Yahoo Spouts First Amendment Doublespeak in Dissident, Nazi Auction Disputes

[The Straight Story]

Yahoo Spouts First Amendment Doublespeak in Dissident, Nazi Auction Disputes
By David Kravets EmailAugust 28, 2007 | 3:48:08 PMCategories: Censorship

Naziart

Yahoo is arguing out of both sides of its Web portal by urging a San Francisco federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit on behalf of Chinese dissidents jailed and allegedly tortured when the Internet concern identified the subversives to Communist authorities.

snip

In short, all Yahoo did was follow Chinese law, according to Yahoo, and has the First Amendment right of speech to deal with the Communists. Therefore, the search engine can't face a lawsuit for financial damages in the United States under a U.S. statute allowing foreign victims of torture to sue for damages in American courts, Yahoo said.

"This is a lawsuit by citizens of China imprisoned for using the Internet in China to express political views in violation of China law. It is a political case challenging the laws and actions of the Chinese government," Yahoo told the court. "It has no place in the American courts."

Yet two years ago, while citing the First Amendment, Yahoo went to the U.S. courts in a bid to prevent it from having to pay millions in fines levied by a French court for allowing French citizens to barter Nazi paraphernalia on its auction site _ a practice against French law.

"This is extremely ironic. They're saying free speech protections apply to Yahoo, but they don't apply to the Yahoo users of the Internet," said Morton Sklar, a lawyer for the World Organization for Human Rights USA who is one of the dissidents' attorneys.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/yahoo-spouts-fi.html

[knight_of_the_star]

1. Can't have it both ways

But then again corporations often find a way to do exactly that.

[Kagemusha]

2. In this case, it just doesn't make good law.

When the lawyer says, Yahoo has free speech protections but its users don't, well its users in China don't. This is the simple truth. They don't. Yahoo doesn't even have free speech guarantees in China. Suing Yahoo for China's lack of free speech can legitimately be seen as a reach. Suing Yahoo on the grounds that Yahoo caused people to be tortured of its own volition and culpability is also a reach. Chinese internet users having American freedom of speech guarantees is pure rhetoric and completely at odds with the plain facts. I wish they did have such protections, but they don't, and it's not Yahoo's job to protect Chinese citizens from their own government. Not to mention impossible.

[spirald]

3. Yahoo should be cautious about "just following foreign laws"

or they might find themselves on the wrong side of history. This is a very slippery slope indeed.

This link references info on how IBM built custom applications for the Nazis to manage the identification, selection, enslavement and extermination of the Jews during WWII. IBM argues that they had no choice in the matter.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02/11/ibm_implicated_in_nazi_extermination/

This is especially relevant given the juxtaposition of this story with AT&T's breaking the law and wiretapping/data mining US citizens without warrants at the request of the NSA. It should alarm us how far corporations will go in turning against the citizenry of a country, especially corporations involved in global information technology. Yahoo should be forced to pay a hefty fine. We should not tolerate American corporations who subvert our democratic principles abroad or at home, participating in the undermining of human rights.

[The Straight Story]

4. Thank you for further information

:)