French Court Rules Twitter Must Hand Over Data Identifying Authors of Racist and Anti-Semitic Tweets in France
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by Zach Pontz
Twitter bird. Photo: wiki commons.
A French court ruled Thursday that Twitter must hand over data to help identify the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets posted to the site in October of last year.
The ruling follows a lawsuit filed by France’s Union of Jewish Students in November which argued that numerous tweets had breached French law prohibiting incitement to racial hatred.
“It is a major precedent and breakthrough in the attempt to balance privacy online with the need to combat hate speech,” Sacha Reingewirtz, vice president of the Union of French Jewish Students, told JTA.
The court in Paris today said the site must do this “within the framework of its French site,” and that for every day it does not comply with the ruling it will face a fine of $1,300.
