The American Nazi Party established a website on Yahoo promoting Nazi propaganda and selling Nazi memorabilia from World War II. In the country of France, there is a specific central government law that forbids the promotion of Nazi propaganda and the sale of Nazi memorabilia. This led to three attempts by the French government to force Yahoo to take this website down:
- The French government asked Yahoo to take the website down. Yahoo refused on the grounds that it was within the Nazi Party's First Amendment rights.
- A group of French Jewish students filed suit in a French court, and obtained a court order directing Yahoo to take the website down. The French court order was served on Yahoo, but Yahoo refused to comply with this order from a foreign court.
- The French government then filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California seeking an order to force Yahoo to take the website down. The court refused on the grounds that the American Nazi Party was acting within their First Amendment rights, and not subject to French laws.
This article: Nazi hunting: How France first "civilized" the Internet is available on the Internet.
So the question becomes: "How will our First Amendment rights survive in cyberspace?" In 1996, and again in 1998, the Clinton Administration passed laws attempting to limit child pornography on the Internet. In both cases, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit that went to the Supreme Court which ruled that both laws were unconstitutional, in violation of the First Amendment. China hammered Google's Internet searches by maintaining control of all servers accessible by hard wire, and forced Google to edit the result of their searches.
How can United States First Amendment rights of freedom of speech on the Internet be forced to comply with foreign legal rules?