Court: Yahoo! Must Bar French From Nazi Sites

P A R I S, Nov. 20 -- In a landmark ruling with potential implications for Web users around the world, a French court today ordered U.S. Internet giant Yahoo! to bar French users from sites selling Nazi memorabilia.

Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez confirmed a ruling that he firstissued on May 22 ordering Yahoo! to prevent people in France from accessing English-language sites that auction Nazi books, daggers, SS badges and uniforms.

He had stayed the decision pending testimony from threecomputer experts on whether the ruling was technically viable.

Gomez ordered Yahoo! to conform with the findings of thepanel, submitted on Nov. 6, that a filter system registering keywords could block access to the offending sites for 90 percent of French Web surfers.

He gave the California-based company 90 days to enact themeasures and said it would be fined 100,000 francs ($13,000) for each day it exceeded the deadline.

The case was brought to court by the Paris-basedInternational League against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of French Jewish Students. A third French anti-racist group, MRAP, joined the action at a later stage.

Gomez upheld their complaint that Yahoo! had to respectFrench laws prohibiting the exhibition or sale of objects that incite racial hatred.

Global Implications

The ruling could have implications for other big U.S.Internet businesses with global reach, such as the e-retailer Amazon.com and online auctioneer eBay.

Yahoo! had fought the case primarily on the grounds that itsEnglish-language Yahoo.com services are U.S.-governed and that auctions of Nazi material cannot be barred because of U.S. constitutional rights to freedom of speech.

Yahoo!’s French-language portal Yahoo.fr does not host suchauctions, but French surfers, like all others, can switch over to Yahoo.com services with a click of the mouse.

It had also argued that there was no fail-safe way toidentify French surfers and block access.

Three Web security experts told the court earlier this month that a filtering system could work by testing the so-called Internet Service Provider address of Web-surfers as well as the keywords they used.