Yahoo defeat

US web giant must bar French surfers from Nazi memorabilia auctions

THE World Wide Web may no longer claim it is a truly international medium after a French judge ordered that Yahoo must bar French users from one of its sites.

The decision that a national law must be observed by a foreign-based Web company could set an international precedent that would impact on Web surfers all over the world. The US-based, English language Yahoo.com site was auctioning nearly 2000 items of Nazi memorabilia. This is not illegal in the US but it is in France, which bans the sale of material which promotes racism.

On Monday, Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez confirmed a ruling he made on 22 May. The final decision had been postponed to allow a panel of three computer experts to assess whether the ban was technically feasible.

US-based Yahoo had argued it was impossible to bar users from a single country. But on 6 November the expert panel testified to the court that 90 per cent of French users could be identified and barred by checking their key words and Internet Service Provider addresses.

Judge Gomez gave Yahoo 90 days to implement a barring system. He said the company would be fined 100,000 francs ($14,000) per day if it exceeded the deadline. Yahoo's French site does not auction Nazi items.  

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Court upholds Yahoo Nazi ruling Yahoo had argued a ban was unworkable A FRENCH judge has upheld a ruling that top website Yahoo must prevent French users from participating in auctions for Nazi memorabilia, no matter where the site hosting the auction is based. The ruling is among the first of its kind and could set a major international legal precedent. "It's Yahoo, which catches a lot of attention, and it's France, not some Third World country, so it is important", said David Loundy, an American expert in internet law.

The panel said on 6 November that although there were technologies that >could block internet users in a given location from accessing a particular site, those technologies were not foolproof. Mr Loundy, the American lawyer, predicted that companies would leap in to fill that gap. "You'll have more companies setting up software to identify where users are", he told BBC News Online.

Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez was in essence confirming a ruling he had made in May, which Yahoo appealed against in July.

The judge gave the US-based site, one of the internet's most popular, three months to comply with the ruling or face fines of 100,000 francs ($12,940) per day.

There has been no comment yet from the website.

But the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), one of two organisations which brought the original complaint against Yahoo in April, welcomed the ruling.

The group's chairman, Yigal El Harrar, said Judge Gomez's verdict would help stop "the banalisation of the memory of the Shoah," the name many Jews use for the Holocaust.

Mr El Harrar also said the ruling confirmed the UEJF position that Yahoo was technically capable of stopping French users from participating in auctions.

The California-based company said that it was not technically feasible to ban French users from participating in auctions because it was difficult to identify the identity or location of any individual bidder.

Judge Gomez set up a three-member expert panel to advise him following the company's appeal in July.

The panel said on 6 November that although there were technologies that could block internet users in a given location from accessing a particular site, those technologies were not foolproof.

Mr Loundy, the American lawyer, predicted that companies would leap in to fill that gap.

"You'll have more companies setting up software to identify where users are", he told BBC News Online.

Yahoo's French site does not offer Nazi items for auction.

Yahoo's US site had 1,982 Nazi-related items for auction, including armbands, flags, hats and military decorations, at the time of the ruling on Tuesday.

Yahoo shares fell sharply on the Nasdaq US index of high-tech stocks following the court ruling.