The hearing has been launched after 6 Jewish groups filed a lawsuit demanding that access to the web portal front14.org be banned. The portal contains links to over 300 web sites containing racist material, illegal under French law. The front14 portal is run by a US company called SkyNetWEB which has no French presence, unlike Yahoo! Accordingly, if SkyNetWEB were successfully sued in France, it would be difficult for the court to enforce the judgment.
Instead, the French groups are seeking an order from the French court that 13 French ISPs, including Wanadoo, Noos, Freesurf and AOL France, should block access to the Front14.org portal and the sites it hosts.
A ruling is expected later this year from Judge Jean-Jacquez Gomez.
Yahoo! is challenging Gomez’s ruling against it in the US courts, although it has removed the auction sites which triggered the original lawsuit. Yahoo! argues that a French court has no jurisdiction to control its US web site. A date has still to be set for the hearing of the case.