French Court Rules That Facebook Can Now Be Sued in France (thestack.com) 145
An anonymous reader writes: A Paris court of appeal has ruled in favor of a French complainant whose account was suspended, because he linked to an image of the 1866 Gustav Courbet nude 'L'Origine du monde', currently residing at the Musee d'Orsay. The appeals court not only agreed that the user's suspension by Facebook constitutes censorship, but the ruling itself negates Facebook's insistence that all legal challenges take place in its native California.
Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
Facebook could have just put a fig leaf over the offending parts...
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Much like Italy covered up all those naughty Renaissance and classical nudes for the Iranian delegation, because, you know, genitals are EVIL!!!!!!!!!
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In this case, the only reason that the picture isn't treated as hardcore pornography is because it was drawn by a famous artist a long time ago. Which, if you think about it, who drew a picture and when they drew it have basically nothing to do with what a picture is.
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A woman's genital area isn't in itself hardcore pornography in France? I mean, really, it's absurd the very picture of a nude person should in itself be consider pornography of any kind, no matter how much of a close up, how much "insertion" is going on, etc. But then that boils down to the point that it's a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more "close ups of a woman's vagina" are pornography, the more people will intend to
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I'm not sure they'd put it on a bus stop, even in France.
(Yes, they put topless women on bus stop adverts there)
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I am almost tempted to link to that famous email service, goatse.cx [goatse.cx]
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Fuck sensitive morons who are offended by reality. Kill all those fuckers. Being offended is for victims who deserve to die.
Yes. Let's kill all intolerant bastards. Anyone who wants to kill other people for their views deserves to die. Oh wai^#$%#@@ CARRIER LOST
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Oh the irony!
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Facebook could have just put a fig leaf over the offending parts...
For the puritanical Americans and for the Middle East.
For everyone else, they could have just left the image as is [wikipedia.org].
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Facebook could have just put a fig leaf over the offending parts...
It is not the censorship that has been ruled on yet. It is the stupid EULA that claimed you had to sue them in California. That is just too stupid and embarresing for any fig leaf to cover.
Good for France. (Score:5, Insightful)
At a very basic level, here's the deal. If you're going to operate as a multi-national company, and you're going to offer and promote your services around the globe, then you need to be responsible for and liable to the laws of the land in each of those territories. If you operate in France and you violate the law in France, then you should be subject to penalty in France.
You don't get to shuffle all of your American tax liability through a double Dutch Sandwich with an Irish muffin, or whatever the hell it is, and simultaneously force French legal complaints to be arbitrated in California. You can't have it both ways.
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At a very basic level, here's the deal. If you're going to operate as a multi-national company, and you're going to offer and promote your services around the globe, then you need to be responsible for and liable to the laws of the land in each of those territories..
At the basic level, here's the deal. If you're going to operation internationally, you have to deal with jerks coming at you from both directions. Some countries are going to demand that you MUST censor this, and that, and other countries will demand that you CAN'T censor that, or the other.
About the best you can do is to defy both of them.
You can't please everyone.
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THen you don't get to oeprate in the country you're ignoring. You don't get to have it both ways. Follow their laws, get them to change their laws, or leave the country. You have no right to operate in every country.
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You don't have to operate in a country to serve up a web site in their country, in their language and to charge their business for ads.
Facebook might have made a mistake by incorporating in France. Easy to fix.
It certainly limits how obnoxious french laws can be before everybody just leaves (but continues doing business with individual frogs).
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I'd say if you're serving a website in that country, you're operating in it. Block the country if you don't, or at least don't complain when they block you. If you're serving in their country, in their language (when its not your home country's especially) you are most definitely operating in it.
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...except when we don't agree with that country. Then the corporation should do everything they can to flaunt local laws and allow citizens to completely violate whatever objective that government is trying to enforce.
I would be shocked if the hypocrisy level in this regard is any less than 100%.
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So what you are saying is that since basically all content on the web is illegal somewhere everyone who hosts a website is a criminal and should go to jail? All porn must be purged, all pro homosexual content erased, and any history that does not mention that the the infinite intelligence and benevolence of Kim Jon Ill should be striked from the record?
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Read the post again. It only applies if you do business in France. If you have no staff there then you can ignore French courts. Facebook has offices in France, pays tax in France, and is subject to French laws that say its EULA doesn't apply.
Re:Good for France. (Score:5, Insightful)
Without bothering to read the article, it's probably relevant that the user in question is a resident of France, and access the site from France.
Facebook obviously know this, as it's a key attribute used to target advertising.
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Without bothering to read the article, it's probably relevant that the user in question is a resident of France, and access the site from France.
Facebook obviously know this, as it's a key attribute used to target advertising.
It doesn't matter if the user is in France. What should matter is if the site is located in France. What matters, or at least what has mattered to this point, is that the hosting country enforces its laws upon the hosting company. Random user from random country is shit out of luck.
So Facebook has the option of pulling out of France and shutting down facebook.fr. Which they won't do any more than they will for countries with harsher laws -- because they're about market share, and will compromise anything e
Re:Good for France. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if the user is in France. What should matter is if the site is located in France.
You don't realy get this "internet" thing, do you. What matters is not where "the site is located" (whatever that means). What matters is where the company is doing business. Facebook does business in France, French law applies.
FACEBOOK FRANCE
Societe 530085802
108 AVENUE DE WAGRAM
75017 PARIS
FRANCE
http://www.societe.com/societe/facebook-france-530085802.html [societe.com]
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so? facebook could just close its french office, do business in another currency, and nothing else would change.
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And if the frogs get too obnoxious, out it comes and they can pound sand.
Re:Good for France. (Score:5, Insightful)
So what do you do when laws in different countries are contradictory? Example: Certain speech being illegal in country A, but protected in country B?
I suppose you have two real choices,
1) block the speech from being seen in country A and allow it to be seen in countries B..Z
2) remove your business operations from country A
Take a look at Google, they've used both strategies in differing countries. Facebook itself is dealing with Belgium's ruling that they're no longer allowed to use cookies to track people who haven't signed up for the service.
My primary point is that Facebook does everything it can to minimize its tax liability in the US by shuffling money around, pretending to be based in Ireland and Luxembourg, etc. That's all well and legal for now, but in doing so, you're no longer an American company and should not have any claim to force overseas legal complaints into American jurisdiction.
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So what do you do when laws in different countries are contradictory?
Example: Certain speech being illegal in country A, but protected in country B?
If your business operates (has legal presence) in country B you have to respect its laws wether they contradict or not the laws of country A. Citizens of country B don't give a rat's ass about the laws of country A. They care wether the laws of country B (their country) are being respected by this corporation. There is no ambiguity here.
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It's basicly the removal of the right of individual countries to have their own laws if they are in the way of multinational corporations.
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The only reasonable solution is in-country subsidiaries that obey the laws of the country in which they're incorporated. So, if you goto facebook.fr you get to a site that is in compliance with French law, if you goto google.com it is in compliance with US law, twitter.cn obeys the laws of Canada, and so on.
The other options are:
1) No regulation at all and the internet is a 100% lawless free-for-all. And as much as that might appeal to the libertarian crowd, and as over-regulated as I personally believe
Re:Good for France. (Score:4, Funny)
twitter.cn obeys the laws of Canada
While having the Chinese branch of twitter obeying Canadian law sounds good, I don't think China would be happy.
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They don't censor posts critical of the government, they Zamboni over them until they disappear.
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But if you target french customers, and do business with french business, but have your servers in the USA, than the frogs can suck it.
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That would mean the frogs have to go after local business. They much prefer to extort foreigners. If this happened (the customer lost and tried to sue you), how would they show it was your problem. They are the ones with an out of control government. A government you are not even subject to.
You positions is that an American business, doing business in America is subject to frog laws when they get their first frogish customer? Does that apply to mail order as well?
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If you do business with french customers,
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So what do you do when laws in different countries are contradictory?
Example: Certain speech being illegal in country A, but protected in country B?
If there ever was a situation where it is impossible to follow the laws of two countries simultaneously, then the company simply has to decide which country to do business with. If it was impossible for Facebook to follow French law and US law, for instance, Facebook would be forced to choose which country to do business in. That means accepting no ad revenue from either US companies or French companies. It really is that simple.
There is no universal right that a company must be allowed to do business in ev
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There is no universal right that a company must be allowed to do business in every country on the planet.
But there are negotiations under way to allow exactly that. They are called TPP and TTIP and similar, and they are basicly about how to protect multinational corporations from national courts and those pesky citizens and their ideas how the law of the country should be.
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Chose which one you want to do business in? No-one is forcing Facebook to do business in every single country.
And, before you cry "but, Internet is global", observe that Facebook specifically has a business-unit (legal entity) in France, which is what matters here.
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If I have a forum, housed in the US, and someone from France doesn't like what someone posts, on my forum that is in my country, then France can suck my nuts. I don't even care if it's a French citizen that posted it on my forum. The property belongs to me. The property is in my country. Even if I sell ads on that site, they can still suck my nuts. If France doesn't like what someone posts on my site, or what I decline to host on my site, then France can try to block their citizens from accessing my site. I
Re:Good for France. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I have a forum, housed in the US, and someone from France doesn't like what someone posts, on my forum that is in my country, then France can suck my nuts.
Good for you. But that is irrelevant to the case in hand -- Facebook is a company doing business in France -- French law applies to that business.
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Until they leave and make the French customers buy their ads from a website hosted overseas.
Which has a cost. That cost is the maximum cost that French laws can impose on overseas companies.
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Sure they have local court cases that say they matter.
What does that matter? Seriously, I can start serving up Danish language pages tomorrow. What are they doing to do? Send the Danish army after me?
I can sell ads to anybody in the world from California (or anywhere else).
Actual result? (Score:2)
Re:Actual result? (Score:4, Insightful)
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They loose by default. I hope they dont have assets to seize in the EU.
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Shielding employees and stockholders is the entire POINT of a corporation.
This WHY a corporation should never be considered a person. It exists primarily to avoid the moral awareness and responsibility that an actual meat bag has.
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Shielding employees and stockholders is the entire POINT of a corporation.
This WHY a corporation should never be considered a person. It exists primarily to avoid the moral awareness and responsibility that an actual meat bag has.
NO. Shielding the stockholders is the point of a corporation. Employees are still liable for any crimes they commit. Also in the US, most countries just have a "tradition" for not suing the rich or the wealthy such as CEO, but that is not because they are immune or protected by anything other than their money and power.
Women (Score:5, Funny)
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She'll never actually learn to code, but she'll get a $100K/year job teaching the code.org tuturial on how to move elsa across the screen.
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If Elsa wants to move across the screen, she will move by herself. I hope she freezes your balls off, you misoginist women-hating gamergating homophobic faggot. Go die in a cold fire.
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Especially your mom, no one on the varsity team was denying her sexuality!
Captcha: immodest
France, République française, again (Score:2)
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Oh France... (Score:3, Insightful)
Always ahead of USA on giving people freedom.
Incorrect Summary (Score:5, Informative)
According to the article, the court didn't say anything about the alleged censorship. It just ruled that the clause in Facebook's terms and conditions that all lawsuits had to take place in California was invalid.
Re: Incorrect Summary (Score:5, Informative)
That's obvious because in all European countries consumer protection laws require law suits to be located at the court of the residence of the consumer.
So requiring a consumer to sue away from his residence is obviously not possible.
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No. It is because such a condition is ridiculous and simply not valid.
It's in London (Score:2)
Last I saw the painting, two years ago, it was hinging in London's National Gallery.
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It was on loan. It's owned by the Musee d'Oray, Paris.
(They got it in return for an unpaid tax bill).
Hold on now... (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Fuck Facebook
2) Fuck Facebook in the eye.
3) Fuck Facebook in the eye with a broken bottle, but don't they just serve up content to French people? What is their liability here?
Someone's going to bring up the privacy implications, but can we for one second take some responsibility for ourselves?
This little Frenchman is upset because Facebook isn't letting him host content on their servers. What is his expected remedy here? If YOU owned a site and BOFH'd it and ruled with an iron fist, would you accept some
'L'Origine du monde' (Score:2)
In case you're wondering:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini... [pinimg.com]
The painting is a very realistic depiction of a squirrel sitting in a woman's lap.
umm (Score:2)
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Great point. So let's shut down Facebook in Europe, South America, Canada...anywhere that doesn't share America's astonishing masturbatory fantasies with religion, racism, ignorance, guns and other evil things. And while we're at it, that whole domain thing...it doesn't really belong in the US.
Works for me. :-)
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French court wants to have jurisdiction over what resides on a server physically located in California?
No,French courts want to have jurisdiction over agreements made between a French company and a French citizen.
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I've seen this argument a few times now, but why would it be relevant where the content is stored or even served from. Shouldn't we look at where the content is consumed?
Your argument is like snail-mailing cannabis from a country where it is legal to grow and sell to a country where it is a prohibited substance. Should that country allow the goods to enter the country as it was produced and served from abroad?
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This is one of those extremely rare times where we hear about someone outside of the U.S.A. suing a company.
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And going on strike.
If you lookup ILO numbers, you see that french workers go on strike less than EU average. The point is that french strike are often massive, national-scale and aimed at the government, which make them very visible.
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The French sometimes strike for silly nonsense.
For example: Makers of cheap Frog wine (vin Ordinair) went 'on strike' to protest that they were being put out of business by better cheap wine from overseas.
Think about that. Your product is crap, you customers prefer a cheaper better product. Do you: (Adopt the technology that is making cheap wine better OR Go on strike)? If you're frogish, strike it is.
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No, the problem is that the likes of E&J have made making cheep industrial scale wine into a science. It's much better than is was even 20 years ago.
The frog cheap wine makers still do it the old fashioned way, right down to an average 2 flies per bottle in the sediment.
With robotic pickers, wine making isn't labor intensive at all.
The fact is that 200+ years ago the french were the only people who could make really good wine. Now anybody can do it and the french are reduced to babbling about sla
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It was an example of a crazy frog strike. Business owners can't generally strike.
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Business owners can't generally strike
SMB owners do sometime strike in France, when they request some action from the government. And farmers strike very often for the same reason.
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Or simply shutdown facebook.fr and the users will just goto facebook.com. It's not like Facebook is netflix and will suffering crippling latency if French users' bits have to go through a cable under the ocean.
Re: Just geoblock France already, Facebook!!! (Score:2)
The EU. Consumers can sue EU companies in their home country.
Re:Just geoblock France already, Facebook!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only principle here is, if a business is generating revenue in a country, then that revenue can be targeted in a civil suit. The company can not turn around and claim somehow that it should be allowed to make money in a country but simultaneously not be held accountable for how it makes money in that country. To pretend to claim so is just so much legal bullshit. It is bad enough when you have global tax fraud on trillions of dollars of income and the pain, death and suffering that causes in the crippling of social services and the break down of infrastructure, now they are corruptly fighting to not be held legally accountable for their actions when they are done by remote control. All the money and no responsibility, corporations are behaving like out of control toddlers, screaming for more all of the time now.
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Easily solved by making Frog advertisers buy their Facebook ads in another country.
I suppose the frogs could go after the advertisers. But they really prefer to sue overseas companies.
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french advertisers should pay for their ads in a different country, then. and forgo french taxes, too.
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Wrong. If Facebook has a service in France, they are subject to French law.
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Wrong. If Facebook has a service in France, they are subject to French law.
If Facebook has servers in France or accepts ad revenue from a French company, they should absolutely be subject to French laws. Depending on European Union laws, this could even apply if Facebook has servers or accepts ad revenue from any European company. Depending on trade agreements between France/EU and the USA, this could even apply if Facebook has servers or accepts ad revenue from any US company.
It all depends on trade agreements in place for all countries involved in this case.
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You know, some of us do believe that the French government should be told to piss off in this matter AND that the US government should be told to go pound sand wrt/ the data hosted in Ireland. The viewpoints are not mutually contradictory.
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The login credentials where in reach of the warrant and the server allowed logins from America.
Seems pretty cut and dried. Their was a terminal that could get the data in reach of cops with guns and warrants.
If the data hadn't been available in the USA the case would be different on a practical level.
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The EU of France should be free to try blocking any site they want.
But there is no reason for Facebook to do it. Their money might not be green, but it converts to it just fine.
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How much money does 20 millions users in France translate to?
A shit ton of people in one of the world's most important countries. France isn't insisting Facebook change its worldwide TOS, but it does insist they change their TOS for France, which is not unreasonable at all. The world is not California, move out and you encounter different people with different philosophies. Between the constant complaining of why the world isn't as sympathetic to them as the US, the billion dollar tax dodges in a country they don't even pretend to be stationed in, their shifty user p
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Using 'people' as a currency/money is kind of creepy.
Is "potential customers" more appealing then? That's what (successful) business's have always called the general populace, and it wasn't creepy before.
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They have more than 20 millions users in France. Facebook is probably better off paying a few lawyers to modify their ToS.
The issue isn't the cost of lawyers fees to draft a new ToS. The issue is that the ToS which conforms to France's requirements would fundamentally change the nature of social media. In the present case, a user can sue Facebook because Facebook decided an uploaded image violated their ToS. If Facebook caves to French demands, then it loses the ability to control what content appears in their site. What if an image they are required under French law to allow is considered illegal in another jurisdiction?
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Re: It's time for Facebook to pull out of France. (Score:2)
It's the EU. The non tracking comes from a court in Belgium (and it's good practice to stop doing it in the whole EU, because it's obviously in compatible in concept with the old and new privacy directives, it's just the first country what a court has ruled).
French consumers can sue any EU company at home.
Furthermore you have the issue that a number of EU countries are critical to popular tax dodges.