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Apparently not mollified by Yahoo!'s recent decision to block auctions of Nazi artifacts and memorabilia on its websites, a group of French Holocaust survivors has launched a ludicrous lawsuit against Yahoo! chairman Tim Koogle for allegedly "justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity." The Register's Linda Harrison says that the group wants to see Yahoo humiliated, and is asking for a token one French franc (around 15 cents) in damages, but is also demanding that Yahoo! pay for publicizing the judgement if they win. Yahoo! Inc. terminated online auctions of Nazi artifacts and "other hate-related materials," as of Jan. 10, following a Nov. 20 ruling in a lawsuit filed by the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of Jewish Students of France by French judge Jean-Jacques Gomez, which gave Yahoo! three months to develop filter technology to prevent French Web-surfers from accessing pages featuring Nazi-related objects. Under the ruling Yahoo! would have been fined roughly $13,000 US for each non-compliant day after the deadline. Nearly 2,000 items of Nazi memorabilia had been available on Yahoo!'s US based auction site. Yahoo! had already removed Nazi paraphernalia from its France-based site, Yahoo.fr, adding warnings alerting French users that they risk breaking French law by viewing pages with sensitive material, but contends that it cannot block people in France from going to other country-specific sites to access banned material, and therefore it is technologically impossible to enforce the French court order. It will effectively comply by blocking the items from everyone. Judge Gomez's ruling, and Yahoo!'s uncourageous capitulation to it, invites a flood of potential similar demands by anyone, anywhere, who considers particular Web content offensive. Last year, when Judge Gomez first ruled against Yahoo! in this case, I expressed the opinion that the appropriate response for Yahoo!to take would be to pull out of France and thumb its corporate nose at the French court judgment. Subsequent events have served to reinforce that view. This latest lawsuit is a graphic demonstration of why. These people are not satisfied even when they get their way. They want to punish and humiliate those they perceive as ideological enemies, and anyone who refuses to conform to their particular worldview. While the world is none the poorer for the removal of Nazi artifacts and gimcracks in particular from Yahoo! site, it is substantially impoverished in general by the terrible precedent Yahoo! set by caving to pressure from special pleading to censor Web content. Appeasement of these ideological inquisitors does not work. And while to be offended by Nazism is a mark of decency, attacking free speech and expression is a mark of philosophical naivete and/or would - be political correctness tyranny. One of the most fundamental bulwarks of free society is free speech, and one surefire characteristic signalizing totalitarianism is the suppression of free speech. Qualified freedom is not freedom at all. The real litmus test of free speech advocacy comes when you have to hold your nose and defend the right of someone whose views you revile to be heard. Personally, I find historical revisionism and politically correct bullying far more offensive than symbols of past injustices. The past can't be altered by getting rid Nazi artifacts from Yahoo!'s auction site. What we can do is something about our own attitudes now and in the future, instead of beating the bushes for symbolic scapegoats. The Internet is one of the few free and democratic information mediums on the planet. Freedom inevitably makes the forces of repression and tyranny nervous. Whether they march under the banner of human rights, political correctness, moral virtue, or whatever, these people want to be in control. They aren't always evil or ill-intentioned, but they are woefully and dangerously mistaken. Censorship with a humanitarian face is still censorship. You could be the next one the kindly inquisitioners decide to silence.
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