The Internet company, Yahoo!, has said that it will ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia from its auction sites. The new restrictions will take effect in a week's time. A spokesman said that the company had decided that it did not want to profit from items that promote or glorify hatred. He denied that the move was in response to a court ruling in France that Yahoo! must prevent Internet users there from accessing its websites that sell such material. Last November, a judge in Paris gave Yahoo! three months to implement the ruling or face a fine of $13,000 a day.
On 21 December the company appealed to a US court to overrule the Paris order on the grounds that France had no jurisdiction on the California company. The case was seen as a crucial test of how national laws could be imposed on the Internet. Yahoo! claimed that the French ruling would have a “significant chilling effect on the freedom of expression for users of Yahoo!” if it is allowed to stand. Yahoo!’s lawyer Michael Traynor said that while the company shared a general concern about hate speech it is also concerned about freedom of speech and that is why Yahoo! will continue to fight the court order.
