This issue is pretty interesting for a number of reasons: (1) Its pretty amazing that a French judge would have the gall to pass an (impossible to comply with) injunction against a US internet company -- and fine them to boot.

But, and I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me here, (2) I'm not too impressed with a law that makes it illegal to buy and sell items that could have a real historical significance. Maybe I'm underestimating the emotions involved, but this seems like a bad example of sentimental reactionary politics. I mean, are museums allowed to buy these things?

The broader problem, be it with France, Germany (remember Germany and CompuServe?) or anywhere else, is that we seem to confuse a belief in the goodness of freedom of the exchange of information and ideas between individuals with the freedom of commercial services to propagate anything they wish regardless of national laws, cultures or sensibilities.

Perhaps so, but Yahoo! isn't doing this. This isn't a matter of cultural hegemony. Yahoo! doesn't permit auctions of Nazi paraphernalia on its French site, out of respect to French law and French sensibilities. This case is about what happens on the US auction site, since French citizens can access (and presumably bid on) auctions there for such paraphernalia. These items are quite legal to sell in the US but illegal to sell in France.

Without national firewalls, there just is no way to prevent French citizens from accessing a US site, with the Internet as presently constituted.

Let me suggest that the onus should be on the French citizens who are breaking French laws in France. Consider that if a French citizen bids on and wins a US auction for Nazi paraphernalia, he or she then has the problem of actually receiving the illegal merchandise. It is preventing the physical act of importation that the French should focus on. And that's their responsibility, not Yahoo!'s.

-Ed

The Act of Supremacy 1559 states unequivocally that "all usurped and foreign power and authority . . . may forever be clearly extinguished, and never used or obeyed in this realm . . . no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate . . . shall at any time after the last day of this session of Parliament, use, enjoy or exercise any manner of power, jurisdiction, superiority, authority, pre-eminence or privilege . . . within this realm."

Now we see that these same laws will let tiny businesses and gov'ts of other nations sprinkle iron filings into our e-economy and screw up local business and cost jobs with blame falling on politicians who want ot get re-elected badly. Finally corporate pressure will start demanding a relaxing of these stupid laws. And maybe we, the common user, can benefit too.
Never click on any of my links. You have been warned.

You find it puzzling that I would extend free speech protection to Nazism, which suppressed free speech. I find it absolutely incomprehensible that you could live in an region so affected by tolitarian reigns and apparently learn nothing from them. You claim to fight oppression and racism by using the tools of oppression and consorship, and see no hypocrisy in your stance.

Certainly wounds still exist. But you don't treat wounds by covering them up and pretending they never happened.

Never ascribe to maliciousness that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Yes it should, you reap Naziism if you sow limitations on free speach.

"They were always excellent at flattening other countries (Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Irak, etc) but were they ever flattened themselves. And by flattened I mean literally flattened."

Yes. Find a picture of Atlanta or Savanah in 1865. As for why we haven't been invaded in the past century, aleutians aside, it's called a navy. Unless Canada or Mexico (speaking of french imperialism) decide to invade us, you gotta get through our navy. You french should appreciate this since the Brits kicked Boney's ass due mainly to their navy.

Speaking of Boney, what about Napoleonic items? A buddy of mine has a Klingenthal sabre from 1809 with the imperial crest on the hilt. Some frog cuirasser could well have slaughtered innocent spaniards, germans, russians, austrians, greeks, arabs, brits, itallians, etc., etc. with it. Where did my buddy procure this sword? Why france of course, you don't seem to care much when it's your own power mad dictator slaughtering people, but reminders of your collaborationist past are just to much for your tender sensibilities I suppose.

Such high moral ground from a country that still hires mercenaries so it's own citizens don't have to pay for it's boneheaded foriegn policy.... or help us flatten Iraq. Speaking of the Legion, it was a virtual retirement camp for ex-Waffen SS troopers after WWII, whats a little memorabilia when you get real Statschuffel troops?

-=RR=-

This may have an effect on Yahoos ability to make peering agreements with French telecom companies
___
GNUTella: Because the client is the server.

Agreed, I hope Yahoo tells them to get stuffed, and that this serves an example to overseas sites threatened by stupid US laws.

An "world government" would not fix this - it would just make it worse. The Europeans will want anything related to nazis banned, the US will want anything related to anonymously sharing files and encryption banned, Australia will lobby for everyone to use censorware (god bless my fucked-up country), moslem countries will want anything derogatory about their religion to be banned, China will throw fits everytime someone mentions their government in less than glowing terms. I wouldn't wish that job on my worst enemy!

Why can't people be tolerant of other people's beliefs? Yes, even neonazis - otherwise you are just emulating them. That's right - the French government/legal system is emulating the very group they are trying to condemn - how's that for irony?

P.S. My favourite quote:

Under French law, it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones.

So a swastika badge and a white hood have "racist overtones". What happens when the next cult uses a flower or a tree? - I guess we'll have to ban those as well.

"There are only two things that are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former."

This is not about nazi related things, this is about making money with Nazi goodies. You just have to understand what it is to be under the control of a racist country for 5 years with no freedom of speech, freedom of press, etc... Also 6 millions peoples have died from those ideas. Even if the ideas are bad the French govt allow them, just not the sell of goodies.

Just remember that with money you can gain power. The French govt don't want to have an another Nazi country taking over an another one and impose their *freedom* of speech.

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

And all of this is truer 10 times over and more for religion. The unbelievers are brutally slain in the name of the assassin's preferred God(s). Any writings or speech or even thoughts that is counter to the local faith is met with similar burtalization.

Six million were killed by Nazis and Nazi believers. But hundreds of millions were killed in the name of various religions. Which is the more dangerous philosophy again?

How can you condemn Nazism more than religion when the former has killed less than the latter?

Oh that's right, you're one of "them". And your religion tells you you're right (absolutely) in persecuting others. Your belief controls your definitions of right and wrong. Therefore the belief, naturally, can never define itself to be wrong under any circumstances. See the power play and the mind control tactics here?

Go ahead. Persecute me and prove my point. Moderate me down and oppress the free speech you all claim to support. Tolerance was never meant for those you disagree with, right? Just a trendy buzzword that has little meaning when it really matters.

Do I expect you to say you believe in Nazism? No. But if you truly support freedom and tolerance, then you must say that you support my right to support Nazism or the KKK or Grape Nuts or whatever you may not personally agree with.
Never click on any of my links. You have been warned.

Never ascribe to maliciousness that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Once again (I am writing this one more time) this is not about free speech, this is about free commerce. In France you have a Nazi-like political party called "FN" or "Front Nationale", can't do more than that to allow free speech, existing for more than 20 years and grabbing around 10% in the recent elections.

This is about free commerce: do the US have to let their citizens buy drugs from Netherland, even if it's legal there, because otherwise we would take over their free speech?

Do we have to let pedophiliacs buy or sell nude kid picture or movies because otherwise we would take over their free speech??

This is about selling goodies and making money from immoral goodies.

Yeah you are right we should let Yahoo sell drugs and kid porn.

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

Hate-speech is sometimes not less bad than hate-crime.

This is something you will have to explain to me, as it appears totally illogical. Speech itself should not be a crime, and the very term "hate crime" is meaningless to me.

Hate speech: I hate people who drive slow in the fast lane because it slows me down. I hate fat men because they smell bad. I hate jews because they are genetically inferior. Have I hurt anyone? Maybe their feelings. Have I commited a crime? maybe in France or Germany.

Hate crime: I kill a jew because I hate jews. Did I commit a crime? Of course, but it was not hating jews - it was murder.

The term hate crime was created so that certain crimes could be dealt with more harshly _because_ of racial or religious implications.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

1st. The anger involved wasn't immediate and transient. It's something that has been carefully built for years before use.

2nd. The crime is more likely to be repeated because a Nazi honestly thinks he is on a holy crusade to protect his own kind from an alien invader of sorts.

However what happens when 200 black churches ( in theory this doesn't exist. In practices American blacks and whites attend different temples. especially in the south ) are burned to the ground in one year ? It's considered an organized hate crime and someone caught for one is treated almost as a serial arsonist or a conspirator on the others. This stuff can't generally be proven but you can sometimes prove that the color of the congregation was the motive

and don't get me started on the Sphinx. The infamous "broken nose" was shot off with mortar fire by French or Italian troops because a broad flat nose on such a huge and ancient monument implies something they were not willing to consider. In theory this is an act of vandalism on par with painting a mustache on Mona Lisa ( never happened ). The racial implications add a lot to the crime however. The perpetrators wanted to claim the Sphinx and by extension the Pyramids as being the creation of Europeans or failing that space aliens. Nobody can claim a great engineer as inferior or less than human so destroy the evidence of that engineering and you can get by.

No, it's probably more widely known than you think. Hitler also went after Catholics, union members, communists, gypsies, homosexuals, slavic people, retarded people and of course jews, among others. It's pretty safe to say that he wasn't a very nice guy in general. Can you say "straw man?" I thought so.

That was the point. It was only a Jewish Holocaust because the Nazis found more Jews. If any of the other groups were a large portion of the areas Germany conquered then it would be there Holocaust instead.

Nazis really just hated everybody. In the End they even hated themselves ( It's alleged that Hitler killed himself )

--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ? there are no underscores '_' in my E-Mail address.

Imagine a world in which the mediocrity of what we see is dictated not by a single confused entity, but by a committee. A committee of nations is a bad plan. Especially when it seems that there is very little communication. All the diplomacy I have seen to date has been everyone yelling,” Do it my way now."

My professor used to say that governments are like children. Now, imagine the web controlled by fascist third graders

The problem whith this is that the internet has become as ubiquitous as roads. Think about the banks, telephone networks, etc - France couldn't cut itself off from the internet even if the government wanted to. Someone would get a satellite link or fibre to another country and start selling access anyway.

There's obviously some content which is accepted a illegal (child pr0n, evidence of crimes) but making something the government doesn't like illegal to view is ridiculous. They can stop it being hosted in France, they can make it illegal to import stuff but trying to stop it from being available is going to cause huge headaches for everyone.

Take my country (Australia). The government, in their wisdom, made it illegal to host smut. Did they make it illegal to view or to be broadcast to Australia? No, they aren't that stupid. In fact, if you go to www.teenagers.com.au you'll find an "Astralian" pr0n site host in the US.

The problem here is the French government's laws. How do they expect to stop information being available from other countries, when it isn't illegal there? It might work with e-bay but what about an actual neonazi web page hosted in Russia or Barbados? If this catches on there'll be chaos.

> So a swastika badge and a white hood have "racist overtones". What happens when the next cult uses a flower or a tree?
You really think nazi are the kind of guys to use a little flower as their emblem ? Then, symbols are symbols. The racist party that plagued France for long (and that is now defunct) was using a flame as their emblem. This particuliar flame was recognizable as their emblem, not as some sort of "generic flame clipart".
Of course, some people will always think that everyone must be free to say anything, some other will always think some ideas are too dangerous to be propagated.

> Why can't people be tolerant of other people's beliefs? Yes, even neonazis - otherwise you are just emulating them. That's right - the French government/legal system is emulating the very group they are trying to condemn - how's that for irony?
If the french were really emulating nazis in this case, agents would have been sent to capture the peoples from Yahoo! and the one who are selling these "object with racist overtones", and to bring them in extermination chamber.

Most of slashdotters are americans. You american havn't the slightest idea of what a full blown modern war in your very own country is, particularly one with atrocities like the one practiced by nazis. You didn't even realize the "never again!" feeling most europeans have about these nefarious idea. Maybe you need an Hitler in your very own country to catch it.

Just know that this is not any inoffensive ideology that people are right to have: it's the infamous dogma that led the world to the first imprescriptible crimes of its history.
Remember it.

You do realize that your sneer against a "mere money institution" carries overtones of both of the great waves of totalitarianism to sweep over Europe this century, don't you?

One of the Nazis' standard lines of anti-Semitic propaganda was that the Jews poisoned the nation with "soulless commerce", and I need hardly comment on the Communist view of free-market transactions.
/.
If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.

Stop trolling, okay ?
sigmentation fault

Maybe I don't bear these predjudices because I was never in a war and didn't have my family and friends killed by a fascist regime. I guess I would probably feel different if this were the case.

There are two reasons to uphold freedom of speech for a holocaust denier and similar people.

Firstly, their ideas should be known - not just spouted to a secret cadre of believers, but publicly debated and shown for the lies they are. And if some of their ideas are true, we need to know that too - the history books don't always tell the whole story. Call me an idealist but I think the public should know the truth, especially about things like this.

Secondly, how do you restrict such actions to a particular group. Today it is the neonazis, tomorrow a religious right group may gain power and anti-christian speech will be banned. Then congregations of other religions will be stopped. If the slide into governmental censorship and control continues you end up with another fascist regime. This is an extreme case, but the more restrictive a government is the harder it is to stop.

Then there was this kissing noise and the sound of a really loud slap. When the train came out of the tunnel, Claudia Schiffer and the Irishman were sitting as if nothing had happened and the Frenchman had his hand against his face as he had been slapped there.

The Frenchman was thinking: "The Irish fella must have kissed Claudia Schiffer and she missed him and slapped me instead."

Claudia Schiffer was thinking: "The French fella must have tried to kiss me and actually kissed the Irishman and got slapped for it."

And the Irishman was thinking: "This is great. The next time the train goes through a tunnel I'll make another kissing noise and slap that French ass again."

Thinking like this is why you always lose in the end, right?

You're really onto something there. USA did not invade Russia and therefore lost WWII?

Guess *I* slept during history class...

All opinions are my own - until criticized

we let them [USSR] have the Eastern part of Europe (as well as Berlin - which we were in first)

Why is it that the contemporary USA, with a genuine WW2 record to be proud of, still has to claim credit for "saving the Limey's Asses", giving Berlin to the Soviets etc. ? Even now Hollywood can't make a U-boat movie without changing the story from the British to the Americans.

Yes, America (and mainly the 8th Air Force) was a huge help to the Allies in WW2. OTOH, if America had kept out of it entirely, Stalin would have turned up in Paris by about 1950 and I (a Brit) would probably be living in the offshore Edward VIII theme park and home for retired Nazis.

America "gave" Berlin to the Soviets ? Maybe geography is different on your planet.

This .sig is here to make you think, "Him again?"

His quote:
Otto: Well, would you like to know what you'd be without us, the good ol' U.S. of A. to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire, that's what. So don't call me stupid, lady. Just thank me!

"Am I paying for this abuse or is it extra?" - Edmund Blackadder

Jeroen

Sad, but all to true nowadays. It seems like ever since America had its little Vietnam "incident" it has been hell-bent on trying to prove its national power by rushing into every "trouble spot" with as many troops and weapons as possible, no matter what the real situation is.

Hence we will usually deride those who don't believe in these liberties with the same fervor as we do.

Well I don't think there is a need to be calling names and I didn't read any posts saying that people getting slaughtered by the Nazis was humorous. The comment seems to be a slam to the French government, probably not a very insightful one seeing how Hitler's army was at the time was the most devastating army on earth.

BTW, how about you all think about it for a second . Would you be as lenient if someone in North Vietnam was using Yahoo to auction off American GI dogtags and other trophies and memorabilia from the Vietnam war? I would think not.

Actually I would have no problem with this and my father is a Vietnam vet. If they want to sell stuff like that, who cares? My Dad might get upset but he would get over it in less then a minute. Bad example I guess.
Molog

So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!

Well, well well... Let's all play the Pointless Accusations of Evil Game. In this case, it's a lot easier because the discussion is about Nazism in the first place...

I am Jewish. My wife's family came from Austria (her father was lucky enough to get out as a kid in 1938). I think the French court's ruling is dead wrong.

The answer to hateful speech is more speech.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin

You mean the good old, "I surrender! Here's my daughter"?

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

• France bosses U.S. around.
• U.S. ignores France.
• France declares war on U.S. (even clones Napoleon to lead the French armies)
• U.S. conquers France within twelve-and-a-half minutes, changes the official language of France to Lojban, and gives the land to Canada free of charge, on the condition that the French language be outlawed in Quebec.

--LordEq
"And the tree was happy... but not really."

I found your argument very thin. You say: today there are in Romania no Jews, before the war were around 1.000.000 so they all get killed in the war. You fail to take account the 55 years that passed from the war.

FYI, before ww2 there were in Romania around the same number of Germans as Jews (around 1.000.000) Today they are (almost) all gone. Does this means they have been all killed in the Holocaust?!

The answer is more simple: the economical conditions in Romania were so bad that Germans emigrated in Germany. And you may say they were forced by the communist regime. Well, the sad truth is that most of them left just after the communist regime felt (i.e. after 1989). By their own will.

Turning back to Jews fate in ww2. You may not speak of Romania as a whole in ww2 for the simple fact that Romania has lost a third of its population just at the beginning of ww2. The North Transylvania was under Hungarian regime. Maybe it's worth mentioning that Jews in that part of the country were sent to german concentrations camps. What fate they had there, it's horrifing to mention. On the contrary, Jews in the Southern Transylvania, under Romanian regime were not. That's true also for Jew population in the southern romanian province Muntenia and in the eastern Moldavia.

On the contrary, the fate of Jews in Bassarabia (extreme east province of Romania, today independent state Republic of Moldova) was terrible. For that, the ww2 Romanian regime is to blame. Basically they were deported over the Nistru river (eastern natural border of Bassarabia). Where they faced famine and persecutions, most of them perishing in terrible conditions.

Why Bassarabia had a different status from the rest of Romania? Because it was lost by Romania in 1939 to the URSS and in 1941 occupied by romanian troops and hence it had an occupied teritory status.

That's all I know of Jews fate in Romania during ww2. I may be very well a victim of Romanian propaganda (after all I live in Romania) but before accusing me of that try to find out the facts before making any affirmations.

What I know as a fact is that Ceausescu's regime (1965-1989) had a "nice" policy of selling emigration visas for Jews. If they would been eradicated 20 yers before, how could this been possible?

The story about Germans in Romania is relevant for countering your opinions: you seem to beleive that jews were forced en masse outside the border, I tend to believe (at least a significant part of them) just left out of good will.

Please ask any romanian originating Jew if s/he wishes to come back. Or any romanian originating German. Do you want to live in Romania? I suppose they just WANT to live outside Romania, and not because of today persecutions...

The German example is also a relevant on what happens when a populations migrates: other people start coming in their place. It's not about razing villages or cemeteries, is about using them. You seem to want people to keep untouched the past relicves. Well, that is just not heppening: nor in Romania, not in every place on Earth. Today generations just want ot live their lives.

I am 100% romanian and still I want to leave this country (Romania) for good. But I won't start crying "i'm forced out of the country". Half of my ethnic romanians friends live now in Canada, French or Sweden.

About loosing roots: I don't really understand your point. Romania is a very young country. Even younger than USA. I myself - 100% romanian ethnic living in Romania right now - cannot trace my ancestors before my grandparents. All I know are general regions of where they originated, and two of their families crossed border in order to live in Romania. Why? Because of ethnical persecutions. Yet I don't start whining that I can't find their cemeteries near lake Ohrida or near Brasov.

It's as simple as that: this century had witnessed great migrations and that's a fact not only for Jews, but for the majority of (Eastern) European peoples.

Oh, yes, there is still a small jewish comunity in Romania too. And it's continuing to diminish because most youngsters just emigrate. I personally know a jewish originating young woman which emigrated a few years ago in Germany.

1. It's hard to find any Jew vilage in Romania history. Cause: (at least in 19th century, when the big Jew migration toward Romania took place) there were a law forbidding them to do agricol works. Consequence: they concentrated into cities.
2. I can direct you to 2 jewish cemeteries in Bucharest (where I was born). From my window in my adoptive town Timisoara I can see the towers of two jewish temples (sinagogues). Do you want to send you a picture?
3. If you really insist visiting Romania even once, maybe you will pay a visit to the jewish theatre in Bucharest.

The French laws against Nazism are very nice, but they fail to answer the real problem. Which is not Nazism, but hatred between groups of people. How can one determined individual (party, secret service, whatever) may create such a state of spirit? In theree steps:

1. Identify the target population. Find something to differentiate those people from the majority. This may be race (Jews/Germans), ethnic appartenance (Albanians/Serbs), social position (burgeoise/proletar) or even glasswearers/everybody else in communist Cambodgia.
2. Demonize them. "The jews are enslaving us. They steal our work" or "Albanian are driving us (Serbs) out of Kossovo" or whatever.
3. Present reality deformed or even invent facts to support your demonizing operation. "Albanians have killed two (serbs) families yesterday". Censor any refference to your own condamnable actions.

The bad news are that Nazis or Milosevici are not the onlyt one practicing the above techniques. You may detect the same pattern even in the above posting (romanians "erradicating" jews during ww2).

You'll detect it even in CNN reports about the war in Jugoslavia. The Serbs were all the time criminals, so we are free to bomb them at will.

How can we protect against this? Censorship is not the way to go. I think the only way to dismantle such a scheme is to be extremely accurate on facts. We should try give anyone the exact facts and all the facts, from both sides.

I suggest to that Frenchs not to try to censor Yahoo, but to build a comprehensive web site with informations on what really happened during ww2. And not only concentrated on Jews fate, but on each european people which suffered in the conflict.

"You Shall Not Subject Your God to Market Forces!" -Commandment of Om

Under US laws you can't sell or buy drugs. But you can do that in Netherland, so it must be a free speech issue for the Netherlanders not to be able to sell drugs to the US. Give them the right to sell drugs to the US.

Or you can also let the pedophiliacs buy nude kids picture or kids porno, hey if you don't do so you get over their freedom of speech

You don't know the French people but I assure you they (including all the geeks, pro free-speech and open-source advocates) agree with this law. We don't like seeing US people making money from the grave of millions.

French They have lost their freedom of for 5 years during WWII, comparing that the Slashdot against M$ case is pityful. But they support free speech and have a Nazi-like political party since more than 20 years. It's not the ideas, it's the symbols that are not allowed.

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

P.S. And, unless you're over 50, please stop acting like you've personally had the s.s. storming down your doors. You are no more a victim than I, no matter where you live.

"You Shall Not Subject Your God to Market Forces!" -Commandment of Om

>I think it's much more dangerous to allow partial exposure to certain ideas
Yes. Is a nazi emblem sell on an auction web site (web site who is yahoo.fr, not yahoo.com) a "full" or "complete" exposure to nazi ideas ? The LICRA, (who is not the French gov't, but an anti-racism organization, totally independant from gov't and presidence) find it damn partial. Thus, dangerous. Like you, isn't it ?

>Even worse, technically under French law, you can kiss goodbye any chance of buying Hegel, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Twain, or any numerous others with 'questionable' content.
I'd like to know where do you have found that. I do have books from Nietzsche and Mark Twain in my library. Where have you seen they are "interdits". You can buy them, without problem. You can even buy really questionnable books, you can even buy Mein Kampf, but you'll have to seach it, it's not placed on outstanding locations. Of course you can, historians needs material to work on.

"You Shall Not Subject Your God to Market Forces!" -Commandment of Om

Eh, the Germans and the French did not undergo the Holocaust-- the Jews did.

Me

Eh, the Germans and the French did not undergo the Holocaust-- the Jews did.

By your argument, then, anyone of jewish descent living in the USA is not an American, but a Jew. Maybe you should not confuse ethnicity with nationality.

From France and the Final Solution:

The most infamous of these mass arrests was the so-called grande rafle du Vél' d'Hiv' which took place in Paris on the 16th and 17th July 1942. The Vélodrome d'Hiver was a large indoor sports arena situated on the rue Nélaton near the Quai de Grenelle in the 15th arrondissment of Paris. In a vast operation codenamed vent printanier, the French police rounded up 12, 884 Jews from Paris and its surrounding suburbs. These were mostly adult men and women but there were around 4,000 children amongst them. The rounding up was made easier by the large number of files on Jews complied and held by Vichy authorities since 1940. The French police, headed by René Bousquet, were entirely responsible for this operation and not one German soldier assisted.

The Holocaust was the plan by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews. Not to exterminate the French, nor to exterminate the Germans. I think what I wrote was clear enough.

Me

Again it's not about free speech, it's about making money off the most dramatic moment of this 20th century. French allow all ideas, even Nazi-like idea. There is even a Nazi-like political party in France called "FN" that exist now for more than 20 years winning about 10% of votes.

This is just like not allowing nude kid pictures or movies to be sold. Even if drugs are allow in Netherland, this is not a free speech issue not to for them to sell drugs to the US.

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

Then who is?

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

Would a sane sysadmin let any luser get the root passwords to his systems? Now would you let any of those lusers carry a gun?

Actualy, no, I don't remember the "French Purity Laws". Can someone give me a quick rundown? This sounds interesting. Does it have something to do with keeping the French launguage pure and unpolluted? That's my first guess....

Yes, in effect the French government polices additions to the language. Every so often they issue an edict banning the use of some (generally) Anglo-French word. In practice this only affects state media and the more conservative private media companies.

They also limit English-language films and pop music

Mark Austin

---- For Whigs admit no force but argument

"Technically anything is possible, but Politicaly? NO!"
___
GNUTella: Because the client is the server.

*cough* Helms-Burton *cough*

This, in case you didn't know, is a US law which allows action to be taken against foreign companies which trade with Cuba. I don't know the exact details, but it's essentially a blatant attempt to impose US foreign policy on other nations.

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

Can you just understand why we can't accept some people making money on a subject so many have die to fight against?

No. Living in Denmark, which was also occupied, I'm still unable to agree with banning the sale of historical artifacts, especially since it's such a self-centered position: You won't see any French court having a problem with the sale of Stalin, Mao or Idi Amin memorabilia, even though these dictators were even worse.

"These bad people were bad to us, so you can't collect their stuff. Go ahead and collect stuff from all the other bad people, as long as they were bad far away".

"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
    - 'K' in Men in Black.

We must help him against censors, after all, nazis are just peoples with a PR problem, not really bad guys"

I don't think there's any question that they were really bad guys. But all people have the right to think and to speak their own opinions (at least in the political arena) without government interference. It's only when people take action on such horrible ideas that government needs to stop them. If you're willing to stop some people from speaking just because you don't agree with them, maybe next you'll be interested in a nice, warm book bonfire in the town square? So went the Nazis, too.

The only way to retain any freedom is to fight for and keep every freedom that is the inalienable right of all people.

"You can open self extracting archives using PKZIP25.EXE or unrar."

Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez told the firm that the auctions were "an offence to the collective memory of the country" and ordered it to report back on July 24 to explain the measures it had taken to prevent the French from participating in the sales.

It might be interesting to see how Yahoo.com is going to respond--how can you ban, technically, all the French people from visiting Yahoo.com? Simply filtering for the ".fr" domain would not be enough, would it? (I noticed that ICRAVETV said they had developed such a method, but it didn't help in their defense, it seems?)

Note that it's not the Yahoo site in France that is in question, evidently, but rather the U.S. site.

If Yahoo loses this case, next the French will require filtering all sites not in French (just so they can enforce their laws easier, like the proposed requirement that everyone retain email for 40 days)?

There is one screamingly obvious problem: it would catch some people in different countries who happened to get their service from a French ISP (and hence were given a "French" IP address).

In any case it would be trivial to circumvent: can you say "public proxy in another country"?

I know a number of people that have Stalin posters simply because they are interesting works, not because they endorse communism or genocide, and it is perfectly fine to do so nearly everywhere -- why should Nazi media be any different?

--
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it -- Andrew Young

Because in modern western culture (at least in europe) naziism is considered the ultimate evil. Most people are not willing to consider that several other regimes have been just as bad.

I cannot see any reason why Hitler should be considered as any more evil than Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin or Mao. Stalin murdered at least as many people as Hitler. Pol Pot did kill fewer people, but that might be because his contry had fewer people he could kill. In western europe you can still say that you think the communist in the soviet union had some good points, but not that the nazist had.

http://www.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

These days all I do on the net is read slashdot and watch my rights slowly fade away. I always thought moving to another country or starting my own one-day would solve all of these problems, but sadly I was mistaken.

Some people wonder whether there is intelligent life in other parts of the universe; I wonder if there is intelligent life on Earth

"You Shall Not Subject Your God to Market Forces!" -Commandment of Om

I'm not sure that I believe this is true. Although I am not an anarchist (AIANAA), I think the internet has done just fine with minimal regulation (and less is better). I hear a lot of moaning about how hate-groups, porn-mongers, drug-addicts, [h,cr]ackers, etc... are ruining the internet and wasn't it all better before all those lusers showed up. From this we start down the slippery slope of letting "officials" determine which ideas are "good".

I think that in the absence of regulation, the internet has done a fairly good job of partitioning itself. hottastybooty.com is most likely a porn site and if you're not interested in seeing porn, don't go there. supernaziskickass.com is probably a hate group of some sort and if that's not your cup of tea, don't go there either. Based on the adventures of the [h,cr]ackers, the flaws in the underlying structure have become issues to be worked on and we all know that giving your credit card to crackmeplease.com is probably not a good idea.

I remember hearing about a couple in Florida who tried to rent their 11 year old daughter for sex via some chat room. The cops found out, broke down the door, and arrested the sick bastards. This is how it should work. If you break your local laws, screw you. If you break the laws of some foreign country, screw them. If they force their ISP's to block you or tell their citizens that they'll kick their asses if they look at your site, fine. If they don't, it's their own fault and you shouldn't feel an ounce of guilt.

The moral is, if you don't want to see it, don't look. If you're concerned that all of your young people will become nazi-pimp-junkies, talk to them and explain why it's wrong to whore their sisters. Don't form some global Farenheit-587 (whatever the flash point of a hard drive is). Outlawing ideas isn't going to fix people feeling a certain way, it'll just make ideas taboo, and we all know how well that works.

The Internet and powerful, accessible workstations have the potential to free the individual from the shackles of the Nation State as never before. By shackles I mean the millions of laws, rules, regulations and taxes imposed by governments on their citizens.
Encryption and digital signing means global e-cash (or multiple systems of global e-cash) become viable - uncrackable, untraceable and most importantly - untaxable. Governments the world over depend on tax revenue for their continued survival. If the top 1% of US earners could move their assets offshore, the Federal Government would lose 30% of its tax revenue.

Connected corporations are just as nimble. Don't like the laws or regulations in your country? Save your documents, code or whatever and take the next plane out. Information companies are going to see that the tyranny of phyical location is completely irrelevant when you can do your business with anyone in the world via the Net - no matter where you are.

We have international groups forming standards that are often ignored by the companies making the stuff of the internet but this will likely change once legislators here and abroad start passing laws requiring companies to adhere religously to set standards in order to sell goods in that country complete with policing rules

This may apply to physical goods but there's no way it can apply to information. There's no customs officers at my router, no government officials telling what I may and may not download from anywhere on the Net. If I like, I can pay for information using a secure, internationally guaranteed credit card drawn on funds in a jurisdiction which forbids interference by any government.

Soon countries (and their citizens) will become familiar with the idea of global laws and global a truly global marketplace complete with global governance.

The opposite is happening if you step back and take a look at the bigger picture. Don't be fooled by governments pretending they control the Net. The global marketplace is happening because people all around the world are finding out they can talk to each other, trade goods and services or even barter - something which locality has made unviable up until now. Nation states have had little to do with the rise of global business-to-consumer ecommerce. And as for global laws and global governments - well, they may apply to those people unable to escape to the Net with their money and their skills - they won't apply to those who can.

"Am I paying for this abuse or is it extra?" - Edmund Blackadder

We (in the USA) are in that state now. The cave man with the biggest club and the most lackeys has a name: The United States Federal Government.

Nice idea. I've even thought about stuff like this, and taking it one step further. Remember that old Doom as a System Administration tool thing a while back? Well, imagine taking the Doom engine and mixing it with *nix and the internet so that you ARE some Doom-ish dude, and your computer and the whole of the net is represented in a Doom engine. For the purposes of running programs you'd have a HUD (Heads Up Display) that could have command line or X-windows access as necessary.

But anyway, before I get *too* off topic, you have to realize a couple of things. Firstly, even if we did get a square mile or something to stash the server on that was independent of any nation, chances are that still most of the citizens would live in other nations. Therefore, as people, each citizen would be governed by the laws of whatever country they are in. And, to make matters worse, assuming that this new Internation has citizens hailing from multiple nations, that means that the different citizens of the net will be affected by different laws, in addition to whatever regulations the net enforces on itself.

Basically, I think this whole issue needs a bit of simplification, just like almost everything else in this world could use. Instead of declaring indepdence, a multi-national organization (a la UN) should be set up whose sole purpose is to deal with the regulation of the internet and negotiation between the net and nations in concerns to people, say, selling child pornography to the US from a site in Syria or something. It wouldn't be as complex as a nation, and wouldn't have all the ugly implications, but it would allow for the net to get some decent and sensible regulation (and not over-regulation), and it would also help the net deal with varying countries and cultures.

Oh, one more thing about your Net-nation. When I first read it, the idea did strike me as kind of neat, but as I said above, a little unrealistic. However, then I realized one hilarious and sad fact: AOL users are the most prevalent net users.... that means that this new "nation" would have a massive majority of AOL citizens, which AOL could herd into "voting" whatever way they want, yada yada..... and in general the AOL citizens would be idiots. The only reason you (yes you! and anybody else, for that matter) enjoy using the net is because of the extreme factionalism (look it up! or figure it out...) present in it. I don't ever have to go to AOL.com. I don't have to deal with AOL users, and I set my email to gag all stuff I get from them. I don't have to visit MSN.com. I don't have to allow some porno-sicky to vote in some sort of cyber-election that would affect me. All in all, the net is full of unsavory and plain stupid characters and such, and I'm glad that all I have to deal with are the ones I want. Not that I'm saying that /. is *that* intelligent, but hey... it's still better then AOL :).

I first got worried about this sort of thing back when I heard a presentation by Herbert Schiller on NPR called "The Corporate Packaging of the Public Mind". Basically, it was a warning cry that the content controllers, the corporations who have the greatest effect on the very way we think were focusing their efforts on consolidating control of information production and distribution. He was very upset about the "recent" merger of Time and Warner, if this gives you any idea of how long ago this was. His warning has been pretty much ignored. Just to give you an example: How long do you think Brittany Spears will retain her present popularity? Wasn't Mariah Carey in that spot just a few months ago? For a period there, I used to get their names mixed up. Anyway, the answer is that she will remain popular just as long as revenue from her so-called art flows at a fast enough rate for the content controllers. As soon as the revenue rate drops below some value, the content controllers will drop the newest "teen phenomenon" on the boards and Miz Spears will be a thing of the past. Heck, New Kids on the Block. Remember them? Glad they died off, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. The content controllers have the ability to basically reprogram us in order to achieve maximum revenue flow, and I see few people outside of Slashdot who are even aware that there's a problem.

I was hoping that people would see the dangers and that some sort of grassroots resistance would spring up. The chilling fact brought home to me by the Lessig speech is that if we don't get our heads out of our collective rear ends, we won't get another chance. The new architecture that the content controllers are willing to impose on the net will basically make resistance impossible. And open source, freedom, and all the other Geek values we cherish will die out except for those who are willing to face being branded criminals.

I don't have an easy solution. We Geeks as a group have got to get our butts out on the line and do what is necessary. Donations to the EFF and then going back to watching TV aren't going to cut it.

--Fesh
Neo: "There is no spoon." Spoon: "There is no Neo." My email has been /. encoded.

It's pretty easy to see where this is all going to end up in a few years. There WILL be some sort of international treaty where all signatories agree to implement and enforce these bans. ISPs will be licensed and audited. Separate licenses will be required for T1 (and other high speed) backbone connections to the net. There's really only a handful of really big nodes in the US and probably the same is true in most countries. MAE EAST and MAE WEST anyone? Add in a dose of protect-the-children and anti-terrorism hysteria and kick it up a few notches with organized crime fears and Intellectual Property wars and it becomes all too clear. People, i.e. the Governments, will demand this wholesale control over who sees what. And the people who make those decisions will have absolutely no idea what they're doing or talking about. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

We, the enlightened ones, won't be able to stop it. We can't stop the RIAA or the MPAA. We're losing the DeCSS battle on the DVD front. Napster might be doomed, for all we know. The companies that have the money will get their way like dingos in a day-care center and THAT will set the precedents. Once the technical means are in place to impose content filtering on a large scale, then the really radical do-gooders will follow in their path and screw it up but good.

I hate to say it but the Geeks and privacy activists and defense-of-rights groups are going to be left out in the cold like one-legged men in an ass kicking contest.

I'd like to see a suggestion on how the French government could deal with the situation that does not include breaking thier own laws or ignoring them.

Here's a bunch: Do like Australia did and forbid hosting the things inside the country. Prosecute those who actually traffick in these kinds of items. Require all French ISPs to screen out the material. Fine people who view it anyway. Do anything you want in your own country, as long as you don't start imposing your law on other nations.

What's that, you say? The above suggestions won't keep anyone from viewing the material if they really want to? Well, duh. Welcome to the year 2000.

"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
    - 'K' in Men in Black.

In France, just as in Canada, England and Germany, racism is against the law.

It's very doubtful that "racism" is against the law in England. We have a law on the books against "incitement to racial hatred", but that refers to incitement. Being a racist is perfectly legal yourself, so long as you don't encourage others to join in -- even if you're one of a large racist mob, it's a legal defence that you were all there independently, not because one incited the others.

As to the practice of racism and the law, then we still have a police service that's racist, and seen as extremely so. Make a complaint of being racially attacked, and find yourself arrested for it ? The Stephen Lawrence case, and the on-going harrassment of Lawrence's friends and witnesses ? Our police have an awfully long way to go to gain some credibility.

At present we can see the unedifying spectacle of leading politicians; chiefly the thuggish Hague and and Anne Widdecombe, although the Labour party aren't above it either, falling over each other in a bid to win political favour by casting any foreign refugee as thieving scroungers and "bogus asylum seekers". It's like watching "Bill and Ted's Kristallnacht Adventure".

This .sig is here to make you think, "Him again?"

What this judgement really illustrates is the balance French jurisprudence is seeing between freedom of speech and its aftereffects. No one seriously believes that collectors of these items are all closet Nazi freaks, hankering after a walk in the park with old Adolf (having met some of these collectors, I cannot lump them into the same category too easily). But what the French court is worried about, and with good reason, are those fascist-leaning bully boys with little in the way of brains and big on the use of fists.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I agree with the French on this at all. But this case reveals that the French judge who decided this thinks very little of their national customs service and their ability to control access to these items. It also puts the onus of restricting access to these items on Yahoo, and for that reason alone is completely unworkable. Consider their alternatives, though. The other options, such as instructing their customs people to open every single package destined for France from Yahoo, are just as impossible given resource constraints and cost the government more in a direct fashion. Getting to that stage socially is only possible with one of these legal moves, as impossible as it alone is.

======================================== Death will come, and will have your eyes -- Pavese

Does the phrase "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" mean anything to you.

A couple of years ago a man doing talks denying that the Holocaust happened tryed to enter my country (Australia) and was refused. Many people, myself included, thought he should have been allowed to enter. I thought this not only because he should have a right to free speech (not a constitutional right in my country), but also because his ideas should have been held up to public scrutiny.

In 200 years, after everything about the Nazi's has been erased from french history books (ypothetically speaking), who will stop another right-wing party from gaining power, another dictator? After all a strong leadership has many advantages for a country during hard times, you can always return to a normal government when things get better, right?

Personally, I'm offended by the sale of books on e-bay, after all information wants to be free. They'd better stop it or else.

Freedom of speech is absolute. There are no exceptions. You have the right to say whatever you want, unless you are infringing someone else's rights.

Stanley Fish wrote a fascinating essay called "There's No Such Thing As Free Speech .. and It's a Good Thing, Too," which is reprinted in a book of essays with the same title. His basic point is that defenders of free speech always delimit the boundaries of what kind of speech is acceptable. For example, Milton's Aeropagitica, a 1643 essay in favor of religious tolerance, goes through pro-free-speech arguments that any modern reader would find very familiar, and then, about three-quarters of the way through, says that of course, none of this applies to the Catholics.

Thus, "free speech" is like "fairness" or "merit". Different political factions present their spin on what the term means. Whichever faction gets its definition widely accepted then gets to present itself as the champions of virtue and can put its opponents on the defensive.

Fish's essay is not available online, but I found an interview excerpt here with his main points.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
"Nobody likes a math geek, Scully."

I'm personally fascinated by the Nazi era. An entire nation was brainwashed to believe that the source of all of their problems lay in the Jewish religion, and they were taught to mercilessly persecute Jews without question. How?.

You or I could have been in the same position - a member of the German military, ordered to instruct a group of Jews to dig a large hole so that we could later execute them and bury them in that which they dug. Thousands of people did this. Why?.

Would you have stopped and realized the absolute immorality of your acts, regardless of your peer's beliefs that these actions were moral?

Are you sure?

Don't try to delete the Nazi era. Don't try to censor it, hide it, or forget it.

A few quick points:

1. What if the removal of these auction item causes grief to individuals, is Yahoo then morally responsible to reinstate them?
2. "Offence can not be given unless the recipient is willing to take it."

yes i know I'm jumping to conclusions. or am i?

wisconsin does not exist.

I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with Nazi memorabilia? I'm not a Nazi by any means, and don't even agree remotley with their politics or the atrocities of WWII.

But what the hell is wrong with trading the Nazi relics of the war? Some of us are history nuts who collect anything from WWII. Some of us keep momentos of teh past around for people of the future to learn from.

Not allowing people to trade relics doesn't mean that it will all go away. Alowing someone to own a relic of the Nazi past doesn't make them an instant Nazi. I really don't even see why there's a problem here.

Exactly...Or, as someone else has said: "He who forgets the passed. Is condemed to repeat it."

Censorship is just a half-assed solution to big problems. And half-assed solutions never work.

* * *

Very well said.

Knowledge is power. The more we know about the mistakes of the past, the less likely we are to repeat them.

When we try to sweep history under the rug and pretend it didn't happen, that plants the seeds for it to happen all over again.

The Nazis were human beings - imperfect, and not so different from you and I, eh? I suspect that many/most believed strongly that they were doing the right thing, probably out of stupid fucking blind nationalism like we have here in the U.S.

Humankind will be better off if we better understand the Nazis and what motivated them, so we can recognize, or better yet prevent, the circumstances leading to the Holocaust.

Can it happen again? Of course it can. We as imperfect human beings are no less fallible than the Nazis. There are plenty of potential Hitlers walking the streets around us, but right here and now the economic circumstances aren't right.

Knowledge is power. Understanding history is the key to not repeating it. We must never forget the Holocaust.

IMHO, despite good intentions the French court is doing a very bad thing.

This .sig is here to make you think, "Him again?"

agree.

One of the things that empower them most is the atention they get. Other groups are probably as violent and do greater damage today (for example the Hells Angels) but since they do not use that symbolism, they are largely ignored.

rmstar

That's just one story. I am sure Deutschland made millions of the Nazi flags. I am also sure they were able to afford a flag for every mechanized piece of equipment. Maybe every citizen had one. I don't know. But I did see quite a bit of footage from that era showing HUGE marches and everyone had a flag.

I have one or two items from their propaganda machine, one is some medal for the U-boat crews, and the other is some type of holiday pin, I forget as I haven't looked at it in a while.

While I totally disagree with the Nazis, I would never, ever ask someone to give up their right to collect any normal piece of history. A flag. A uniform, swords, weapons, etc . I would be pretty disturbed if someone had death-camp memorabilia, I'd rather those be in museums, but there are a few legitimate reasons to have them, so why d*ck with them?

Anything that is legislated to be learned about only in history books will be revived. People need to see up close that this stuff was REAL. We have enough revisionists as it is, please don't advocate getting rid of the evidence so that these people can say what they please without having some sort of proof that they are wrong.

Yes, there are a few nitwits that believe that having Nazi-related material means you are one and there are those that have Nazi-related material because the agree with those ideas, but I have met neither. Most of the people that have this sort of thing are historians, collectors, families that have them as mementos, etc.

--Fesh
Neo: "There is no spoon." Spoon: "There is no Neo." My email has been /. encoded.

I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with Nazi memorabilia? [...] Allowing someone to own a relic of the Nazi past doesn't make them an instant Nazi. I really don't even see why there's a problem here.

The problem is, as usual, political. Let me try to explain how I see it.

Back in 1945, when WWII was over, people said to each other: 'We do not want this to happen ever again' -- like they said after WWI :-( -- The Germans and their collaborators were punished and the Good Guys tried to get on with their lifes. And all was good because the Good Guys won. And they tried to banish all traces of nazism.

Then a second generation stood up and asked their parents: 'but what did YOU do in the war?', to which a lot of parents replied: 'I had very strong thoughts against the situation' or 'I once directed an officer the wrong way' or 'I has this Jewish neighbour, I helped him and en passant nicked all his valuables, I didn't like Jews anyway'. And this second generation scorned their parents for it, felt guilty about their parents and wrote way too many books about it.

And now this second generation is in control, and people ask them: 'what did the previous governements do?' to which they have to reply 'we helped the oppressors every way we could -- that really taught them a lesson'. And they get a lot of bad press about it.

And then some gov-related guy(m/f) in France sees that you can buy nazi-thingies in France. And he sees the questions arising: 'What is the french government doing against the rise of neo-nazis'. And now they can answer: 'we did everything we could'.

Of course, this is only a reason for their actions, not a justification of it. But please note that it's not just France -- a lot of (north-west) european countries could have done this.

(No, I'm not French)

.sigmentation fault

eXistenZ is *paused*

I tink historical testimonies belong to museums (possibly virtual ones), where they can be publicly displayed and explained, and not to auction sites.

Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
"Pick an A.C. sailor!.. We're cheaper than Karma Wh*res!" - A.C.

Therefore, I don't see any problem as far as Yahoo! is concerned.

Yahoo has assets in France, and those are gone if they don't comply with a french court order.

Furthermore, if Yahoo executives have broken french criminal law (which I don't know), they are subject to extradition (which would be denied by the US government) as well as arrest upon entering any country that extradites to France, e.g. all European Union countries.

--
Sponsor free software at the Free Software Bazaar

Of course, technically, that will not work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, technically, the most viable solution that would pretty much guarantee that no-one in France would get access to this material would be for Yahoo! to maintain a list of IP addresses allocated to France and block based on that IP list

That would still not stop someone in France using a non-French proxy server to gain access. Which means that the only viable solution to absolutely guarantee that no-one in France gains access to this material would be to isolate France from the rest of the Internet. Frankly, I think the Yahoo! lawyers should point this out to the Judge and tell him that they are in contact with the international telcos to try to make it happen.

The thing is, there is a Yahoo presence in France (see the links at the bottom of www.yahoo.com). Since Yahoo is operating servers in France, they are within the reach of the French authorities.

Damn it, I thought I saw some Mongolian artifacts for sale on Yahoo the other day. Don't the French realize the Mongols slaughtered millions of innocent men, women and children? They wiped out entire towns in the worst, bloody ways possible.

Apparently the French endorse the actions of Genghis Kahn.

--
[Drink Coke] [Army - Be All You Can Be] [This ad space for sale! Contact the author for current rates]

Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.

The solution?
The French goverment can only have one: To deprive every French person of human contact.

* * *

Okay, maybe I'm dumb, or missing something, but couldn't a country-of-origin code be embedded in the options section of the IP packet header? I believe that there is a state telecom monopoly in France, so...

Couldn't the French government mandate that country-identifying data be added to every packet leaving Franch? Then, they could say to Yahoo, "You have the ability to discern French visitors from non-French. Comply, or ______" where _______ is probably a whoppingly large amount of money. At that point, it would be a reasonable request, and probably legally enforceable.

I suppose such a system could be easily extended to any other country that has a state telecom monopoly--which is just about every country in the world, I think--though I don't know if it would be a better world.

Please tell me if I'm wrong here. But if I'm not, please consider solutions of this type before you type, yet again, that the Internet is naturally borderless, or whatever.

Oops. By "Franch" I mean "France".

That's the thing. France doesn't want Yahoo to censor THEM. They just want them to censor someone ELSE.

Personally, if some moron wants to trade Mein Kampf online or someone's selling old WW2 pistols, I could personally give a damn. My grandfather served in France during WW2. I understand the atrocities that went on.

I'm not saying "forget what has gone before". Quite the opposite. Remember, and learn.

The French government is trying to blot out a spot in history simply because they find it personally repugnant. All they're doing is making it easier for such things to happen again.

Banning sales of things, simply because they evoke emotional response from someone is ridiculous. That leaves EVERTHING open to banning.


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
chas@evilnet.net

I believe that there is a state telecom monopoly in France, so...

Long distance telecommunications have been deregulated for quite a long time in France, and there are quite a few companies providing such services.

Furthermore, you seem to confuse the opinion of a single judge in a lower court and the opinion of the legislative body or the cabinet of ministers. For instance, when I talk about the United States, I take care of not presenting the opinion of, say, governor Bush of Texas as "the will of the United States".

Such a proposal wouldn't require that every web server in the world replace its TCP stack, I think.

For one thing, the handling of options is required by RFC 791:

The options may appear or not in datagrams. They must be implemented by all IP modules (host and gateways). What is optional is their transmission in any particular datagram, not their implementation.

France can't easily regulate the technical implementation of every web server in France. However, my guess is that the French could require that all telecoms (and I think there is only one in France) that provide internet access, add a location code to the options section of the packet at some point in the routing process.

What this would set up would be a reasonable method, built on current technologies, of marking packets as coming from a particular place. From that point on, then, there would be no "we have no way of determining where users are from" argument. Furthermore, the implementation burden would be placed on entities that clearly fall under French jurisdiction.

Many firewalls block traffic with "unusual" option bits set. If the French want to introduce a new IP option it will take time for the firewall manufacturers to update their software, and even longer for end-user sites to upgrade their firewalls.

The French could find themselves locked-out of a lot of Web sites in the meantime.

[This is in response to MattBaggins, Chas and Steve]

MattBaggins: I'm not so clear on the subject as you, regarding where jurisdiction lies, or more importantly, should lie. After all, the rightfully elected representative government of the people of France decided that it was in the best interests of France to prevent the display or sale of Nazi items. Nevertheless, I can walk into an apartment in Paris, and call up an auction of Nazi memorabilia on Yahoo! This seems to me a problem, and one that can be addressed largely through technical means.

As for the French being the only ones responsible, that is possible. Beyond the fact that there may be extradition treaties handling this, France could build packet filters to shut off, or at least throttle, Yahoo! if Yahoo! failed to comply.

Chas: you say "Banning sales of things, simply because they evoke emotional response from someone is ridiculous. That leaves EVERTHING open to banning." I would counter that I, too, could use the logic of the slippery slope could also be used to say "If we don't build an infrastructure that allows for the rule of law to be respected, then there will be no laws whatsoever!".

Regardless, you seem to assume that the US Constitution applies here. I am not so clear on that point (see above).

Steve: I see what you mean, but the "leaving one place and going to another" metaphor is, in most ways at least, only a metaphor. At no point in the transaction does your body leave the country.

Yes, it may be the responsibility of the French to police incoming materials (see above). But my guess is that the French want a system that allows them to exercise their political will, and Yahoo! a method of appeasing the French government.

Maybe in 2060 the French will condemn Yahoo for making them the laughingstock of the world (again).

Not that I condone neo-nazi shitheads. But I know people collect war memorabilia, and a few whiny losers from "nous nous rendons!"* land won't change that.

(* "we surrender," at least according to babelfish)

-Legion

Secondly, there is every reason to own Nazi artifacts if you are a historian. There is no substitute for a primary source, and the propaganda and imagery created by the Nazis is a very important cultural artifact. I believe the saying is something along the lines of "Those who forget (or attempt to push away) the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes." The Nazi era is a time I would just as soon not repeat; as such, I am very interested in remembering.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -Hunter S. Thompson

Cool. I'm Hindu, the swastika is a very important religious symbol, and has been for the past 3000+ years.
So does this mean that neither I, nor the 800+ million Hindus today can trade in our religious items?
Hold on, Buddhists and Jains also use it, though to a lesser extent.

So do we ban it just because a group of bigoted scum used it?
Hold on, weren't the Crusades and Inquisition carried out under the cross? The Frogs should ban that as well.

You can think of it as a symbol of hate because of the actions of one group as long as you want to but until I die it will mean goodwill and prosperity to me. I would not do anything as foolish as wearing a swastika in public due to the ignorance of the populace at large of the symbols true origin.

"swas·ti·ka (swst-k) n. The emblem of Nazi Germany, officially adopted in 1935. An ancient cosmic or religious symbol formed by a Greek cross with the ends of the arms bent at right angles in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise direction. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Sanskrit svastika, sign of good luck, swastika, from svasti, well-being; see su- in Indo-European Roots.]"

If the Nazis occupied your country, killed your countrymen, killed and opressed you and your family, would you believe that people should have a right to carry Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols? Even if you're a so called Libertarian, can you be 100% sure how you'd feel after living through that?

Yes--and I'm Danish; they did occupy my country and kill my countrymen. Especially with a grandfather who fought in the war, and a great uncle who had to live in hiding for several years as a member of the Danish resistance, I am absolutely firm in my opinion that we should not stop anyone from carrying these symbols. Outlawing the Nazis would invalidate everything these two men were prepared to give their life for. Had either of them been killed by the Nazis, I would feel even more strongly about this. I want the Nazi scumbags in the open, where anyone can see how twisted and wrong they are. This is why I find the positions of France, Germany and others utterly wrong and immoral.

"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
    - 'K' in Men in Black.

I also salute you and your countrymen. In ALL of occupied Europe, only Denmark stood up to the Nazis and saved their Jews and other "undesirables". IIRC, King Christaan (sp?), stated that the Jews of Denmark were Danes, and he wore the yellow star himself to prove the point.

Denmark and the Danes deserve a special place in history for all time for those acts.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin

3. There is little practical reason to own a swastika or other Nazi or neo-Nazi symbol. Chances are about 99.99999999% that if you own such a symbol, you're a hate-mongering, jew/black/gay beating fascism-loving jerk.

The Bill of Rights in the U.S. is constantly under pressure, but that does not mean that it has not been successfuly defended, at least in part, nor does it take away from the contrast in rights in the U.S. compared to other places. The U.S. is different, and some U.S. citizens like it that way.

Recently our Supreme Court dusted off the Commerce Clause of the Constitution after decades of neglect and started taking seriously the idea that rights not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states. So we are guilty of twisting our Constitution, enough so that you might not think we deserve to keep it. But occasionally we wake up and take it seriously.

Currently eBay US has a policy with regards to potentially offensive material, which says in part:
"eBay has always exercised judgment in allowing or disallowing certain listings in the best interest of the community. Therefore, eBay will judiciously disallow listings or items that promote hatred, violence, or racial intolerance, including items that promote organizations (such as the KKK, Nazis, neo-Nazis, Skinheads, Aryan Nation) with such views. eBay will review listings that are brought to its attention by the community, and will look at the entire listing to determine whether it falls within this rule.

eBay recognizes that some older relics of organizations that promoted hate, violence or racial intolerance are legitimate collectible items that serve as a reminder of past injustices or horrors. Obviously, the past cannot be erased, and such relics can serve as important reminders and educational tools in a community that can learn from the past. Therefore, relics of groups such as the KKK or Nazi Germany may be listed on eBay, provided that they are at least 50 years old, and the listing is not used as a platform to glorify or promote the organization or its values. Listings of such items that are not 50 years old will be removed when brought to our attention. Sellers must state the approximate age of the item within the description. "

(Found at: http://pages.ebay.com/help/ community/png-offensive.html)

Therefore if the item is over 50 years old and has historical value it is OK to be listed on eBay. I know for a fact, as an eBay employee, that all Nazi memorabillia is banned from being listed on the eBay Germany site and eBay members who are registered as living in Germany are actively blocked from bidding on such items, irrelevant of which eBay site they are listed on.

The actively blocking users is the same for the eBay Adults Only section. Any member who has registered as living in Australia, is unable to access the eBay Adults Only section, whether they are willing to provide age verification or not. This policy helps eBay to comply with other countrys' laws outside of the US. The eBay Australia site simply does not have an Adults Only sections.

So technically it is certainly possbile to block certain users, living in a particular geographic region, from certain areas of the site.

This ruling will certainly prove interesting for eBay as they are planning further international expansion into Europe in the near future, including one particularly relevant nation.

-- Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."

I know for a fact, as an eBay employee, that all Nazi memorabillia is banned from being listed on the eBay Germany site and eBay members who are registered as living in Germany are actively blocked from bidding on such items, irrelevant of which eBay site they are listed on.

Just out of curiosity, how does eBay know what is Nazi memorabilia and what isn't, in order to block German users, without it being "brought to their attention"? I know that Australian residents are blocked from the Adults Only section, but there is no separate section for Nazi items. I had a glance after reading this story, and they're mixed in with everything else in the various subcategories of Militaria (i.e. uniforms, medals, patches, etc.).

(p.s., there's plenty of it. Someone was even auctioning a genuine WW2 Knight's Cross.. $US3200 so far, reserve not yet met..)

Like most geeks, I'd love an Enigma machine. Is this Nazi memorabilia ? Eagle, swastika, military service history, the lot, but is it Nazi ? Would Goering's trainset be Nazi memorabilia ? No obvious military connotations...

I think most of us would have no problem in answering "No" and "Yes" to those examples, but could we defend that in court ? If eBay do take an editorial line here on what's acceptable, then they're into a very difficult area. Their ToS quoted above seems a very fair attempt, but I'm glad it's their problem to deal with and not mine.

Apparently France "realizes" that you can't beat fascism with liberty, equality and fraternity, and instead decided to fight fire with fire.
--

Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.

Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.

... is to cut all of France off. From all of Yahoo. Until they're invited back. Seriously. If they bend over for this, everybody is going to start doing it.

Of course, they're not gonna have the guts to do that.

• Website X hosted in Country A
• Country B declares some information in X illegal to access for citizens of B
• Court in B takes action, ordering X to stop broadcasting to citizens of B

• Ignore request. Waddya gonna do, block us? Force every ISP in France to use [shudder] Cybersitter?
• Say the architecture of the web makes this impossible: it's difficult to build walls, but easy to move around them.
• Build walls which X knows are useless, and say "there you go, we tried."

How about alternative, equivalent scenarios?

• X=CIA, A=USA, B=Iran
• X=pornsite, A=USA, B=Australia (My stoopid Australian government has ordered ISPs to use filtering software to block all X-rated material)
• X=scientology, A=France, B=USA

1154 items found for "Hitler".
211 items found for "Lenin".
155 items found for "Mao".
155 items found for "Stalin".
83 items found for "Mussolini".
3 items found for "Krushchev".
1 items found for "Pol Pot".

What's the point, you ask? Maybe this just goes to show that as far as 20th century dictators go, Hitler and his Germany continue to hold an enduring fascination.

I wish I had a nickel for everytime I've walked into the living room while my Dad was watching a WWII movie or documentary about the Germans. I've been known to joke: "Ahhh... where would cable TV be without the nazis".

This .sig is here to make you think, "Him again?"

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Someone had to put all that chaos there!

Someone had to put all that chaos there!

- this is not "France trying to rule the Internet". Yahoo France is a registered company here, and the problem was because these auctions were accessible from the yahoo.fr portal.

According to both the referenced articles, these items weren't accessible from yahoo.fr, only from yahoo.com--which yahoo.fr of course links to. That would mean that this, even before touching upon the content itself (or, indeed, the laws in question), is Yet Another Linking Lawsuit(TM), the very concept of which I hope we can agree is absurd. If, on the other hand, Reuter's and AP have it wrong, could you post a link to an article with the real facts?

"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
    - 'K' in Men in Black.

From the user point of view, this change is really transparent. Just have a look!

Well, that certainly is transparent. In fact, I only realized I'd left yahoo.fr because yahoo.com recognized my username. I also found a couple of war memorabilia on there, although none of them had any swastikas.

So yes, Yahoo could be more up front about the fact that you're being moved to a non-french server, and it looks like the auction is being hosted on the French site. It isn't, however, so it's still an issue of wanting to punish someone for linking to a given piece of information, and thus still Wrong for a large number of reasons (among these the issues of deep linking and changing content).

"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
    - 'K' in Men in Black.

yall(1)

NAME

yall - yet another linking lawsuit(tm)

USAGE

In context: "Y'ALL ain't linkin' to that there [thing i/we object to], now iz ya? Y'ALL better knock it off."

DESCRIPTION

ridiculously impractical demands popular by those who haven't much clue about how the internet works, but have convinced their lawyers that they'd like it to work differently.

My Home: Apartment6

A French court actually took this nonsense seriously enough to issue an injunction. Thus, the discredit for such nonsense attaches itself to the court (and the government it represents) as well as to the original plantiff.
/.
If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.

There is a translation problem here. In French, gouvernement means the cabinet of ministers at the head of the executive branch, which in American gets translated as the administration (whereas in French, the administration is the set of government agencies).

The executive has apparently nothing to do with this case. As it appears from the press, two private plaintiffs, noprofit associations, sued Yahoo on grounds of a restriction of the freedom of the press law that prohibits incitation to racial hatred. A judge issued an injunction against Yahoo. The matter has not been fully judged yet, neither appealed. It is therefore totally premature to speak of any official French policy on the Internet. This is only a single judgment by a single judge in a local correctional court.

But just because they're now unpopular doesn't mean they're right. Now, don't get me wrong, I value free speech too. I completely understand why we should allow people to hold Neo-Nazi rallies -- it's their right to state their positions, and if we try to stifle that, we're only going to add more fuel to their fire.

The problem here is that this isn't just a free speech issue. People are actually buying the items being offered for sale (presumambly, or they wouldn't have auctioned off in the first place); there's a big difference there. This isn't just "stating your opinion", it's "taking action based on your opinion". The former is harmless, the latter is a real-world action that can actually lead to harm.

For example, suppose a KKK member decided to burn a Jewish's man house as a way of showing his (the KKK member's) beliefs. You can argue that the KKK member should be able to, as it's part of his right to free speech -- but, c'mon, the Jewish guy lost his house. We can't allow one extremist individual to take away from the rights of everyone else.

There are times when your free speech becomes secondary to others' rights. Just like we wouldn't want arch-conservative Southern hicks deciding to start up their own slave plantation this summer, we shouldn't let Neo-Nazis commandeer a public forum and use it to attack Jewish citizens. This is an "action", not a "speech", and should be judicized accordingly.

Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.

This is more of a request for information than a possible solution, though it could be that too.

What would have happened if Yahoo had just refused to show up in court? As far as I know, they don't own property, machines, server space or anything like that in France. Being based in another country entirely (the U.S.), they shouldn't be subject to French law. In one sense, it isn't even really their fault that French citizens can access their web sites at all. So what if they had just said "screw you, this is your problem, not ours; you work out how to prevent your citizens from buying that stuff"?

Would U.S. agencies have forced Yahoo to appear in the French court or to comply with its judgement? If Yahoo now turns around and declines to obey the ruling, how will the French courts enforce it?

According to the NewsBytes article,

The AP reported that Yahoo's French site did not offer Nazi-related items but hundreds of such objects were available at Yahoo.com. Yahoo had no immediate response to the ruling.

If this is true, then I really don't think the French government is making a reasonable request, or one they even have a right to make. If, however, all they want Yahoo to do is remove material from its French-language or physically-present-in-France servers, then this issue is reduced to one of censorship, and not of a government trying to censor material over which they have no jurisdiction.

Anyway, if there are French citizens who actually want to purchase the items in the Yahoo auction, shouldn't that tell the French government something about popular support for their law? Collectors of Nazi artifacts aren't automatically Nazis. I took a course in the Third Reich a couple of semesters ago, but I didn't call the professor a Nazi just because he was interested enough in them to teach a course on them.

During the second big indiscretion of the 20th century, the Nazis availed themselves to all the tools an authoritative government can utilize (mostly because they had all the guns). Among the devices used was the suppression of anti-regime ideas in Germany and conquered lands.

Granted, it was a war, and even the United States resorted to censorship and other things that are no-nos under the Bill of Rights. Freedom was suspended in the name of preserving it. The Nazis didn't suspend German liberty in the name of preserving it. Their quest was power, and they won't surrender a bit of it in the name of common freedom.

Towards the end of World War II, France was a complete mess. The French were symbollically liberated when the Allies took Paris. Each soldier that died along the way died for the purpose of freeing the French and wiping this scourge off the planet.

What did the French choose to do once they got their country back in order? Ban pro-Nazi material. Regardless of how good or bad such material is, banning it defeats the purpose of that whole liberation thing.

Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez told the firm that the auctions were "an offence to the collective memory of the country" And censorship sits well with them? I guess two wrongs does make a right.

> "It appears France is now defining censorship on US Web sites"
No, John. It's not yahoo.us, but yahoo.com. TLD com, net and org are international, not specifically americano-centered.
sigmentation fault

When you grow up and happen to see pictures of all your family that were killed by the Nazis, hearing the stories of how your mother escaped the Warsaw ghetto, hearing how your father continued receiving anonymous antisemite phone calls after avoiding the Gestapo during the war, you cannot, you must not remain silent! Never!

Government is an invention to oppress people; if you want to talk specifically about government, say "french government", not "France"; if you want to talk about the country, say "France", not "french government". I am french, yet I feel little solidarity with present, past and future french governments; I know for sure than in other countries were governments are even more on the loose than in France, people feel even less solidarity with their governments.

That said, like many french people, I think that the "anti-racist" law is itself a very racist law (apart from being most inappropriate), since it makes a special case for the jews; of course, I can't say it on any french media, least I be censored by this very law.

-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernethics

Shouldn't it rather be because they made it possible?

This is just as silly as the (californian?) US court that asked non-US sites to put DeCSS down because of the DMCA.

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995)

The situation is a bit complex: freedom of speech is a constitutional right, and the 1881 law on the Press (revised many times since) states so. However, restrictions of this freedom have been inserted into this law; to the old prohibition of public advocacy to commit crimes and felonies was added a prohibition on the advocacy of racial hatred and of putting into doubt the reality of the nazi crimes.

Apparently, the jurisprudence considers nazi emblems and books such as Mein Kampf or the Protocols of the Sages of Zion to be banned antisemitic propaganda. It is nevertheless possible to trade such goods provided they are used as historic documentation; this is a very murky area and I do not know the exact criteria applied.

In Germany, where for obvious reason people are wary of anything reminding of nazism, such restrictions are even more stringent.

As for the legal ground of ordering Yahoo US to comply, I think it is quite weak, but I am not a lawyer. I would wait until the legal matters are sorted out (appeals, maybe going before the supreme court).

As for the social opinion of the people here, I think the French people are a bit too prone on legislating on what should be or not be done (mind, after all, many US states legislate on what sex positions are legal between consenting adults). There are reasons for this: there are every so often racist or antisemitic attacks, many old people suffered during WWII, and there is still the remembrance of the traitors of the Vichy government.

I remember years ago when the world tried to do this with pornography, and it didn't work. Instead, anyone who wants to block pornographic material can do it quite well by using third party software on the client side. If France wants to regulate something on the net they should do it themselves.

Logically this would mean ordering all French citizens not to view material that trades Nazi-related items. Since they don't trust their citizens to do so on their own, it's the citizens they should be regulating. There are lots of choices. For example, they can:

1. Regulate French ISP's to block yahoo, ebay, geocities, slashdot, and whatever other international sites they find remotely 'offensive'.
2. Set up filtering systems between ISP's and the outside world and regulate all traffic flow in and out of France. (China does this quite well, doesn't it?)
3. Disallow the use of the Internet in France at all.

If they're resourceful, maybe they could actually think of something that wouldn't cripple the entire internet structure in a country. But why should yahoo be singled out just because it's easy to find? All that blocking yahoo would do is redirect everyone who wants Nazi things badly enough to another site.

But in the end, why should the rest of us suffer just because a minority doesn't like something? If they don't like it outside, they should close the door. The same goes for all the other governments in the world trying to impose their localised values on the rest of the world. I despise nazi'ism, but at the same time I find this action very offensive.

I know I'm just preaching to the converted anyway so I won't keep going. Personally I hope yahoo tells them to grow up and it turns into a highly publicised international incident. Somehow I don't think they will, though.

1. Is France's law stupid -- This essentially is a red herring. Many laws are stupid in many countries, and this one certainly has to take the cake (repressing an entire political philosophy... doesn't someone realize this is dumb). However, it is their law.
2. Can they enforce the law? -- This is very tricky. I don't know French law very well, but it seems to me that they are trying to restrict the actions of a US company which is doing what it's doing ON US SOIL. That's going to have to be a diplomatic nightmare at the least.
3. Most importantly: is Yahoo! to blame at all? -- Yahoo! has never attempted to push Nazi material to the French. Their users have put material up on a US site for purchase. There are two problems here: a French citizen had to go to a foriegn Web site in order to find this and the seller is really the one breaking the law by allowing a French citizen to purchase the item. Wouldn't the SALE be the problem? Who does France prosecute if I (a hypotheticaal French citizen) hear about a Nazi relic while travelling, and then order it by mail once I get home? The shop where I saw the for-sale announcement in London?

So how does this froggy judge intend to enforce his ironically fascist ruling? Foreign judicial branches have no more sovereign power over American companies than my dog Spot.

Or did Clinton give them that power in exchange for a campaign donation? =)