Washingtonpost.com: Can the Internet Have Borders?

Byline: Robert MacMillan

The Internet, as we've heard time after time, is borderless. That means that some of the material people publish online will be legal in some places and illegal in others. America faces this problem every day when offshore gambling operations run Web sites that are available to anyone here, even though they're illegal. Laws also vary from state to state: You can order wine from an out-of-state winery in some states, but not others .

Not to continue picking on Paris -- after all, Random Access bought an " aller retour " ticket to France this week -- but insisting that French law apply to a distant corner of the Internet, just because you can access it from inside French borders, raises tough questions about online freedom.

Consider Yahoo Inc. 's continuing troubles with naughty Nazis auctioning their paraphernalia online. The latest twist in this ongoing tale is in Yahoo's favor. A French appeals court yesterday cleared the company's former president and chief executive, Tim Koogle , of charges that he violated French law by allowing Nazi and racist items to be sold through its U.S. auction site.

"The former Yahoo! chief executive had been taken to court by the Association of Auschwitz Deportees , a group of survivors of the infamous Nazi death camp," Agence France-Presse reported . "Koogle had risked a fine of [46,000 euros, or about $49,150] and five years' imprisonment if found guilty of the first charge, and a [1,500 euro] fine for the second." ZDNet's France staff reported that the association, along with the Mouvement Contre le Racisme et Pour l'Amitie des Peoples ( Movement Against Racism and for Understanding Between Peoples ), accused Yahoo of "justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity" by allowing the auctions. (The groups sued Koogle because they could not sue the entire company.)

This wouldn't be such a big deal in the United States, where the Constitution affords freedom of speech protections even to Nazis, but it violates France's law against hate speech. Yahoo, based in California, does not allow such material to show up on its French Web site but that doesn't stop anyone in France from typing in http://www.yahoo.com and searching the American site. Not only that, the Yahoo France site contains a direct link to the English pages.

Nevertheless, the court said Koogle could not be held responsible for what was sold on the site's auction pages.

That case, which was filed in 2000, probably will come to a close in France, but it will drag on in the United States. Here's why, according to the Associated Press : In 2001, French courts started fining Yahoo more than $13,000 for each day that it did not remove racist auction items from its U.S. Web site. The company, the AP said, now theoretically owes $5 million. A U.S. federal judge in 2002 ruled that Yahoo faced the possibility of lawsuits because being available worldwide meant running the risk of violating some countries' laws. An appeals court panel reversed that decision in August, but said in February that it would rehear some arguments this spring, the AP said.

France's appeals court ruled correctly that Koogle, now the interim chief of the Friendster online networking company, should not be held liable for the auctions. The appeals court, meanwhile, should toss out the lawsuit against Google.

France must find a way to deal with the fact that in the United States we have every right to believe in and buy merchandise that appeals to people who ought to be locked up and fed bread and water for the rest of their lives (on days when we're feeling generous). France cannot stop its Jean-Marie Le Pen wannabes or its legions of boneheaded Holocaust revisionists and racists from visiting Web sites in other countries and getting hold of contraband material. What it can do is keep fighting the good fight on the ground. Right-wing extremists have a habit of taking to the streets and making asses of themselves. It'll be Hitler's birthday in a few days and they'll all come out to goosestep in various places around Europe. If that violates the law, round them up, put them on trial, stick them in jail.

Meanwhile in America, e-commerce corporations should search for racist material and expunge it from their sites. It can be done and it is worth doing, but asking a court to outlaw free speech is asking for trouble.

New York State of Revolt

The New York Daily News in an editorial Monday encouraged a tax revolt: "It's tax season again, and millions of New Yorkers are preparing to be scofflaws. They're going to fill in Line 56 on the state's long-form tax return or Line 27 on the short form by reporting that they made no out-of-state purchases, over the Internet, by catalog or in person, in 2004. Most will be lying. And good for them, we say. Don't pay this tax."

The Daily News noted that Gov. George E. Pataki (R) vetoed the addition of a line to tax returns that required people to report their out-of-state purchases but that the legislature overruled him. It also listed some notable names of people who on their tax returns claimed to have made no Internet, catalog or out-of-state purchases in 2004: Pataki, Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue (R) and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (D). I thought Spitzer spent all his time online.

Rest in Virtual Peace

How would you like to walk through a cemetery with a remote control, occasionally zapping graves to launch a video reel on a flat-screen television embedded in the headstone so you can get the edited highlights of someone's life? That's San Mateo, Calif., inventor Robert Barrows 's vision of the graveyard of the future. The Wall Street Journal reported that Barrows has filed a patent for a weatherproof, hollowed-out tombstone that will include the TV and a microchip.

While one could ponder the transitory nature of life, the permanent nature of death requires more thought than we tend to give to our high-tech communications, one source told the Journal: "Whether you'll be putting words, symbols or videos on your tombstone, 'you've got to think long term, very long term,' says Chris Epting , a pop-culture historian. 'Today, everything is so from-the-hip. We fire off e-mails and the next day look at them and say, "Why did I send that?" You can't do that on a tombstone.'"

This is off-topic for a technology column, but read on. The Journal also quoted Paul DiMatteo , who tries to help people think twice about the memorials they want to leave for their loved ones: One family, "having lost a loved one in a commercial fishing accident, wanted an etching of a hand coming out of water, pulling down a boat. Mr. DiMatteo talked them out of it by saying, 'When you go to the cemetery, you should remember the happy times.' ... One man recently had him carve this simple epitaph: 'Thanks for stopping by.'"

The Decline of Western Civilization, Wedding Edition

Got absolutely nothing to do Saturday? Spend it glued to your Webcam presentation of the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles . The BBC today reported that British firm Network Webcams is setting up two cameras near the Windsor Guildhall where the nuptials will take place. "Royal wedding fever has already begun online as people trade memorabilia and bid for the best view of proceedings," the Beeb reported. "Various media outlets have offered up to [5,000 pounds] to local hotels and other buildings in order to set up cameras on roofs. On auction site e-Bay , a shopfront in Windsor has been offered for hire for the day."

Is That All There Is?

A new study suggests that I might suffer some abuse from my coworkers if I admitted to not only knowing, but liking that song . Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Palo Alto Research Center found that sharing iTunes music libraries on an office network "turns out to be something like a peacock spreading his feathers for display," CNET's News.com reported.

From News.com : "I just went through [my playlist] and said, 'I wonder what kind of image this is ... giving me,'" reported one of the study's subjects. "I just went through it to see if there was stuff that would be ... annoying, that I would not like people to know that I had." I could take some potshots, but I don't want to risk the taunts from my well-documented Jacques Brel fixation.

Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com .