J Bus Ethics (2012) 106:353–365DOI

J Bus Ethics (2012) 106:353–365
DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-1001-z





Freedom of Expression, Internet Responsibility, and Business
Ethics: The Yahoo! Saga and Its Implications


Raphael Cohen-Almagor







Received: 12 March 2010 / Accepted: 9 August 2011 / Published online: 31 August 2011
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011


Abstract In the late 1990s, the Internet seemed a perfect medium for business: a facilitator of unlimited economical propositions to people without any regulatory limitations. Cases such as that of Yahoo! mark the beginning of the end of that illusion. They demonstrate that Internet service providers (ISPs) have to respect domestic state legislation in order to avoid legal risks. Yahoo! was wrong to ignore French national laws and the plea to remove Nazi memo- rabilia from its auction site. Its legal struggle proved futile and may have harmed its business. This essay argues for the adoption of standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR considerations may trump some forms of antisocial, highly offensive expression.

Keywords Internet Yahoo! Nazi memorabilia
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) Business ethics



Introduction

In his cyber law scholarship, Lessig (1999, pp. 43–44) distinguishes between two claims. One is that, given its architecture, it is difficult for governments to regulate behavior on the Internet. The other is that it is difficult for governments to regulate the architecture of the Internet. The first claim is true; the second is not. It is not hard for governments to take steps to alter Internet architecture and, in so doing, facilitate regulation of Internet behavior.




R. Cohen-Almagor (&)
Department of Politics and International Studies,
University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UK
e-mail: [e-mail]
URL: http://www.hull.ac.uk/rca; http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/*rca/

In the late 1990s, the Internet seemed a perfect medium for business: supranational, diffusive, with wide distribu- tion and little regulation, offering enormous opportunities to investors. In his famous ‘‘declaration of the indepen- dence of cyberspace,’’ the Internet theorist John Perry Barlow wrote,

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel…. You have no sovereignty where we gather. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders.1

Cases such as that of Yahoo! mark the beginning of the end of the no-sovereignty illusion. They demonstrate that Internet service providers (ISPs) have to respect domestic state legislation in order to avoid legal risks. An ISP is a company or other organization that provides a gateway to the Internet, enabling users to establish contact with the public network. Many ISPs also provide e-mail service, storage capacity, proprietary chat rooms, and information regarding news, weather, finance, social and political events, travel, and vacations. Some offer games to their subscribers and provide opportunities for shopping. Yahoo! is one of the most popular search engines and websites in the world. The company also provides multiple other web services, including a directory (Yahoo! Directory), email, news, maps, advertising, an auction site, and video sharing (Yahoo! Video).2
The Yahoo! controversy juxtaposes two contrasting views: Yahoo!’s Internet-separatist view that it can engage in commerce as it chooses notwithstanding national laws

1 ‘‘The Internet’s new borders’’ (2001); Shea (2006, p. K4).
2 http://everything.yahoo.com/; http://uk.yahoo.com/?p=us.


and morals, versus the view that countries have the right and ability to assert their sovereignty on the Internet. This essay argues for the adoption of standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR), under which limits are placed upon free expression in the interest of furthering goals of social responsibility. CSR on the Internet, especially when it concerns ISPs, may require limiting some information deemed by sovereigns to be antisocial and offensive (for further discussion, see Levmore and Nussbaum 2010).
In his seminal work, Bowen (1953, p. 6) defined CSR as the obligations of business people to make decisions, to pursue policies, or ‘‘to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society.’’ The Internet is international in character, but it is susceptible to the constraints of national laws. There is not one law for the Internet and another for all other forms of communication.
This essay comprises four parts: First (I), the Yahoo! saga as it unfolded in France and the USA is described in detail. Next (II), a comparative legal dimension is pro- vided, explaining how different countries address the challenge of hate and racist speech. Part III considers the business dimension of the Yahoo! affair. Finally, part IV discusses responsible terms of service that Internet com- panies can employ that prohibit antisocial, violent content on their servers.


The Yahoo! Saga

Sales of Nazi merchandise are against the law in France, which strictly prohibits the selling or displaying of any- thing that incites racism. The French Criminal Code pro- hibits the display of Nazi symbols.3 The Yahoo! saga started in February 2000 when Marc Knobel, director of the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antise´mit- isme, LICRA) and a member of the Observatory of Anti- semitism, went to the Yahoo! auction site and saw pages of Nazi-related paraphernalia. The site featured swastika arm- bands, SS daggers, concentration camp photos, striped uniforms once worn by Nazi camp prisoners, and replicas of Zyklon B gas canisters (Crumm and Capeloto 2000, p. A1; Reuters 2002, p. C4). Sales of Nazi merchandise are against French law. Knobel acknowledged that the auctions might be legal in the USA, but believed them to be abso- lutely illegal within the borders of France.4
In April 2000, LICRA together with two other organi- zations, Union des Etudiants Juifs de France (UEJF) and


3 Section R645-1 of French Criminal Code.
4 ‘‘Yahoo! sued for Nazi-item auctions,’’ http://www.usatoday.com/
life/cyber/tech/cth715.htm.

Mouvement contre le Racisme, l’Antise´mitisme et pour la Paix (MRAP), asked Yahoo! to either remove the Nazi memorabilia from its American websites or make all such auctions inaccessible to web surfers in France and its ter- ritories such as Martinique and French Guyana in accor- dance with its own terms of service agreement, which prohibited netusers from posting content that was ‘‘hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.’’5 If it did not, the organizations asked that the California-based company be fined US $96,000 for each day of noncom- pliance. Ronald Katz, a lawyer representing the French groups, asserted: ‘‘There is this na¨ıve idea that the Internet changes everything. It doesn’t change everything. It doesn’t change the laws in France.’’6
Yahoo! did not respond to the demands, and legal action commenced. At the first hearing in the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris on May 15, 2000 defending counsel Christophe Pecard noted that Yahoo! maintained a French- language website (Yahoo!.fr) that complied with French law. He argued that ‘‘Internet users who go to Yahoo.com undertake a virtual voyage to the US.,’’ so no offense could be said to take place in France (Le Menestrel et al. 2002, pp. 135–144). In any case, he said, it would be technically impossible for Yahoo! to block all access to its sites from France. Yahoo! claimed that it had no power to identify the national origins of its customers and thus no control over where in the world its digital products went. Were Yahoo! forced to comply with French law, it would need to remove the Nazi items from all its servers, thereby depriving Yahoo! users everywhere from buying them, and making French law the effective rule for the world (Goldsmith and Wu 2006, p. 5). In response, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Ste´phane Lilti, asserted that France had the sovereign right to prohibit the sale of Nazi merchandise within its borders, and argued that Yahoo! should not be exempt from French law (Le Menestrel et al. 2002).

The Court Orders

On May 22, 2000 Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez ruled that Yahoo!’s sales were ‘‘an offense to the collective memory of a nation profoundly wounded by the atrocities com- mitted in the name of the Nazi criminal enterprise.’’7 He rejected all of Yahoo! Inc.’s jurisdiction-related arguments, holding that, though the Yahoo!.com site was located on a server in California, and perhaps intended for an American

5 http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/info/terms.html/.
6 Guernsey (2001), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=
9B01E7D71F3AF936A25750C0A9679C8B63.
7 LICRA v. Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo! France (Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, 2000), affirmed in LICRA and UEJF v. Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo! France (Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, 2000), www.foruminternet.org/actualities/lire.phtml?id=273.


audience, harm was suffered in French territory, and Yahoo! auctions were not protected in France by the USA’s First Amendment. Judge Gomez ordered Yahoo! Inc. ‘‘to take all measures such as would dissuade and render impossible all consultations on yahoo.com of the service of auctioning of Nazi objects as well as any other site or service which constitute an apology of nazism or which contest the nazi crimes.’’8 In other words, the French Court said that there can be no apology for Nazi crime, and that it is impossible to contest or downplay the horrific magnitude of evil-doing that had happened. Nazi crimes should be condemned without any reservation. Yahoo! Inc. was ordered to prevent access from Frenc

Hasil (Bahasa Indonesia) 1:

J Bus Ethics (2012) 106:353–365DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-1001-zFreedom of Expression, Internet Responsibility, and BusinessEthics: The Yahoo! Saga and Its ImplicationsRaphael Cohen-AlmagorReceived: 12 March 2010 / Accepted: 9 August 2011 / Published online: 31 August 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract In the late 1990s, the Internet seemed a perfect medium for business: a facilitator of unlimited economical propositions to people without any regulatory limitations. Cases such as that of Yahoo! mark the beginning of the end of that illusion. They demonstrate that Internet service providers (ISPs) have to respect domestic state legislation in order to avoid legal risks. Yahoo! was wrong to ignore French national laws and the plea to remove Nazi memo- rabilia from its auction site. Its legal struggle proved futile and may have harmed its business. This essay argues for the adoption of standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR considerations may trump some forms of antisocial, highly offensive expression.Keywords Internet Yahoo! Nazi memorabilia Corporate social responsibility (CSR) Business ethicsIntroductionDi cyber hukum beasiswa, Lessig (1999, ms. 43-44) membedakan antara dua klaim. Salah satunya adalah bahwa, mengingat arsitekturnya, sulit bagi pemerintah untuk mengatur perilaku di Internet. Yang lain adalah bahwa sangat sulit bagi pemerintah untuk mengatur arsitektur Internet. Klaim pertama benar; yang kedua adalah tidak. Hal ini tidak sulit bagi pemerintah untuk mengambil langkah-langkah untuk mengubah arsitektur Internet dan, dengan demikian, memfasilitasi peraturan perilaku Internet.R. Cohen-Almagor (&)Departemen Politik dan studi internasional,Universitas Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UKe-mail: [e-mail]: http://www.hull.ac.uk/rca; http://HCC.Haifa.AC.Il/ * rca / Di akhir 1990-an, Internet tampak media yang sempurna untuk bisnis: supranasional, panjang, dengan Ting distribusi-tion lebar dan sedikit peraturan, menawarkan peluang besar kepada investor. Dalam terkenal '' pernyataan indepen-mengumpulkan bukti dunia maya,'' Internet teoretisi John Perry Barlow menulis,Pemerintah dunia industri, Anda lelah raksasa dari daging dan baja... Anda memiliki kedaulatan ada dimana kita berkumpul. Anda tidak ada hak moral untuk memerintah kami atau apakah Anda memiliki metode penegakan kita memiliki benar alasan untuk takut. Dunia Maya terletak borders.1 AndaCases such as that of Yahoo! mark the beginning of the end of the no-sovereignty illusion. They demonstrate that Internet service providers (ISPs) have to respect domestic state legislation in order to avoid legal risks. An ISP is a company or other organization that provides a gateway to the Internet, enabling users to establish contact with the public network. Many ISPs also provide e-mail service, storage capacity, proprietary chat rooms, and information regarding news, weather, finance, social and political events, travel, and vacations. Some offer games to their subscribers and provide opportunities for shopping. Yahoo! is one of the most popular search engines and websites in the world. The company also provides multiple other web services, including a directory (Yahoo! Directory), email, news, maps, advertising, an auction site, and video sharing (Yahoo! Video).2The Yahoo! controversy juxtaposes two contrasting views: Yahoo!’s Internet-separatist view that it can engage in commerce as it chooses notwithstanding national laws1 ‘‘The Internet’s new borders’’ (2001); Shea (2006, p. K4).2 http://everything.yahoo.com/; http://uk.yahoo.com/?p=us. and morals, versus the view that countries have the right and ability to assert their sovereignty on the Internet. This essay argues for the adoption of standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR), under which limits are placed upon free expression in the interest of furthering goals of social responsibility. CSR on the Internet, especially when it concerns ISPs, may require limiting some information deemed by sovereigns to be antisocial and offensive (for further discussion, see Levmore and Nussbaum 2010).In his seminal work, Bowen (1953, p. 6) defined CSR as the obligations of business people to make decisions, to pursue policies, or ‘‘to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society.’’ The Internet is international in character, but it is susceptible to the constraints of national laws. There is not one law for the Internet and another for all other forms of communication.This essay comprises four parts: First (I), the Yahoo! saga as it unfolded in France and the USA is described in detail. Next (II), a comparative legal dimension is pro- vided, explaining how different countries address the challenge of hate and racist speech. Part III considers the business dimension of the Yahoo! affair. Finally, part IV discusses responsible terms of service that Internet com- panies can employ that prohibit antisocial, violent content on their servers.The Yahoo! SagaSales of Nazi merchandise are against the law in France, which strictly prohibits the selling or displaying of any- thing that incites racism. The French Criminal Code pro- hibits the display of Nazi symbols.3 The Yahoo! saga started in February 2000 when Marc Knobel, director of the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antise´mit- isme, LICRA) and a member of the Observatory of Anti- semitism, went to the Yahoo! auction site and saw pages of Nazi-related paraphernalia. The site featured swastika arm- bands, SS daggers, concentration camp photos, striped uniforms once worn by Nazi camp prisoners, and replicas of Zyklon B gas canisters (Crumm and Capeloto 2000, p. A1; Reuters 2002, p. C4). Sales of Nazi merchandise are against French law. Knobel acknowledged that the auctions might be legal in the USA, but believed them to be abso- lutely illegal within the borders of France.4In April 2000, LICRA together with two other organi- zations, Union des Etudiants Juifs de France (UEJF) and3 Section R645-1 of French Criminal Code.4 ‘‘Yahoo! sued for Nazi-item auctions,’’ http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth715.htm. Mouvement contre le Racisme, l’Antise´mitisme et pour la Paix (MRAP), asked Yahoo! to either remove the Nazi memorabilia from its American websites or make all such auctions inaccessible to web surfers in France and its ter- ritories such as Martinique and French Guyana in accor- dance with its own terms of service agreement, which prohibited netusers from posting content that was ‘‘hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.’’5 If it did not, the organizations asked that the California-based company be fined US $96,000 for each day of noncom- pliance. Ronald Katz, a lawyer representing the French groups, asserted: ‘‘There is this na¨ıve idea that the Internet changes everything. It doesn’t change everything. It doesn’t change the laws in France.’’6Yahoo! did not respond to the demands, and legal action commenced. At the first hearing in the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris on May 15, 2000 defending counsel Christophe Pecard noted that Yahoo! maintained a French- language website (Yahoo!.fr) that complied with French law. He argued that ‘‘Internet users who go to Yahoo.com undertake a virtual voyage to the US.,’’ so no offense could be said to take place in France (Le Menestrel et al. 2002, pp. 135–144). In any case, he said, it would be technically impossible for Yahoo! to block all access to its sites from France. Yahoo! claimed that it had no power to identify the national origins of its customers and thus no control over where in the world its digital products went. Were Yahoo! forced to comply with French law, it would need to remove the Nazi items from all its servers, thereby depriving Yahoo! users everywhere from buying them, and making French law the effective rule for the world (Goldsmith and Wu 2006, p. 5). In response, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Ste´phane Lilti, asserted that France had the sovereign right to prohibit the sale of Nazi merchandise within its borders, and argued that Yahoo! should not be exempt from French law (Le Menestrel et al. 2002).The Court OrdersOn May 22, 2000 Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez ruled that Yahoo!’s sales were ‘‘an offense to the collective memory of a nation profoundly wounded by the atrocities com- mitted in the name of the Nazi criminal enterprise.’’7 He rejected all of Yahoo! Inc.’s jurisdiction-related arguments, holding that, though the Yahoo!.com site was located on a server in California, and perhaps intended for an American5 http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/info/terms.html/.6 Guernsey (2001), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E7D71F3AF936A25750C0A9679C8B63.7 LICRA v. Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo! France (Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, 2000), affirmed in LICRA and UEJF v. Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo! France (Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, 2000), www.foruminternet.org/actualities/lire.phtml?id=273. audience, harm was suffered in French territory, and Yahoo! auctions were not protected in France by the USA’s First Amendment. Judge Gomez ordered Yahoo! Inc. ‘‘to take all measures such as would dissuade and render impossible all consultations on yahoo.com of the service of auctioning of Nazi objects as well as any other site or service which constitute an apology of nazism or which contest the nazi crimes.’’8 In other words, the French Court said that there can be no apology for Nazi crime, and that it is impossible to contest or downplay the horrific magnitude of evil-doing that had happened. Nazi crimes should be condemned without any reservation. Yahoo! Inc. was ordered to prevent access from Frenc

Hasil (Bahasa Indonesia) 2:

Etika Bus J (2012) 106: 353-365
DOI 10,1007 / s10551-011-1001-z Kebebasan Berekspresi, Tanggung Jawab Internet, dan Bisnis Etika: Yahoo! Saga dan Implikasinya Raphael Cohen-Almagor Diterima: 12 Maret 2010 / Diterima : 9 Agustus 2011 / Diterbitkan online: 31 Agustus 2011 Springer Science + Business Media BV 2011 Abstrak Pada akhir 1990-an, Internet tampaknya media yang sempurna untuk bisnis: fasilitator proposisi ekonomi tak terbatas untuk orang tanpa ada pembatasan peraturan. Kasus seperti yang dari Yahoo! menandai awal dari akhir ilusi itu. Mereka menunjukkan bahwa penyedia layanan Internet (ISP) harus menghormati undang-undang negara dalam negeri untuk menghindari risiko hukum. Yahoo! salah untuk mengabaikan hukum nasional Perancis dan permohonan untuk menghapus Nazi kesepahaman rabilia dari situs lelang nya. Perjuangan hukumnya terbukti sia-sia dan mungkin telah dirugikan usahanya. Esai ini berpendapat untuk adopsi standar tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan (CSR). Pertimbangan CSR dapat mengalahkan beberapa bentuk antisosial, ekspresi yang sangat ofensif. Kata Kunci Internet Yahoo! Nazi memorabilia tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan (CSR) Etika bisnis Pendahuluan Dalam beasiswa maya hukum, Lessig (1999, pp. 43-44) membedakan antara dua klaim. Salah satunya adalah bahwa, mengingat arsitektur, sulit bagi pemerintah untuk mengatur perilaku di Internet. Yang lain adalah bahwa sulit bagi pemerintah untuk mengatur arsitektur Internet. Klaim pertama adalah benar; yang kedua adalah tidak. Hal ini tidak sulit bagi pemerintah untuk mengambil langkah-langkah untuk mengubah arsitektur Internet dan, dengan demikian, memfasilitasi pengaturan perilaku internet. R. Cohen-Almagor (&) Departemen Studi Politik Internasional dan, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UK e-mail: [e-mail] URL: http: //www.hull. ac.uk/rca; http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/*rca/ Pada akhir 1990-an, Internet tampaknya media yang sempurna untuk bisnis: supranasional, difusi, dengan distribusi yang luas dan sedikit peraturan, menawarkan peluang besar kepada investor. Dalam bukunya yang terkenal '' deklarasi kemerdekaan dari dunia maya, '' ahli teori Internet John Perry Barlow menulis, Pemerintah Dunia Industri, Anda raksasa lelah daging dan baja .... Anda tidak memiliki kedaulatan di mana kita berkumpul. Anda tidak punya hak moral untuk memerintah kami juga tidak Anda memiliki setiap metode penegakan kita memiliki alasan yang benar takut. Cyberspace tidak berbohong dalam borders.1 Anda Kasus seperti yang dari Yahoo! menandai awal dari akhir ilusi tidak ada kedaulatan. Mereka menunjukkan bahwa penyedia layanan Internet (ISP) harus menghormati undang-undang negara dalam negeri untuk menghindari risiko hukum. ISP adalah perusahaan atau organisasi lain yang menyediakan gateway ke Internet, memungkinkan pengguna untuk menjalin kontak dengan jaringan publik. Banyak ISP juga menyediakan layanan e-mail, kapasitas penyimpanan, milik chat room, dan informasi mengenai berita, cuaca, keuangan, kegiatan sosial dan politik, wisata, dan liburan. Beberapa menawarkan permainan untuk pelanggan mereka dan memberikan kesempatan untuk belanja. Yahoo! adalah salah satu mesin pencari paling populer dan website di dunia. Perusahaan ini juga menyediakan beberapa layanan web lainnya, termasuk sebuah direktori (Yahoo! Directory), email, berita, peta, iklan, situs lelang, dan berbagi video (Yahoo! Video) 0,2 Yahoo! kontroversi mendampingkan dua pandangan yang kontras: Yahoo 'pandangan separatis-Internet s yang dapat terlibat dalam perdagangan karena memilih meskipun hukum nasional! 1' 'perbatasan baru The Internet' '(2001); Shea (2006, p K4.). 2 http://everything.yahoo.com/; http://uk.yahoo.com/?p=us. dan moral, versus pandangan bahwa negara memiliki hak dan kemampuan untuk menegaskan kedaulatan mereka di Internet. Esai ini berpendapat untuk adopsi standar tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan (CSR), di mana batas ditempatkan pada kebebasan berekspresi untuk kepentingan memajukan tujuan dari tanggung jawab sosial. CSR di Internet, terutama ketika itu menyangkut ISP, mungkin memerlukan membatasi beberapa informasi dianggap oleh penguasa menjadi antisosial dan ofensif (untuk diskusi lebih lanjut, lihat Levmore dan Nussbaum 2010). Dalam karya mani, Bowen (1953, p. 6) didefinisikan CSR sebagai kewajiban pelaku bisnis untuk membuat keputusan, untuk mengejar kebijakan, atau '' mengikuti garis tindakan yang diinginkan dalam hal tujuan dan nilai-nilai masyarakat kita. '' Internet adalah internasional dalam karakter, tetapi rentan terhadap kendala hukum nasional. Tidak ada satu hukum untuk Internet dan satu lagi untuk semua bentuk komunikasi lainnya. Tulisan ini terdiri dari empat bagian: Pertama (I), saga Yahoo! seperti membuka di Perancis dan Amerika Serikat dijelaskan secara rinci. Berikutnya (II), dimensi hukum komparatif disediakan secara, menjelaskan bagaimana berbagai negara mengatasi tantangan kebencian dan pidato rasis. Bagian III menganggap dimensi bisnis dari Yahoo! urusan. Akhirnya, bagian IV membahas hal yang bertanggung jawab dari layanan yang perusahaan- perusahaan internet dapat mempekerjakan yang melarang antisosial, konten kekerasan di server mereka. Yahoo! Saga Penjualan barang dagangan Nazi yang melawan hukum di Perancis, yang melarang penjualan atau menampilkan apapun - hal yang menghasut rasisme. KUHP Perancis dan melarang tampilan Nazi symbols.3 Yahoo! saga dimulai pada bulan Februari 2000 ketika Marc Knobel, direktur Liga Internasional Melawan Rasisme dan Anti-Semitisme (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l'Antise'mit- isme, licra) dan anggota dari Observatorium dari Anti Semitisme, pergi ke situs lelang Yahoo! dan melihat halaman perlengkapan Nazi-terkait. Situs ini menampilkan swastika arm band, belati SS, foto kamp konsentrasi, seragam bergaris sekali dipakai oleh para tahanan kamp Nazi, dan replika tabung gas Zyklon B (Crumm dan Capeloto 2000, hal A1;.. Reuters 2002, hal C4). Penjualan Nazi barang menentang hukum Perancis. Knobel mengakui bahwa lelang mungkin hukum di Amerika Serikat, tapi percaya mereka untuk menjadi mutlak- lutely ilegal dalam batas-batas France.4 Pada bulan April 2000, licra bersama dengan dua organisasi-organisasi lainnya, Union des étudiants Juifs de France (UEJF) dan 3 Bagian R645-1 dari KUHP Perancis. 4 '' Yahoo! menggugat lelang Nazi-item, '' http://www.usatoday.com/ hidup / maya / tech / cth715.htm. Mouvement contre le Racisme, l'Antise'mitisme et pour la Paix (MRAP), meminta Yahoo! baik menghapus memorabilia Nazi dari situs Amerika atau membuat semua lelang tersebut tidak dapat diakses untuk peselancar web di Perancis dan ritories ter- nya seperti Martinique dan Perancis Guyana yang se- suai dengan istilah sendiri dari perjanjian layanan, yang melarang netusers dari posting konten yang '' kebencian, atau ras, etnis atau tidak pantas. '' 5 Jika tidak, organisasi meminta bahwa perusahaan yang berbasis di California didenda US $ 96.000 untuk setiap hari kepatu- noncom-. Ronald Katz, seorang pengacara yang mewakili kelompok Perancis, menegaskan: '' Ada ide naif ini bahwa Internet mengubah segalanya. Ini tidak mengubah segalanya. Ini tidak mengubah hukum di Perancis. '' 6 Yahoo! tidak menanggapi tuntutan, dan tindakan hukum dimulai. Pada sidang pertama di Pengadilan de Grande Instance de Paris pada 15 Mei 2000 membela nasihat Christophe Pecard mencatat bahwa Yahoo! mempertahankan situs bahasa Perancis-(Yahoo! .fr) Yang memenuhi hukum Perancis. Ia berpendapat bahwa '' pengguna internet yang pergi ke Yahoo.com melakukan perjalanan maya ke AS., '' Sehingga tidak ada pelanggaran bisa dikatakan berlangsung di Perancis (Le Menestrel et al. 2002, hlm. 135-144). Dalam kasus apapun, kata dia, akan teknis tidak mungkin untuk Yahoo! untuk memblokir semua akses ke situs-nya dari Perancis. Yahoo! mengklaim bahwa itu tidak memiliki kekuatan untuk mengidentifikasi asal-usul nasional pelanggan dan dengan demikian tidak ada kontrol atas mana di dunia produk digital pergi. Yang Yahoo! dipaksa untuk mematuhi hukum Perancis, akan perlu untuk menghapus item Nazi dari semua server, dengan demikian merampas pengguna Yahoo! mana-mana dari membeli mereka, dan membuat hukum Perancis aturan yang efektif untuk dunia (Goldsmith dan Wu 2006, p . 5). Sebagai tanggapan, pengacara penggugat, Ste'phane Lilti, menegaskan bahwa Perancis memiliki hak berdaulat untuk melarang penjualan merchandise Nazi dalam perbatasannya, dan berpendapat bahwa Yahoo! tidak harus dibebaskan dari hukum Perancis (Le Menestrel et al. 2002 ). Pengadilan Pesanan Pada 22 Mei 2000 Hakim Jean-Jacques Gomez memutuskan bahwa 's penjualan yang' Yahoo! 'pelanggaran ke memori kolektif bangsa mendalam terluka oleh kekejaman yang dilakukan pada nama perusahaan kriminal Nazi . '' 7 Ia menolak semua Yahoo! Inc argumen yurisdiksi terkait, memegang itu, meskipun situs .com Yahoo terletak pada server di California, dan mungkin dimaksudkan untuk Amerika! 5 http: // uk. docs.yahoo.com/info/terms.html/. 6 Guernsey (2001), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res= 9B01E7D71F3AF936A25750C0A9679C8B63. 7 licra v. Yahoo! Inc. dan Yahoo! Perancis (Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, 2000), menegaskan di licra dan UEJF v. Yahoo! Inc. dan Yahoo! France (Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, 2000), www.foruminternet.org/actualities/lire.phtml? id = 273. penonton, kerugian diderita di wilayah Prancis, dan Yahoo! lelang tidak dilindungi di Perancis oleh USA Amandemen Pertama. Hakim Gomez memerintahkan Yahoo! Inc '' untuk mengambil semua langkah-langkah seperti akan menghalangi dan membuat tidak mungkin semua konsultasi di yahoo.com dari pelayanan melelang Nazi benda serta situs atau layanan lainnya yang merupakan permintaan maaf dari nazisme atau yang kontes kejahatan nazi. '' 8 Dengan kata lain, Pengadilan Prancis mengatakan bahwa tidak ada permintaan maaf untuk kejahatan Nazi, dan bahwa tidak mungkin untuk kontes atau mengecilkan besarnya mengerikan kejahatan-perbuatan yang telah terjadi. Kejahatan Nazi harus dikutuk tanpa syarat apapun. Yahoo! Inc diperintahkan untuk mencegah akses dari Frenc