Yahoo Knuckles Under

ewhac was one of several to inform us that Yahoo has knuckled under. Their auction site will now start using "computer software," which as we all know is infallible, to roboban auctions of Nazi and Klan items (see SFGate's story or CNN's story). France wanted its countrymen kept away from these items, and since Yahoo couldn't block the French, they blocked the stuff. Cigarettes, switchblades and used underwear are also forbidden, but it seems only the hateful stuff gets autoblocked. "Photons have neither morality nor visas" my ass. Just wait until every one of the planet's sovereignties gets a proscripted category of its own -- will I be able to sell paintings by John Wayne Gacy? Wounded Knee medals? Confederate flags? The world's full of offensive knickknacks, Yahoo, have fun banning it all.

The actual terms of service forbid: "any item which, in Yahoo!'s sole discretion, is inflammatory, offensive, unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise inconsistent with the spirit of Yahoo! Auctions." It's the robo-enforcement that's new.

I Dont get it

I don't understand why yahoo should have to buckle to this pressure. Why is it up to them to enforce another country's laws? If France wants to deny their citizens access to information and materials, I hardly see how it is yahoo's responsibility to enforce this. If they really want it blocked, they should force isps to block the site as a rule, not force a foriegn company to change the way they do business just because you dont want your citizen's to be able to buy a german ww2 bayonet or something like that. Please give me a break.

Yeah, but ...

They want to do business in Germany. German law doesn't like racist stuff at all, and in light of both WWII and the right-wing idiots currently playing Hitler I don't really have a problem with this policy.

Censorship is bad, don't take me wrong, but free speech is not exactly the most important basic human right out there. It needs to be balanced with others, like for instance the right to life, dammit, and that right isn't furthered by the idiots who stand at the next street corner and shout "kill the f*cking foreigners".

Sorry, but I'd rather protest restrictions like ebay's blocking of erotica. That stuff at least doesn't promote killing.

What's the problem?

You know what? I can't go to Toys R Us and buy
a copy of Debbie Does Dallas. Am I being persecuted because of this? Are my rights being violated? No. Toys R Us, has the right to decide what they sell, not the consumer. Yahoo, Amazon, your ISP, etc. are all businesses, not governments. They don't have to respect your right to buy Nazi propoganda, Confederate flags, etc. They only have to respect the market and occasionally their stock holders. When Yahoo comes knocking on doors and imprisoning people for trying to sell these things, then rights are being violated. Otherwise, just go somewhere else and purchase it. That's your right as a consumer and ultimately, Yahoo will respect those almighty dollars.

The Floodgates Are Open.

Armed with this, every censor-minded state and politico can now attack the freedom we have taken for granted on the Net. "See, if the French could do it, so can we". A sad, sad, eventuality.

Yahoo should have pulled out of France rather than submit to this.

Re:Good for Yahoo

No one is having their rights violated here. No one has a right to list items on Yahoos auctions and Yahoo is well within their rights to prohibit or allow whatever they want
Absolutely. However, when the Big Picture is taken into account, it becomes a bad thing. The important word here is 'precedent'. By agreeing to ban Nazi stuff, Yahoo are admitting that any country around the world can decide what a US site can display. Speaking as a denizen of Ireland, would I be within my rights to demand Yahoo remove all artefacts relating to Oliver Cromwell? What about governments that find democracy offensive?
It's also important, IMO, to point out that Yahoo are not 'taking a positive step'. They are, as the headline points out, knuckling under. They fought this all the way in the French courts, and they lost. What they're doing is complying with French law (which is the right thing to do, probably), but they're not doing this because it's the Right Thing To Do.
Censorship issues aside, I'm looking forward to what happens when Yahoo's blocking fails (as it inevitably will). Will the be viewed as contempt of court, or will the French tacitly recognise that they're demanding the impossible?

what if . . .

. . . there is in some foreign country an auction site that sells cocaine, heroin, LSD and other such stuff to U.S. citizens with guaranteed anonymous delivery? How many milliseconds will this be online before the U.S. government tries to stop this? And if the government of that country refuses to take actions, how long will it be there before the CIA replaces it with a more U.S. friendly government?

Re:Yeah, but ...

And exactly how is selling or collecting NAZI memorabilia racist?

These aren't cursed objects that will turn the owner into a goose-stepping NAZI.

Re:I Dont get it

I don't understand why yahoo should have to buckle to this pressure. Why is it up to them to enforce another country's laws?

...well, for starters, Yahoo is a multinational company, and has a physical business presence [yahoo.com] in France. Businesses in France need to follow French laws; if they don't they get sued and fined. Thus, Yahoo can be fined through their French division if they violate French laws. If they wanted to, they could probably avoid the whole mess by closing up their French operations, but that's a very costly step to take.

Yahoo Auctions 2005

By clicking 'I Accept' below, you affirm under penalty of perjury that the item:

• Was not owned, issued, manufactured, specified by any Nazi, Soviet Communist or other official of a repressive state, and does not bear the likeness, symbol or insignia of any political organization or entity other than a free western democracy.
• Cannot be used to harm a human being, household pet, personal property or the environment, or to violate anyone's privacy, or to duplicate without authorization information that is protected by copyright or patent or by your country's National Security laws or regulations, nor to tamper with any electronic or computer system.
• Does not cause offence to, or ridicule or belittle, people of any religion, political belief, sexual preference, race, profession, place of abode, preference in operating systems or applications, physical, mental or emotional handicap, characteristic odor, drug or smoking habit, criminal record, personality or character.
• Does not embody the proprietary intellectual property of any government, corporation, religion, or any other organization, except that it may be or include a properly licensed copy of such a work, complete with a notarized receipt.
• Cannot be used to facilitate any abnormal sexual practices, and does not bear any obvious bodily secretions or residues of intoxicating drugs.

Thank you for using Yahoo! auctions.
I Accept [hoboes.com]

Real Historical Medals vs. Skinhead Junk

What ticks me off is their failure to distinguish between modern racial movement trinkets and the highly refined hobby of medal collecting.

The man who first introduced me to WW2 artifacts was a Jew whose father served in the US Army during WW2. His father brought home tons of German surplus items and thus my friend eventually became a dedicated collector. At one point he owned one of Hermann Goering's dress uniforms. Serious collecting requires brains and YEARS of experience! It's not exactly the kind of hobby a nuckle-dragging skinhead enjoys.

Hell, Pokemon collectors are more violent than Nazi medal collectors!

I'm indifferent.

I don't really care what Yahoo! decides to do in terms of blocking certain ads for inanimate objects. The reason for this is that I wouldn't use Yahoo! at all in the first place. Especially if I was to buy German WWII militaria.

I have a collection of German WWII militaria, among others a full uniform and a bunch of medals. These used to belong to my late Great Grandfather. He was an officer in the SS Legion Latvia on the eastern front. He got wounded at Kursk but still managed to save two of his men. He died shortly after. His wife was awarded the Ritter Kreuz, which is also in my collection. Know what? Not all Germans killed Jews. Neither did they all like Hitler. In fact, most Germans hated him.

But this collection I have, however offensive it may be to French or other people, is part of my heritage. I will pass this on to my decendants when that time comes. My Great Grandfather fought a battle, in which he died as well as many of his countrymen. Now here is for the real noodle. He wasn't German. He was Latvian. He fought for the Germans because that was the only opposition towards the Soviets who blatantly occupied his country. So there is history on both sides of the war. Stalin, who was the almighty ally of the Allies, was one of the most horrible people in the 20th century. Genocide in the form of "artificial starvations" and the like were only part of the horror that he induced. He didn't care wheather somebody was close to him or not. He killed them anyway. But we all seem to forget these things.

Why not ban American militaria from that era? I think I know why, the winner writes the book. But a great man known as General Patton was not a very nice guy either. Upon the surrender of approximately 300 German soldiers near Ville Spockers, France, he ordered his men to shoot the Germans who already had given up. Why? Because he didn't think that Germans were good enough to be taken prisoners. But then again, history is only as good as in the eye of the beholder. I think that WWII militaria should be widely traded and at the best possible way be taken care of. American, German, British, Soviet, Japanese and Italian... These tokens of history may aid in preventing future uprisings of left-/rightwing extremists. We should all remember the people that died in that war. We should learn from the atrocities of the 20th century. Not the way we punished the Germans after WWI. These "bannings" of certain objects only fuel the growth of underground organizations who will obtain these artifacts for tokenizing some kind of religion. It is unfortunate that the people out there that really do collect WWII militaria should suffer for these reasons. Once again, these people are probably more interested in the history than starting a foundation of a Vierte Reich.

However, as I started out, if I was in the market for obtaining some German militaria, I would look at http://www.german-militaria.co.uk, rather than Yahoo! auctions.

Thanks for reading and understanding that I in no way support what the holocaust or whatever other atrocities the Germans bestowed upon others, by posting this response.

Alex

A victory for French Revisionism

Hooray, it's a victory for French revisionism! The French would really rather have us all forget their own little foray into Nazi collaboration since it makes it that much easier for them to try to gain whatever advantage they can over the Germans.

And don't forget, you new champions of French political enlightenment, that it was your friends in the French government that saw fit to bomb the Greenpeace ship "Rainbow Warrior" in a New Zealand harbor.

But then again this is really nothing new from the people that brought you the Comittee of Public Safety, Robespierre and Saint-Just.

The thing I find really ironic about all this that they don't seem concerned at all with people collecting "memorabilia" related to Louis XVI or Napoleon -- c'mon, didn't the French at least have a revolution to overthrow that bad Bourbon king? Or are we still embarassed enough over the Terrors to not want to make a stink over it? Kind of like the embarassment over the Vichy government.

Legal documents about Yahoo v. France

From The Center for Democracy and Technology [cdt.org]'s web site

Yahoo's Complaint for Declaratory Relief, (.pdf, 3.2MB), December 21, 2000 [cdt.org]

English Translation of French ruling (.pdf), November 20, 2000 [cdt.org]

French Court Imposes Speech Restrictions Beyond Its Borders, November 20, 2000 [cdt.org]

Are you racist?

If it is legal to be a racist neo-nazi in the US, I don't see why we should tolerate this in Europe.

I disagree entirely with your conclusion. I know how dangerous racism is. I know, because I am a racist. So are you. So is everyone I know. We all have prejudices, and the sooner we realise it, the better. Brushing it under the carpet will only make the next generation unaware of the dangers. 99% of people associate antisemitism with Nazi Germany. They are simply unaware that the Nazis were only the latest in a long and inglorious European tradition [uea.ac.uk] of blaming the Jews for economic problems, and massacring them for it. We've been doing it for over a thousand years. I have no reason to presume that I am inherently morally superior to my forefathers, or any less likely to do the same, except that I know of the dangers inherent in laying blame on a social or ethnic group. I know what happens when it goes too far. I know, because we have historical record of it. If you make that historical record taboo, then it will disappear, and we will make the same mistakes over again. Sorry, this rant isn't directed against you, Juju, or anyone in particular, I just happened to pick on your post to reply to. I was going to write something about Saddam Hussein taking ebay to court for selling whiskey [ebay.co.uk], but I kinda switched tracks.

Re:Spank you very much, Jamie

As the little blurb I wrote makes abundantly clear for any of you who would actually care to read it, the issue is not whether this individual decision is "censorship" or not. You can split hairs over that word's meaning all day, have fun, I put it in that topic category because I didn't have one for "American corporation kowtows to foreign nation's irrelevant laws."

So can we please shut up about whether Yahoo has the right to write its own terms of service however it wants? It does. Thank you. Next.

The point is that corporations will kowtow to foreign anti-speech laws. This is a high-profile example. Hell, I don't care that I won't be able to buy a Nazi pin from Yahoo; if I really wanted one (I don't) I'd just go to eBay. Until eBay does the same. And then all the other auction sites. And then they refuse to sell John Wayne Gacy paintings. And Civil War memorabilia from the Confederate side because it promotes slavery.

And then it's not just auctions, it's email sent to and from your free Yahoo account. And then web traffic sent over AboveNet's backbone [slashdot.org].

What I was hoping was that people like you would think about what this could mean. Instead of getting up on your high horse and announcing that this decision is meaningless and that I'm a loon for thinking it's noteworthy, please just use your head for a minute.

Will photons need visas? I'm afraid too many people have been trained to recite comforting mantras like that whenever they see something that looks like censorship. The internet knows no national borders, cyberspace considers national laws to be local ordinances, etc.

But in ten years, your photons damn well may need visas because every corporation that delivers you any service you care about finds it easier to censor you because they want to continue doing business with Outer Schizovania, and Outer Schizovania demands that its national pride not be injured by hateful references to the War of 1827.

Possibly the greatest threat to free expression on the internet, over the next ten years, is the complacent attitude of those who think free expression is guaranteed.

Jamie McCarthy

Re:What's the problem?

And to be fair, I can't see how anyone in America can imagine they have any right to lecture the French on how to deal with (neo-)Nazis, since their experience 50 years ago was ENTIRELY different...

Well, let's check the score:

• France - conquered and/or capitulated to Nazis (depending on whose history you believe, but Vichy has to count for something), citizens killed by Nazis, now has draconian regulations of all things Nazi (and we all know how making things forbidden drives the young people away).
• The U.S. - never conquered by Nazis, citizens killed by Nazis, currently has no regulations on Nazis freedom of speech (thus ensuring that everybody knows what a neo-Nazi really is, so that they get laughed out of every town they're in).

Sure, the final verdict on resisting Nazism isn't in yet, but I bet 50 more years of the same approaches will leave neo-Nazis in the U.S. a forgotten bunch of reactionaries (like all those nuts who think The South Will Rise Again) and neo-Nazis in France an underground known-subversive group that's essentially a new kind of gang for all the young hoodlums to join. I know where I'd rather live...

P.S. The correct moderation for this is ~maybe off-topic. Definitely not flamebait, though.

Re:exactly

What if tomorrow, Iran sued Wal-Mart demanding they take all copies of the Swimsuit Issue of SI, Kathy Ireland calendars, etc... off the shelf?

What if tomorrow, Chnia sued demanding that Best Buy, CompUSA, etc... stop selling Linux?

This decision would be fine if Yahoo had stood up on their own and said "Hey...we don't like this hateful crap - we won't let you sell it."

However, it is not their decision. It is the french government standing up and saying "Hey...we don't like this hateful crap - it reminds us of how we rolled over - you can't let people sell it."

About the only differnce is that Yahoo has a "branch" in France, whereas Wal-Mart may not have one in Iran, or Best Buy in China - but with the Internet, does that matter anymore?

Lowest Common Denominator.

Must... resist... Godwin's... Law...

Seriously, it's tempting. These hypocritical bookburners are no better than the people they claim to be fighting against, if these are the tactics they want to use.

The problem here isn't that Yahoo isn't selling this stuff anymore. The problem is that they were forced to stop selling it by a third party which ought to have no jurisdiction anyway, solely because of this group's own ideals. The precedent is dangerous.

Or, to put it another way, I have the right to speak or not speak as I please. I do not have the right to silence another for no better reason than my own paranoia, however. But this is what happened here.
----------

What The French Actually Did

Ok, there is a vast amount of wrong comment going round on this subject, so here is an actual explanation of what happened.

First, Yahoo are offering a service into France, so they are *bound to observe French law*, *so far as it is possible*. Two important clauses there. In the first place, the fact that Yahoo is an American company is irrelevant. They are offering a service into France, so their physical location matters for liability purposes no more than Exxon's company head office in Delaware matters when one of their tankers spills oil all over SouthEast Asia or something. The test for whether they are "offering a service into" France is a complicated one (it's most usually relevant for tax purposes), but it's a fairly settled body of law. If Yahoo were merely offering a service that French citizens happened to be able to pick up, things might be different, but the existence of yahoo.fr means that this particular train left some time ago.

Right, that's cleared up. Now, secondly, it's an important principle that the law does not compel anyone to do the impossible. If there were genuinely nothing that Yahoo could do, a French court would never fine them. It would end up simply ruling that they could not offer the service in France (reread what is meant by "offering a service" above). In fact, the judgement sets out a number of things that Yahoo could have done but refused to do.

The facts of the case are interesting in themselves. Yahoo removed the Nazi auctions from yahoo.fr, but placed a link reading "If you want to research more about this subject, please visit yahoo.com". This seems a bit blatant to me; they were attempting to comply with the letter rather than the spirit of the ruling and ended up complying with neither. Of course, it's the letter rather than the spirit of the law which is binding, but Yahoo seemingly got bad advice on whether they had done enough, and ended up needlessly annoying the court.

Second, the court ruled that Yahoo could and should have set up their site so as to refuse requests from French IP addresses or which came from clickthroughs from yahoo.fr. Yahoo's defence against this (a similar line of argument is implied in the article above) was that such a ban would be easy to circumvent using an anonymiser. This misses the point. The point is that someone who goes to the trouble of using an anonymiser and avoiding yahoo.fr, is pretty clearly intentionally buying Nazi regalia in the knowledge that it is illegal to do so in France. Someone who just goes through a link saying "to research this further ..." has a pretty good chance of being able to claim that they did not know that they were doing anything wrong, but just happened to surf through. By not putting up even token barriers which require any effort at all to circumvent, Yahoo was effectively providing an alibi for French Nazis. This, in the eyes of the court, pretty much implicated them in intentionally offering a service dealing Nazi regalia in France.

Finally, Yahoo could have put a banner on the appropriate pages warning that material was made available which was against the law of France, but refused to do so. I have absolutely no fucking idea why they refused this one, but I suspect that they just wanted to play hardball in the hope that a patriotic American court would put down an order against the French court making the fine unenforceable.

So that's what happened in France. The French were not demanding the impossible; they were asking for a show of good faith, which Yahoo refused to give them.

Furthermore, nobody seems to have wondered whether Yahoo's decision to get out of the Nazi regalia business was not a purely commercial decision. It certainly did not generate any really favourable publicity, and they may have received legal advice that they couldn't rely on the protection of the American court. There was certainly an avenue open to them which would have allowed them to keep on selling regalia to Americans (NB: They Didn't! and quite clearly said so in their terms of service) while satisfying the French courts. If Yahoo wanted to avoid making a test case for the feasibility of local internet regulation, that was their choice, not that of the French.

In conclusion, the assumption running through 80% of this thread -- that this case is anything to do with the French attempting to exercise extra-territorial jurisdiction -- is incorrect.