The Yahoo Case : How to Reconsider State Sovereignty in the Internet Age

The Yahoo! Inc. case illustrates the question of which law to apply to the Internet and the limits of state sovereignty in a borderless “virtual” world. In this legal dispute Yahoo! Inc. had been charged by several French associations with violating French criminal law and public order by hosting websites offering NAZI items for sale. The French judge showed sufficient references of the case to the French territory and in so far uses the forum delicti principle in order to acknowledge French jurisdiction over the case. Nevertheless even if the possibility for the French user to access certain unlawful contents on the internet exists, other criterions might be considered whensearching for the applicable law to the Internet. An additional problem in these cases is how to apply a decision affecting only French users to the worldwide web