French Scholars Delves Deeply Into

¶ … French scholars delves deeply into the legal and ethical controversy that arose when Yahoo initially refused to -- but later agreed to -- remove neo-Nazi sale items on Yahoo's auction sites.

The article is eight years old but it brings up several important points that are especially relative to the global online business marketplace. One, should the sale of what is considered "hate-related" items -- things that offend a given culture or ethnic group -- be allowed to be auctioned off on the Internet? How free is the market if a legitimate collector of historical memorabilia -- with no connections to hate groups and no history of ethnic or social bias against any culture or group -- cannot purchase an item used by Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan? And also, should the book written by Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, an evil but historically valid publication be banned from Internet sales?

Meanwhile the article traces the steps taken by the Union of Jewish French Students (UEJF), the Wiesenthal Center, the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (ILARA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the UK's Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and other groups to attempt to shut down Yahoo when it comes to auctions and sales of items that these-above mentioned groups considered hate-related.

Immediately after the LICRA sued Yahoo, urging a French court to fine Yahoo $90,000 for selling Nazi objects, Yahoo responded with what Le Menestrel, et al., called "a principled stance" (Le Menestrel, 2002, p. 137). Yahoo simply said that while of course it does not "endorse anti-Semitism," or "racism of any sort," Yahoo has consistently supported "freedom of expression and choice" and prefers not to become "a political censor" (Le Menestrel, p. 137). The first hearing at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris the attorney for Yahoo insisted that the case was actually putting "Internet on trial instead of neo-Nazi propaganda" (p. 138). The lawyer, Christophe Pecard, noted correctly that technically anyone from France can log on to the U.S. version of Yahoo and will find there the offensive items, and so taking the Nazi-related items off the French version of Yahoo won't prevent French Internet users from buying those items in any event. A few days later the judge (Jean-Jacques Gomez) ordered Yahoo to "take all measure of a nature to dissuade and to render impossible all consultation…of the online sale of Nazi objects…or any other site or service that constitutes an apology of Nazism or a contestation of Nazi crimes" (p. 138).

The response from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang was that the French court does not have jurisdiction over an American company; "Asking us to filter access to our content according to the nationality of an internaut is very naive" (p. 138). Basically Yang was saying we won't obey your order and become a censor. The worst part of this for Yahoo was the media exposure; headlines had "Yahoo" and "Nazi" in the same sentence was a public relations disaster for Yahoo. When Yahoo decided to remove all Nazi-related materials (except anti-Nazi items) from its pages that still didn't put the controversy to rest. Arguing not from a business standpoint but from a "free speech" standpoint, Yahoo took a lot of heat that it could have avoided by simply removing the offensive items at the outset of the media-driven conundrum.