ZDNet: Yahoo backs off on porn sales. I'd seen this article in several places, but I had to take issue to this quote from Dan Gillmor's eJournal's coverage:
In January, after fighting French officials who wanted French citizens to be unable to see parts of Yahoo's site where Nazi artifacts were being auctioned, Yahoo caved in by banning such auctions. Nazis are loathesome, but Yahoo didn't care if historians were the ones looking for the items, not just wackos out for cheap thrills. Yahoo didn't care about anything but making the trouble go away.
Doesn't fighting French officials
contradict didn't care about anything but making the trouble go away?
If Yahoo! didn't care, they wouldn't've tried to fight it at all.
But then I remembered that there was one Yahoo! VP or somebody quoted about it, so my new thought is that the Yahoo! VP wanted to fight it, but the legal bills started piling up and Yahoo! itself decided to overrule the vocal moralists.
Of course, it's probably that they didn't want to have to make the expense of the user-filtering system, but I can be optimistic if I like.
