Yahoo! has argued in the case that it cannot prevent French
users accessing its US sites. The company has removed the offending
site from its French portal, yahoo.fr, to comply with the French
law against the sale or exhibition of anything that incites racism;
but it refuses to remove the auction from yahoo.com because it is
not in breach of US law. The case is being brought by two human
rights groups based in Paris.
Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez is upholding the order he made in May
requiring Yahoo! to block French internet users form such sites as
that hosting the auction of Nazi memorabilia. However, he has
declined to impose daily fines on Yahoo! for failing to comply,
pending the result of an investigation into the technical barriers.
A team of three experts will be appointed and given two months to
find a means by which Yahoo! can comply. He rejected Yahoo!’s
assertion that French courts could not impose French law on the
English language portal based in California.
The next hearing of the case will be 6th November at which the
experts will present their findings. A lawyer for Yahoo! said: “The
decision to appoint international experts is a good decision… we
will co-operate with the experts in order to find, to see, if any
solution is possible.”
A number of companies have offered solutions that they claim
will answer the geographical problems posed by the case by
identifying the location of a user and blocking access if
appropriate. However, most of these technologies appear to rely on
an Internet Protocol address which can be changed in some cases.
According to Yahoo!, such ideas have already been rejected.
In Europe, under the Electronic Commerce Directive (which came
into force on 17th July), an ISP that hosts a web site with illegal
content is not liable for the content if it is not aware of its
existence (and there is no need to monitor all content hosted); but
if and when it becomes aware of the existence of illegal material,
the ISP must remove it or prevent access to it to avoid being held
legally responsible.
