Fighters of racism welcome Yahoo's Nazi ban

Yahoo's announcement of the ban late Tuesday was a surprise development in one of the most closely watched issues that have pitted freedom of speech on the Internet against the need to regulate extremists. Yahoo had been waging a legal battle against a French court order banning the sale of Nazi memorabilia on its website. But in an apparent change of tune, Yahoo announced Tuesday that, not wanting to profit from items that glorified or promoted hatred, it would forbid online sales of Nazi and Ku Klux Klan memorabilia starting January 10. Previously, it had vigorously defended its right to sanction the sales of items - like SS recruitment posters as well as SS knives, medals, uniforms and identification documents; a swastika T-shirt; and even a print of a watercolour painted by Hitler - claiming that as long as the sales were legal, they had legitimate historical value. "We welcome Yahoo's public commitment to act responsibly in the digital marketplace," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Los Angeles-based human rights group that monitors hundreds of websites. Cooper said he had consistently lobbied Yahoo to end the sales and said the company was merely living up to its own terms of use in banning the sales. In France, anti-racist groups that had led the legal battle against Yahoo's sales policy welcomed the company's decision as a vindication of their fight. "I believe we have won the battle," said Marc Knoble, a leading activist for the Paris-based International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), which led the legal charge against Yahoo in the French courts last year. "This is a great victory. It goes beyond what we could have hoped for." LICRA and the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) sued Yahoo in May saying the Nazi sales broke local laws forbidding the sale or promotion of racist material. Yahoo countered that the websites involved were aimed at the American market and said the U.S. First Amendment governing freedom of speech prevented it from shutting them out. A French judge ruled against the California-based company in November and gave it three months to set up a filtering system to prevent web surfers in France from accessing the auctions. Despite its decision Tuesday, however, Yahoo will continue to fight the French court ruling. "They have set a legal and technical precedent that we think is dangerous for the development of the Internet," said Yahoo France Managing Director Philippe Guillanton. "We hope that a U.S. judge will confirm that a non-U.S. court does not have the authority to tell a U.S. company how to operate." The newly banned items at Yahoo will include medals, weapons, uniforms and other items that carry swastikas or other symbols associated with hate groups. They will join a banned list that now includes tobacco, live animals and used underwear. Yahoo said it will use a special computer program to screen out such items before they go on sale. Ebay, the leading online auctioneer, already bans hate materials in Germany, France, Austria and Italy, where such items are illegal. Under the company's rules, sellers may not ship such items there, and buyers from those countries may not bid on them.

(dpa)