
>
> But the court case, involving charges that Yahoo displayed more than 1,000 
> Nazi-related objects on its auction site, sparked a fierce debate about 
> free speech and the limits of national jurisdiction over the Internet.
>
> Yahoo lawyer Christophe Pecnard said, "We are going to examine all the 
> possibilities now, and obviously appealing this decision is one of the 
> possibilities."
>
> In his ruling, Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez said a panel of Internet experts 
> believed that a combination of screening Internet users for their name, 
> nationality and place of residence would be 90 percent effective in 
> blocking French from accessing the U.S. auction site. Yahoo has already 
> screened its French site for such access.
> [..]





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