Nazi hunting: How France first ‘civilized’ the Internet
Interesting background info. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to have Nazi “swag” or memorabilia. I mean I get that museums keep that kind of stuff for historical reasons, but…ugh.
The online world is looking nervously at Europe, whose leaders are making ever-louder noises about joining forces to bring “civility” to the Internet. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has led the cheering squad. At the last G8 conference Sarkozy rolled out a digital laundry list of Internet-related problems that need ironing and folding—everything from intellectual property protections to the need for cyber folk “to show tolerance and respect for diversity of language, culture and ideas.”
The Internet “is not a parallel universe which is free of rules of law or ethics or of any of the fundamental principles that must govern and do govern the social lives of our democratic states,” he warned. He called for “collective responsibility” and “for everyone to be reasonable” in cyberspace.
The specific call for regulation may be new, but France has long attempted to “civilize” the Internet out of things like racism and Nazi ideology by curbing their dissemination.
In fact, the first battle in this war concluded a decade ago. The winner was France; the loser was the then-reigning giant of the Web—Yahoo—along with the notion that the Internet is a “global” place that inherently transcends national boundaries.