From the attached message by Valerie Sedallian, it looks like a French judge approved the injunction. This will allow the French Jewish Students Association to prevent a number of ISPs (including CompuServe and IBM Global Network) from allowing connections to any revisionist web sites. In France, revisionism is a criminal offense.
Related messages are in these archived threads: http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=1801 http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?thread=French+Jewis... tudents+sue+ISPs+for+revisionist+materials&after=1817 Instructions on how to subscribe to fight-censorship-announce for updates: http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/ A web site with some info on Germany's failed net.blocking attempts: http://www.gsia.cmu.edu/andrew/ml3e/www/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/ France's failed book banning attempt is at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/le-secret/ Info on other international net-censorship attempts is at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/zambia/ -Declan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 20:29:05 +0100 From: Sedallian =?iso-8859-1?Q?Val=E9rie?= <sedallian@argia.fr> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@eff.org> Subject: French Jewish students sue ISPs for revisionist materials? Declan, Here is a note about the hearing that i have written for my newsletter and translated . english version has not reviewed yet so please excuse english mistakes.you can forward this message . FRANCE : 15 March 1996 A French Jewish Students Association ( Union des Etudiants Juifs de France - UEJF) has issued a writ against 9 French Internet Providers on the grounds that ISP allow their client to access to negationists services or messages infringing French criminal law. The plaintiff asked that the jugde gave the defendants an injonction under penalties to prevent their clients to connect to messages and services that patently infringe a french law that provides that revisionism is a criminal offense (loi Gayssot). The law provides that whose who will have contested publicly the existence of one or some crimes against humanity as they are defined under article 6 of statutes of the international military court attached to London agreement of 8 august 1945 and that have been committed either by an organisation declared criminal by application of article 9 of the said statute , or by a person recognised as guilty of such crimes by a french or international jurisdiction will be punished up to an emprisonnment of one year or/and a fine of 300 000FF Defendants have explained that they were providers of access, not of content, the the plaintiff 's demand would amount to make an a priori, systematic, in real time control on all serviecs and messages exchanged, which would be impossible to implement. They underlined the discriminatory character of the proceedings as not all French IP had been sued and the unspecified nature of the demand , messages and services considered unlawfull not being precised. International law issues and the fact that negationnists messages come from persons located in the USA where they are protected by the 1st amendment of the american constitution have also been discussed. Internet providers have reminded that they were neither administrators or managers of the Internet, which is a network build by users themselves. Sentenced is scheduled April 12th 1996.