Agence
France Press

Paris, August 10, 2000

French
Court to rule on Yahoo! Nazi auction sites

PARIS, Aug 9 – A French court could set judicial precedent on
Friday when it decides whether to force the US Internet company Yahoo! to bar
French users from accessing its sites on which Nazi memorabilia are auctioned.

Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez ordered
Yahoo! on May 22 to make it ‘impossible’ for French users to access sites that contravene national laws against promoting racial hatred.

The judge is to say on Friday how he will oblige the company to comply with his ruling, unless he asks for further expert opinions.

Even if he asks for more information,
Gomez could still fine Yahoo! for not having implemented filtering techniques to keep French users out of sites auctioning
Nazi memorabilia.

Yahoo! told the court on July 24 that no filtering system could be one hundred per cent effective in keeping people away from such sites.

Yahoo!’s French site, fr.yahoo.com, currently offers no Nazi memorabilia, but that does not stop French web surfers from accessing Yahoo! auction pages which routinely offer hundreds of Nazi artifacts
– from Swastika flags and Nazi daggers to replicas of Zyklon B gas canisters used in
Nazi death camps– through the global site www.yahoo.com.

Filtering systems do exist which allow
Internet providers to know in which country the surfer is accessing the web, and thus keep them out of particular web sites, but these can easily be bypassed,
Edelweb, a French Internet security company said.

But another
company, Infosplit – cited by the
co-plaintiffs, the League against
anti-semitism and racism (LICRA) – said
their technology could keep 95 per cent
of surfers from a particular country
from a web site.

“What we are being asked to implement is disproportionate,” Christophe
Pecnard, a lawyer for Yahoo! France said.

Executing the May ruling would necessitate a ‘complete revamp of Yahoo!’s site’, he said, and ‘not a single method’ is fail safe.

LICRA has long asked that a 200,000
euro ($A311,318) fine be imposed for every day Yahoo! does not implement a screening system.

French prosecutors also demanded a fine against the company, even if the court takes more time to conduct expert tests.

LICRA also wants Yahoo! France to post a warning on the illegality of the auctions, telling users to disconnect immediately.

“We’re not absolutists,” Marc
Levy, a lawyer for LICRA said. A screening system ‘with faults’ would satisfy the organisations, he said.

But the Jewish Students Union of France (UEJF), a co-plaintiff, sharpened its tone.

“If you can’t filter out the Nazi material then get rid of it”, Stephane
Lilty, a lawyer for UEJF said.

“Stop selling clothing scraps belonging to deported Jews for a few bucks, available on the Web around the world,” he said.

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