Thursday, January 24, 2013

Twitter must identify racist, anti-Semitic posters, says French court


For months now, twittersphere French-language lit up with a rash of tweets racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic using the hashtags # UnBonJuif (a Jew), # SiMonFilsEstGay (if my son is gay), and # SiMaFilleRamèneUnNoir (if my daughter brings home a black guy).Last fall, under pressure from the French advocacy group Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), Twitter agreed to remove some offensive tweets. In October 2012, at the request of Berlin, also suspended Twitter account German neo-Nazi located in the city of Hanover, the first time that the company has such a government request.However, at the time, UEJF also information identifying the audience, Twitter not prepared to give up. So the group went to court to force the issue.On Thursday, the Court of First Instance ordered the Paris Grand Twitter to create the anti-Semitic authors tweets mechanism (Google Translate) of the French authorities to give notice "illegal content," the French site "in a visible and easily accessible [way]. "If Twitter does not comply within two weeks before the American company fines of € 1,000 ($ 1,336) per day.How should "free", "free speech"?This is not the first time that the courts of the French and butted heads laws more over online racism idiotic. Less than a year ago, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a law that would make the site look even hate crimes.Here in the U.S., we have near-blanket protection constitutional right to free expression. While incitement to violence generally does not protect hate speech - no matter how disgusting and awful. As we reported before, the principle is generally operating in America should be talking undesirable to be countered with more speech not less.That's not the approach adopted in Europe, where hate speech is not protected most definitely. Many European Union (and even some non-EU countries in Europe) are different types of anti-hate speech law mechanisms, partial head off terrorism and far right violence."We are not able to identify the people, but Twitter can not do that," said Sacha Reingewirtz, UEJF Vice President, the French broadcaster RFI. "We have already tweeted the decision. And we see on Twitter that the decision drew like raising new anti-Semitic messages directed against our organization, so that the work still to be done, both in and Twitter, but we're happy that the French justice is now changing the way it is. "
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