CNet News is reporting that the another chapter has been added to the ongoing saga between Yahoo and French regulators over what can be viewed or sold over online networks. You may remember that several years ago the French got angry because some knuckleheads were selling Nazi memorabilia over the Net via Yahoo’s site.
Consequently, a French court ordered Yahoo to find a way to prevent French citizens from accessing auctions of Nazi memorabilia. Yahoo asked a U.S. federal judge to block the French court’s ruling – – citing not only its free speech rights both also the impossible hassle associated with trying to quarantine French citizens from the rest of the world – – and the company eventually prevailed.
But, on procedural grounds, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision yesterday. Basically the court said that the California judge who issued the previous ruling didn’t have the right to hear the case.
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Hard to believe that there are still so many regimes on this planet trying to clamp down on freedom of speech, especially in an age of ubiquitous electronic communications. But this editorial by Nir Boms and Erick Stakelbeck reminds us that some countries will stop at nothing to restrict the flow of information.
In particular, they note just how repressive some Middle Eastern regimes have been in recent years, including our “allies” in Saudi Arabia (who have banned 400,000 Web sites since 1999). And the authors also report of Iran’s jailing of a popular journalist for posting stories and cartoons on his blog that the regime didn’t like.
By the way, I edited a collection of essays on these issues two years ago entitled, “Who Rules the Net: Internet Jurisdiction and Governance.”
Eugene Volokh has an important post up on his excellent site about Australia’s new effort to crackdown on online porn by requiring nationwide filtering. As with so many other countries that have already been down this road, one has to wonder: Do they really think they can successfully block all offshore sites? If the history of human civilization has proven anything to us it is that human beings have a seemingly insatiable appetite for prurient material; people will find a way to get what they desire. So the real question in debates like this: Just how far are governments willing to go to enforce moral codes? In an age of seemless, borderless communications, it boggles the mind how ANY regulatory regime (even a “UN for the Net“) could ever shut down the free flow of information (including porn) no matter how hard they tried. Anyway, if you’re interested, these issues are explored in greater detail in a book I co-edited last year with Wayne Crews entitled “Who Rules the Net?”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.