Yahoo! rejects French court ban on Nazi sites

[Hope Ehn Dennis Ehn <ehn...>]

Protests or boycotts, anyone? Apparently the head of Yahoo shows more
"respect for the Internet" than for the Jewish people! (This may be
somewhat off-topic for a music mailing list, but no more so than the
previous discussion of online sales of the "Protocols of the Elders of
Zion.")

Hope Ehn           <ehn (at) world(dot)std(dot)com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
16 JUNE 2000

PARIS (Reuters) - The co-founder of Yahoo!  Inc., Jerry Yang, has rejected
a French court order to stop Web surfers in France gaining access to sales
of Nazi memorabilia which appear on one of the Web sites it hosts. "We are
not going to change the content of our sites in the United States just
because someone in France is asking us to do so," Yang told French daily
Liberation in an interview published Friday. 

A Yahoo.com auction site puts hundreds of Nazi or neo-Nazi, and Ku Klux
Klan objects up for auction each day, including films, swastikas,
uniforms, daggers, photos and medals. Under French law, it is illegal to
exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones. 

A French court last month ordered California-based Yahoo! to report back
on July 24 to explain the measures it had taken to prevent the French from
participating in the sales. Yang said he was not going to take any steps.
"Asking us to filter access to our sites according to the nationality of
Web surfers is very naive," he said. 

Lawyers representing Yahoo had told the court that it was not technically
possible for the company to scan the content of all the sites carried on
its service. "We have a lot of respect for national sovereignty, we also
have a lot of respect for the Internet," Yang said. He said Yahoo!  did
not control the Internet. 

Yahoo! has previously said the French court had set a precedent which
endangered the development of the Internet across the globe, and appealed
to those who had started the court action to seek "suitable solutions" to
the problem. The suit was started by the International League against
Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of French Jewish Students. 


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