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...
141). In other words, by sticking stubbornly to the "free speech" argument (e.g., rights to sell even Nazi items) Yahoo underestimated the bitterness towards Hitler and the Nazis that still exists in Europe today. Those in France (which was occupied by the Nazis during WWII) whose families' lives were brutally damaged by Hitler didn't "get" the whole notion of Yahoo's First Amendment (U.S.) rights. Nor did Yahoo correctly estimate the huge negative public relations fallout that resulted from having their name linked with "Nazi."
Works Cited
Le Menestrel, Marc, Hunter, Mark, and de Bettignies, Henri-Claude. (2002). Internet e-ethics
In Confrontation with an Activists' Agenda: Yahoo! On Trial. Journal of Business Ethics,
Vol. 39, 135-144.
