{"id":1421,"date":"2015-03-12T09:10:06","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T16:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2020-08-26T15:16:42","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T22:16:42","slug":"french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/","title":{"rendered":"French Court Says French Freedom Of Speech May Trump Facebook&#8217;s Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A French court has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2015\/mar\/06\/french-court-rules-it-can-hear-cases-brought-against-facebook\">ruled<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/europe\/france\/11453537\/Facebook-can-be-sued-if-it-tries-to-censor-content-says-French-court.html\">that a<\/a> challenge to Facebook\u2019s terms of service under French law may go ahead in a French court. A man had had his account suspended for publishing French nude art on Facebook, and sued Facebook for violations of Freedom of Speech. A French court will now rule whether the man\u2019s fundamental rights were unlawfully limited by Facebook.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Durand-Baissas, a teacher in France, posted a famous 19th-century painting by Gustave Courbet named \u201cThe Origins of the World\u201d on his Facebook account. The painting portrays a female reproductive organ, celebrating birth and origin \u2013 in addition to being a piece of great importance to the community of art historians. Facebook, in accordance with its noncompromising stance on any and all nudity, promptly blocked monseiur Durand-Baissas\u2019 Facebook account.<\/p>\n<p>The Frenchman decided to challenge this in court and argued that his freedom of speech had been unlawfully limited, and that French law should apply. Arguably, when he does post in France with a company that does business in France, that\u2019s not an unreasonable position.<\/p>\n<p>However, this obviously cuts both ways. If local law can take precedence before the terms of service of a global company, under the provision that they conduct business in the jurisdiction where the law seeks to be applied, then that doesn\u2019t just apply to France, but also to China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. However, we\u2019ve already seen the blade cut in that particular direction. Several of the global services have adapted to various dictatorships\u2019 restrictions in freedom of speech in order to do business there at all.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, it\u2019s beyond refreshing to see the blade cut the other way, too \u2013 an opening for the possibility that Facebook\u2019s ban on natural and artistic nudity must give way to actual freedom of speech, as required by fundamental rights. It doesn\u2019t just go in the direction of allowing <em>less<\/em> freedom of speech \u2013 this is the first time there\u2019s been an opening to allow <em>more<\/em> freedom of speech than desired by the corporation in question.<\/p>\n<p><strong>At the end of the day, this is about the fact that the public square, where freedom of speech used to be enforced, has moved in under the terms-and-services umbrella of a private corporation, where they enforce their own arbitrary limits of what may be expressed and not. That means our fundamental rights have effectively moved into the hands of private interests. I welcome a challenge to this doctrine and an enforcement of freedom of speech, once a public discussion forum \u2013 like Facebook \u2013 has grown large enough to be a de-facto public location, if not <em>the<\/em> de-facto public location.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And if you can\u2019t voice your opinion about any subject you like, or express nonsexual nudity and art in a public location, then there\u2019s a much larger problem than being promised Mars bases and getting Facebook instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A French court has ruled that a challenge to Facebook\u2019s terms of service under French law may go ahead in a French court. A man had had his account suspended for publishing French nude art on Facebook, and sued Facebook for violations of Freedom of Speech. A French court will now rule whether the man\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;French Court Says French Freedom Of Speech May Trump Facebook&#8217;s Censorship&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":true,"_modified_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1945,1,1940],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-news","category-social-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v26.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>French Court Says French Freedom Of Speech May Trump Facebook&#039;s Censorship<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A French court has ruled that a challenge to Facebook&#039;s terms of service under French law may go ahead in a French court. A man had had his account\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"French Court Says French Freedom Of Speech May Trump Facebook&#039;s Censorship\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A French court has ruled that a challenge to Facebook&#039;s terms of service under French law may go ahead in a French court. A man had had his account\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"PIA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/privateinternetaccess\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-03-12T16:10:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-08-26T22:16:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/ogimage.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rick Falkvinge\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@http:\/\/twitter.com\/Falkvinge\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@buyvpnservice\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rick Falkvinge\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rick Falkvinge\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/8153559f44e1b6f9738dd6c7d33046a4\"},\"headline\":\"French Court Says French Freedom Of Speech May Trump Facebook&#8217;s Censorship\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-03-12T16:10:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-26T22:16:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/\"},\"wordCount\":491,\"commentCount\":3,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Censorship\",\"General Privacy News\",\"Social Media\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/french-court-says-french-freedom-of-speech-may-trump-facebooks-censorship\/\",\"name\":\"French Court Says French Freedom Of Speech May Trump Facebook's Censorship\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-03-12T16:10:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-26T22:16:42+00:00\",\"description\":\"A French court has ruled that a challenge to Facebook's terms of service under French law may go ahead in a French court. 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