More on the France-Yahoo case....A U.S. court is worried by Yahoo's attempt to avoid jurisdiction in the French case against it for violating French law on hate-speech. Until now, U.S. courts have said that France cannot limit the free-speech rights of Americans. But now Judge Warren Ferguson, of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is thinking, "All the French court's saying is, 'Whatever you do, don't impact France.' See? That's called homeland security."
I'm sorry to say that I predicted that U.S. courts would make this turn. From FOSN for 11/16/01: "U.S. courts don't want France limiting the speech of Americans. But IP-tracking software gives us a way to avoid that result; and when that result can be avoided, U.S. courts might well recognize the sovereign right of France to control what French citizens can do in France, and ask Americans to respect that sovereign right."
From FOSN for 2/14/02: We should worry about countries in which "deference to the sovereignty of other nations is a stronger policy than the freedom to put content on the internet that might offend others." Also see FOSN for 11/9/01, 1/23/02.
Why does this matter for FOS? If France can block Yahoo auctions from selling offensive artifacts to French citizens, then China can block U.S. history journals from distributing histories of the Tienanman Square massacre to Chinese citizens, and the latest country seized by fundamentalists could block U.S. science journals from defending Darwinism.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/03/2002 09:19:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
