[LINK] [Fwd: FC: What Yahoo ruling in France means, from Sili con Alley Daily]

[Michael Skeggs]

I don't usually find myself on the same side as David Goldstein, but I don't
think he was trying to be patronising or say that there are no people in
Australia that understand the holocaust.
I have found that since I moved to the UK that all aspects of the second
world war loom incredibly large in the national psyche. I sympathise with
the French courts who are trying to prevent a resurgence of nazism, and the
Germans who ban Mein Kampf.....but this isn't about the Internet anymore.
The French authorities know their ban will be as inneffective as previous
bans in the real world (in fact, less effective), but they do it anyway.
I believe the issue isn't whether the ban will be effective, but to
re-examine whether it is necessary....as Ellen rightly points out, how can
history be effectively studied when some source documents are censored?
Of course this discussion is probably not appropriate for Link.

Michael Skeggs 
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Email: michaels@uk.uu.net


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-link@www.anu.edu.au [mailto:owner-link@www.anu.edu.au]On
> Behalf Of Hrebeniuk, Ellen
> Sent: 30 November 2000 06:19
> To: 'Link '
> Subject: RE: [LINK] [Fwd: FC: What Yahoo ruling in France means, from
> Silicon Alley Daily]
> 
> 
> David Goldstein [SMTP:goldstein_david@yahoo.com.au] wrote:
> 
> >Whether you agree
> >or disagree with the decision of the French courts, one has to
> >acknowledge that the French courts are perfectly entitled to make
> >decisions based on French law. And the French, along with many other
> >Europeans have genuine concerns about racism and Nazism that few in
> >Australia are able to understand.
> 
> I have grown up hearing my Dad's accounts of life in 
> Nazi-Occupied Europe.
> There was the German soldier he saw guarding a group of Jewish
> slave-labourers near Kharkiv as they worked on a railway.  
> When he felt like
> it, the soldier would pick up his rifle and shoot one of 
> them.  Later Dad
> worked near Auschwitz-Birkenau.  So kindly drop the 
> patronising stuff about
> people in Australia who just don't understand.
> 
> Linkers have mentioned the difficulties in getting the French 
> ruling to
> work.  The problem is NOT that people will attempt to, and 
> perhaps succeed
> in, breaking the law:  we know it happens everywhere.  The 
> problem is that
> Yahoo! may be charged with committing a crime when it was 
> impossible for
> Yahoo to know they were doing so.
> 
> I might add a question that puzzles me as a librarian:  If 
> _Mein Kampf_ is
> banned in Germany and France, how is it possible for people 
> there to study
> their Nazi era history properly?
> 
> Ellen Hrebeniuk
> Librarian
> Petersham TAFE Library
>