Judge blocks French ISPs from connecting to revisionist sites

[Declan B. McCullagh]

>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+Jewish+s
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 at argia.fr>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan at 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.