(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The Appeal Court in Paris has decided that the French ISPs need to block the access to website AAARGH, considered as revisionist by the court. This decision was made even though the judges admitted that the measures would be imperfect and the site would still be accessible through other means as well.

The action was started by a number of French anti-racist groups that have first asked three US-based hosting providers to shut down the website of AAARGH. But one of them refused to shut down the website and therefore the anti-racist NGOs continued their action in the French court.

The 2004 French law that implements the EU E-commerce Directive gives the possibility to the plaintiffs, after all the possible measures to convince the hosting company to take down the illegal access have been exhausted, to impose to the ISPs to filter the illegal content.

A first decision was taken in June 2005 when a lower court admitted the action against the major 11 French ISPs. The ISPs have asked in the appeal that the site be included on the blacklists used for parental control and have pointed out that the measure might block other legal websites, since an entire IP address is blocked, not just the URL of a website. They presented arguments that filtering methods are also very costly and not efficient. The ISPs have also asked to pursue directly the authors of that website.

The Appeal Court rejected the ISPs appeal considering that their arguments were already rejected within the parliamentary debates for this law. The court also stated that the decision, even if imperfect, "has the merit of reducing, as much as possible in the present technical situation, the access of Internet users to an illegal site."

The imperfection of the ISPs filtering solution is obvious in this case, as well. The AAARGH website can be accessed via any search engine. Also, even before the legal procedures were over, the authors of the webpage changed the hosting company and domain name and therefore now they freely explain users how they can use anonymising software to get to their website.

Decision Court of Appeal Paris - Tiscali, AFA, etc vs. UEJF, J'Accuse, SOS Racisme, etc. (only in French, 24.11.2006)
http://www.juriscom.net/jpt/visu.php?ID=866

Case AAARGH: ISP Filtering obligation confirmed in appeal (only in French 24.11.2006)
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,39020774,39365008,00.htm

Case AAARGH: Months of procedure for a inefficient filtering (only in French 27.11.2006)
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,39020774,39365037,00.htm