Opinion ID: 3035677
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Substantial hardship of withholding judicial

Text: consideration Even more perplexing is the majority’s conclusion that Yahoo! does not face “substantial hardship” because of our unwillingness to adjudicate its First Amendment claim. The majority attempts to avoid the obvious chilling effect of an overbroad and vague injunction in two creative and troubling ways. First, the majority opines “with some confidence” that Yahoo! need not fear the enforcement of a fine because “it is exceedingly unlikely that the sword [of Damocles] will ever fall” (Op. at 441) — another speculative assessment, we submit. It also faults Yahoo! for failing to proffer examples of “anything that it is now not doing but would do if permitted by the orders” (Op. at 445) and thereby imposes a new, higher burden on a First Amendment plaintiff to establish a chilling effect. Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) contended that anti-Communist provisions of the McCarran-Walter Act unconstitutionally put them at risk of deportation for engaging in protected First Amendment activities without the opportunity for a fair and impartial hearing before the INS. We held that the plaintiffs were sufficiently at risk of government prosecution to give them standing; but we found their claims not ripe because there was “a sketchy record . . . with many unknown facts,” such as whether the plaintiffs were actually members of the PFLP or what acts the government alleged they had committed, and we emphasized that the INS had not yet interpreted or applied the challenged provisions. Id. at 510-11. In marked contrast to these cases, here the French injunction remains extant and as broadly worded as ever; the defendants have refused to stipulate to Yahoo!’s compliance; and the district court has found actual noncompliance with specific terms as well as an overall risk of noncompliance with fatally undefined terms — thereby subjecting Yahoo! to the risk of substantial monetary fines and the chilling effect of the vague and overbroad injunction. Additionally, there is no court or agency — other than this federal court — that can address Yahoo!’s United States constitutional claim. YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 489
First, the majority overlooks Yahoo!’s claim that it faces actual abridgment of its current speech — not just a chilling effect on its ever-changing Web content. As the majority does acknowledge, Yahoo! hosts content on its auction site, including the sale of Mein Kampf, that is specifically prohibited by the terms of the injunction. The district court’s findings of impermissible material still present on the auction site demonstrate that Yahoo! is currently engaged in speech that the French orders — by their terms — compel it to foreclose to some users or forgo entirely. Yahoo! opts not to accede to the injunction, thereby incurring daily accumulating fines should its current or future behavior displease LICRA or UEJF. Certainly Yahoo! should not have to abstain from conduct it believes is constitutionally protected solely for us to find its claim ripe. Cf. City of Auburn, 260 F.3d at 1173 (9th Cir. 2001) (noting that finding case unripe would require party to comply with “costly and cumbersome” franchise requirements, only for the party to then raise “exactly the same argument that it makes here”). More importantly, the majority largely ignores the broad and diffuse scope of the French injunction — which extends well beyond Yahoo!’s auction site and clearly raises the question whether it is substantively possible for Yahoo! to comply. Apart from entirely obvious cases, how can one determine with any certainty whether something “may be construed as constituting an apology for Nazism or a contesting of Nazi crimes”? The majority makes the rather startling assertion that “[b]efore the district court can engage in useful factfinding, it must know whether (or to what extent) Yahoo! has already sufficiently complied with the French court’s interim orders.” (Op. at 449.) Of course, this is precisely the crux of Yahoo!’s predicament — and highlights the vagueness and overbreadth of the orders. We know the actions Yahoo! has taken and not taken with respect to Nazi paraphernalia appearing on its site. The only reason we cannot determine “whether (or to what 490 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME extent) Yahoo! has already sufficiently complied” with the French orders is because we cannot assess the scope of the orders themselves.7 It is this very kind of uncertainty that epitomizes a purely legal question of facial infringement of First Amendment rights and the harms routinely associated with such an infringement. In plain terms, if no one but the French court can decipher the meaning of its injunction aimed at Yahoo!’s speech, how can Yahoo! comply? Yahoo! has to know what content it has to screen from France-based users. The French orders contain no meaningful instructions for Yahoo! to winnow permitted speech from unpermitted speech. It is the absence of a discernible line between the permitted and the unpermitted that makes the orders facially unconstitutional. As the district court concluded, and as discussed previously, “compliance would still involve an impermissible restriction on speech” because it would require Yahoo! to interpret the vague and overbroad injunction as to what content is prohibited and which users should be denied access, on pain of substantial penalty should it guess wrong. See Yahoo II, 169 F. Supp. 2d at 1193-94. Ultimately, the majority’s parsimonious treatment of the free speech issues here culminates with its reducing Yahoo!’s argument to an interest in merely “allowing access by users in France” to Nazi materials. (Op. at 446.) Yahoo! is allegedly seeking “a First Amendment right to violate French criminal law and to facilitate the violation of French criminal law by others.”8 (Op. at 446.) Notably, even the defendants have not 7 It is telling that even the Internet experts relied upon by the French court were unable to recommend a “suitable and effective technical solution” for Yahoo! to screen out France-based users from any of its sites or services, other than the auction site, that may be construed as constituting an apology for Nazism or a contesting of Nazi crimes because “[n]o grievance against any . . . Yahoo! sites or services [other than the auction site] is formulated with sufficient precision.” 8 According to the majority, “the French court’s interim orders do not by their terms require Yahoo! to restrict access by Internet users in the United YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 491 construed Yahoo!’s First Amendment argument in such crabbed terms. But suppose Yahoo! really were concerned only with not having to act in the United States as an enforcer of France’s restrictions on Internet access by France-based users. That would not make the constitutional implications of the effects on Yahoo!’s United States operations go away. Yahoo! cannot merely act in France to restrict access by users located in France; the French orders require Yahoo! to make changes to its servers and protocols in the United States. That Yahoo! seeks First Amendment protection from having to compromise its domestic operations to comply with a foreign injunction does not translate into its seeking the right simply to violate French law. This case is not about the extra-territorial application of the First Amendment; it is about the extraterritorial application of France’s anti-Holocaust denial speech codes and the extent to which compliance may infringe Yahoo!’s rights of free speech here in the United States. The majority, however, views the French orders as concerning “speech accessible solely by those outside the United States.” (Op. at 440.) Additionally, it accepts that Yahoo! can screen out access to any prohibited materials by “most” — States.” (Op. at 446.) This is not Yahoo!’s position. The company has asserted that complying with the French orders would compel it to remove prohibited material from its United States-based Internet services and reengineer its servers, also located in the United States, to identify both France-based users and prohibited material that may be posted in the future; therefore, it may not be possible to comply with the French orders without rendering certain content inaccessible to all users, including those in the United States and not just those in France. Nor does Yahoo! appear to be interested in asserting its constitutional rights solely for the sake of violating French law. To comply with the orders as they affect the company’s French services, Yahoo! now removes any posted material it becomes aware of on its site that would violate French law. 492 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME estimated to be 70-90% — of France-based users. (Op. at 438.) This reasoning is flawed in several respects. First, Yahoo! does not target specific users by initiating content directed solely at them. Rather, anyone who logs on to , including users in France, gains access to material on Yahoo!’s message boards, search engines, auction sites and other services. It is the accessing of vaguely and overbroadly described content — by anyone in French territory — that the orders prohibit and hold Yahoo! responsible for preventing. Thus, even if one could readily and reliably limit the universe of Internet users whose access must be censored — an assumption the record before us does not justify — Yahoo! would still be at a loss to define the universe of content it must censor. Second, the factual question of whether it is technologically feasible for Yahoo! to monitor the postings and filter the millions of users accessing the website — assuming such technology actually bears on Yahoo!’s First Amendment claims — is an unresolved issue that should be returned to the district court. The parties have not addressed the specifics of technical feasibility issue on this appeal, nor the validity of the experts’ report. Thus the 70% and 90% figures the majority adopts from that report depend solely on the majority’s reading of a translated technical and ambiguous document, the scientific merits of which have not been addressed even in the district court. LICRA and UEJF did raise the issue of feasibility below, but the district court denied them discovery regarding technological feasibility of screening France-based users because it deemed the issue immaterial to the court’s First Amendment ruling. See Yahoo II, 169 F. Supp. 2d at 1194. The defendants have not appealed either the district court’s First Amendment decision or its discovery ruling. To the extent that the technological feasibility issue has been argued at all on appeal, Yahoo! has said that it “could not monitor the content of these millions of postings and listings to its U.S.-based Internet services” and that it YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 493 essentially faces a binary choice between self-censorship and paying the French fines. On the record before us — lacking expert testimony and cross-examination, much less district court findings of fact — we do not believe we as appellate judges can or should accept as a given that Yahoo! can readily and reliably identify 70% of the users it must censor, “irrespective of whether a Yahoo! user sought access to an auction site, or to a site denying the existence of the Holocaust or constituting an apology for Nazism.” (Op. at 414-15.) This is particularly true given that the experts’ report is replete with hearsay, technological assumptions and disclaimers. Most importantly, the experts explicitly limited their analysis to how an Internet “surfer” in France could be prevented from accessing prohibited content only on Yahoo!’s auction site, not all such content that might find its way onto generally. As the experts emphasized — echoing Yahoo!’s own concern about the imprecision of the orders: The decisions of the [French] court and the demands made are precisely directed against the auctions site. No grievance against any other Yahoo! sites or services is formulated with sufficient precision to enable the consultants to propose suitable and effective technical solutions. In these circumstances, the consultants will therefore confine their answers to the matter of the auctions site. . . .9 9 Even as to screening content on the auction site, the experts acknowledged that it was not possible for Yahoo! to “exclude a priori items which have not been described by their owner as being of Nazi origin or belonging to the Nazi era.” How then would Yahoo! keep the prohibited material from being accessed? The report suggested that a more “radical solution” might be warranted, essentially prohibiting any search containing the word “Nazi” by an identified French user. How such Nazi paraphernalia which has not been described by its owners with the label “Nazi” could be screened remains a mystery. 494 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME (Emphasis added.) The experts also emphasized, “[t]he measures to be taken depend upon the particular case in point. They cannot be generalised to all sites and services on the Internet. In this case, the site in question is pages.auctions.yahoo.com.” (Emphasis added.) Of course, the French orders do not solely prohibit content on Yahoo!’s auction site but, by their terms, encompass content on all of Yahoo!’s services. Yahoo!’s services extend far beyond its auction site and include its search engine, e-mail, classified listings, personal Web pages, shopping, message boards, chat rooms and news stories. The majority — like the French court itself — seems to credit two of the three experts who estimated as many as 90% of France-based users of Yahoo’s auction site could be identified and screened. The methodology underlying this estimate, however, further illustrates the uncertainty of predicting Internet identification and screening, compounded by the vague and overbroad mandate of the court orders. Assuming that “70% of the IP addresses assigned to French surfers can be matched with certainty to a service provider located in France, and can be filtered,” all three experts agreed that “no filtering method is capable of identifying all French surfers or surfers connecting from French territory.”10 To reach 90%, two experts relied on a voluntary “sworn declaration of nationality” by a French surfer that “could be made when a first connection is made to a disputed site, in this case the Yahoo auctions site . . . .” (Emphasis added.)11 They suggested ask10 Significantly, the experts were at pains to caution that even the 70% figure based on IP addresses has a short shelf life: “[t]he consultants stress that there is no evidence to suggest that the same will apply in the future. Encapsulation is becoming more widespread, service and access providers are becoming more international, and surfers are increasingly intent on protecting their rights to privacy.” 11 Notably, the French orders compel Yahoo! to prohibit access by any users in French territory, not just French citizens. Thus a declaration of “nationality” does not seem adequate in any event. YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 495 ing for the declaration of nationality at “the home page of the auctions site” or “in the context of a search for Nazi objects if the word ‘Nazi’ is included in the user’s request . . . .” In short, the experts’ 90% figure depends on the ability to link users to a specific Yahoo! site and to specific content on that site. The third expert, Vinton Cerf, a 1997 recipient of the United States National Medal of Technology for co-designing the architecture of the Internet,12 disavowed relying on users’ self-identification at all, concluding that “it does not appear to be very feasible to rely on discovering the geographic locations of users for purposes of imposing filtering of the kind described in the [French] Court Order.” Given the orders’ broad language, none of the experts could devise a system for screening out France-based users that went beyond the auction site. Therefore, even if were true that Yahoo! can identify up to 70% of all of its France-based users, irrespective of the site or service they are accessing, the evidence is clear that geographical identification alone would not enable Yahoo! to prohibit such users from accessing 100% of the content proscribed by the French orders — indeed, Yahoo! could not even come close on that side of the compliance equation. There are other serious questions about the experts’ report that should be part of an evidentiary hearing in the district court. For example, the 70% IP-address screening figure was derived in part from information provided by a French Internet association regarding how many of its access providers can identify whether their users are located in France. Such anecdotal data do not demonstrate conclusively that Yahoo! itself has the capability to identify the location of its users. 12 See Technology Administration, Department of Commerce, The National Medal of Technology Recipients, at http://www.technology.gov/ Medal/Recipients.htm. 496 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME Indeed, the method the experts proposed for Yahoo! to identify users is imprecise. The experts noted that for a number of reasons the “real world” location of a user may not be readily identifiable. For instance, a French citizen who uses AOL for Internet service may be shown as having an IP address from Virginia, where AOL’s network is located. In other instances, users may choose to mask the geographical origin of their Internet address. Thus we cannot assume, as does the majority, that this case is about Yahoo! restricting access only by French users, 7090% of whom are readily identifiable regardless of what content they may seek out on . The validity of these percentage assumptions not only drives the majority’s definition of whose access is restricted, but also its apparent willingness to assume that even if Yahoo! can identify only 70% of the prohibited universe of users, that would be good enough. If technical feasibility is to be the lynchpin on which Yahoo!’s day in federal court depends, then let the parties return to the district court for proper factfinding. Instead, the majority preempts the district court’s factfinding function, interpreting the French experts’ report as conclusive evidence in order to deny Yahoo! access to the court altogether. Lastly, there is the issue of cost of compliance. There can be no dispute that the very nature of the French orders puts Yahoo! to the choice of incurring the costs to develop and implement mechanisms to filter out individual users based on location or removing content from its service altogether. This type of immediate financial burden clearly suffices to make a case ripe for adjudication, even if we accept the majority’s proposition that the threat of enforcement is remote. See Pac. Gas & Elec. Co. v. State Energy Res. Conservation & Dev. Comm’n, 461 U.S. 190, 197-98 (1983) (holding ripe for review a preemption challenge to a regulation imposing a moratorium on new nuclear plants because petitioners would face substantial financial hardship if they built plants while hoping the law would be struck down); City of Auburn v. YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 497 Qwest Corp., 260 F.3d 1160, 1173 (9th Cir. 2001) (noting that finding case unripe would require party to comply with “costly and cumbersome” franchise requirements).13
Recognizing that the risk of a large monetary penalty must inevitably weigh heavily in Yahoo!’s assessment of its options, the majority tries to neutralize the risk — creating a protective shield by invoking the doctrine that United States courts will not enforce the penal judgments of other countries. It thus assures Yahoo! that “even if the French court were to impose a monetary penalty against Yahoo!, it is exceedingly unlikely that any court in California — or indeed elsewhere in the United States — would enforce it” because it is a penal judgment. (Op. at 442.) It is true as Justice Marshall observed that “[t]he courts of no country execute the penal laws of another,” The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66, 123 (1825). But that begs the question whether the French injunction itself or the accruing fines are truly penal. Although we respect the majority’s scholarship, this issue has not been the focus of the parties’ briefs or arguments, and thus we cannot share the majority’s level of confidence that its dictum is sufficiently accurate — or binding — that we should remove the risk of a substantial, retroac13 The mere possibility of future fines can have very real financial consequences for a publicly held corporation like Yahoo!. To the extent it is material to a corporation’s financial condition, such companies are required to disclose contingent liabilities in Form 10-Q and 10-K statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. See Securities Exchange Act of 1934, §§ 10(b), 15(d), 15 U.S.C. §§ 78j(b), 78o(d); 17 C.F.R. §§ 240.10b-5, 240.12b-20; see also Financial Accounting Standards Board Statement of Financial Standards No. 5, available at http:// www.fasb.org/pdf/fas5.pdf. Such filings may adversely affect the credit ratings and hence the valuation of shares of such companies. In another context, we have held that financial impacts on a business resulting from legal uncertainty support a finding that a case is ripe. See Chang v. United States, 327 F.3d 911, 922 (9th Cir. 2003). 498 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME tive monetary penalty from the First Amendment or ripeness analysis. As with the French defendants’ assurances that they consider Yahoo! currently in substantial compliance, absent a binding court order actually freeing Yahoo! from the enforcement of the French orders, Yahoo! remains at serious risk if it fails to conform its web content to the dictates of those orders. “The test whether a law is penal, in the strict and primary sense, is whether the wrong sought to be redressed is a wrong to the public, or a wrong to the individual . . . .” Huntington v. Atrill, 146 U.S. 657, 668 (1892). The Court warned against the “danger of being misled by the different shades of meaning allowed to the word ‘penal’ in our language.” Id. at 666.14 Determining whether a sanction is penal or civil in nature is not always a simple task. Cf. F.J. Hanshaw Enters., Inc. v. Emerald River Dev., Inc., 244 F.3d 1128, 1137-38 (9th Cir. 2001) (establishing procedural protections due a party based on whether sanctions were criminal or civil in nature). Although LICRA and UEJF’s substantive claims against Yahoo! in French court depended in part upon Yahoo!’s violations of French criminal law,15 the record suggests that the 14 The Supreme Court’s warning in Huntington has even greater salience when we are attempting to determine “the different shades of meaning allowed to the word ‘penal’ ” in a language other than our own. (Op. at 443.) 15 LICRA and UEJF’s claims are based in part on a French law that criminalizes the public wearing or display of the uniforms, insignias and emblems of any organization declared criminal by the post-World War II International (Nuremberg) Military Tribunal (e.g., the Nazi Party). See C. Pén. R645-1. One of the most serious penalties for violation of this provision of the penal code is a fine. See id. Their claims also appear to rely on the French Law of July 29, 1881 (Law on Freedom of the Press) (2004), which, among other things, criminalizes Holocaust denial, see art. 24 bis, and the incitement of discrimination, hatred or violence on the basis of belonging to a particular ethnic, national, racial group, see art. 24, ¶ 6. Both crimes carry a penalty of one year imprisonment or a fine of 45,000 Euros or both. See id. YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 499 French lawsuits were civil rather than criminal and, more importantly, that the French orders primarily sought to redress a wrong to LICRA and UEJF rather than a wrong to the French public. Of course, we agree with the majority that “the label ‘civil’ does not strip a remedy of its penal nature.” (Op. at 444.) However, that still begs the question whether or not the French accruing fines were penal. On this point, the majority asserts that there is some language in the November 20 order that supports the characterization of the fines as penal and that in any event the fines are potentially much larger than the nominal damages awarded to UEJF and therefore the “award of one Franc [to UEJF] cannot render the orders primarily remedial rather than punitive in nature.” (Op. at 445.) The majority cites no authority for the novel arithmetic balancing test it proposes to distinguish penal from nonpenal orders, and although we admit there is some language in the orders that supports holding the French orders punitive, there is also significant language that supports the conclusion that the orders sought to redress a wrong done to LICRA and UEJF. The proper test for determining whether the French orders are penal is a purposive one, see Huntington, 146 U.S. at 668, and based on the record before us, we do not share the majority’s certainty that the orders are undoubtedly penal in nature. French law gives standing to public interest, nongovernmental organizations dedicated to defending the interests of members of certain victimized groups, including victims of the Holocaust (déportés), to initiate enumerated types of civil actions (but not criminal prosecutions) on behalf of such victims. See, e.g., C. Pr. Pén. arts. 2-4 & 2-5; Law of July 29, 1881 (Law on Freedom of the Press) (2004), art. 48- 2. Yahoo!’s challenge to UEJF’s standing under Article 48-2 of the French Law on Freedom of the Press and the French court’s subsequent finding that LICRA and UEJF “are dedicated to combating all forms of promotion of Nazism in France” suggest that the French trial was a civil proceeding under one of the specialized French standing statutes. This 500 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME conclusion is further supported by the French court’s reliance on Article 809 of the New Code of Civil Procedure for its authority to issue orders. Furthermore, the award of damages to UEJF and other relief “by way of restitution” strongly suggests that the French court orders were predominantly civil and remedial rather than penal.16 The court based its award of damages and other restitution in its May 22 decision on a finding that the exhibition for sale of Nazi objects “has caused damage to be suffered by LICRA and UEJF.” The French court reiterated this finding of direct harm in its November 20 decision: “this display [of Nazi objects] clearly causes damage in France to the plaintiff associations who are justified in demanding the cessation and reparation thereof.” In this context, the additional relief afforded to the French plaintiffs — an injunction ordering Yahoo! to cease its harmful activity in France — appears to be merely an additional remedy in a civil suit. As with the French injunction, the accruing fines are similarly more likely civil than penal in nature. The most natural reading of the French court’s rationale for imposing the accruing fines is that such fines were meant to coerce Yahoo! into compliance with the substance of the French injunction. Rather than assessing the fines retroactively as a court would do when redressing the public wrong Yahoo! had allegedly already committed, the French court made the fines entirely conditional on Yahoo!’s future behavior beginning three months after the date of the second French order. The U.S. analogue for such a regime of per diem fines is civil contempt. See Sarl Louis Feraud Int’l v. Viewfinder Inc., 16 The French court ordered payment by Yahoo! (jointly and severally with Yahoo! France) of provisional damages of 1 Franc to UEJF. As a means of effecting restitution for the harm suffered, the French court also ordered Yahoo! to pay for the publication of one of the French decisions in “five daily or weekly publications at the choice of [UEJF].” YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 501 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22242, at ,  (S.D.N.Y. 2005) (characterizing a French court’s judgments and a “fine (‘astreinte’) of 50,000 francs per day for each day that Viewfinder failed to comply with each judgment” as “an injunction backed by coercive penalties analogous to a civil contempt fine under American law”). “In contrast [to criminal contempt], civil contempt sanctions, or those penalties designed to compel future compliance with a court order, are considered to be coercive and avoidable through obedience.” Int’l Union, United Mine Workers v. Bagwell, 512 U.S. 821, 827 (1994). See also 17 C.J.S. Contempt § 64 (2005) (“[C]ontempt proceedings brought to vindicate the dignity and authority of the court may be characterized as criminal in nature, whereas those brought to preserve and enforce the rights of private parties are remedial and civil in character.”). Courts have the power to order either imprisonment or the payment of fines when holding a party in civil contempt: “A close analogy to coercive imprisonment is a per diem fine imposed for each day a contemnor fails to comply with an affirmative court order. Like civil imprisonment, such fines exert a constant coercive pressure.” Bagwell, 512 U.S. at 829. See also People v. Gonzalez, 910 P.2d 1366, 1373 (Cal. 1996).17 17 Admittedly, the characterization of the fines as coercive yet non-penal may depend on whether Yahoo! “is afforded an opportunity to purge” its liability to pay the fines. Bagwell, 512 U.S. at 829. Alternatively, the fines may be compensatory and therefore non-penal if they are payable to LICRA and UEJF “for losses sustained” rather than to the French government. See id. The majority claims that the “penalties are payable to the government and not designed to compensate the French student groups for losses suffered.” (Op. at 444.) However, nothing in the record indicates to whom the fines are payable. Furthermore, the majority fails to acknowledge the possibility, indeed the probability, that the fines were not designed to punish Yahoo! for its past behavior, but rather to prevent future harm to LICRA and UEJF. Coercive per diem fines need not be “designed to compensate [plaintiffs] for losses suffered” (Op. at 444), in order to be non-penal, so long as their purpose is to “preserve and enforce the rights of private parties,” 17 C.J.S. Contempt § 64 (2005). In any event, such uncertainty concerning the nature of the fines merely reinforces the conclusion that further factfinding by the district court is necessary before we can jump to the conclusion that the French fines are penal and unenforceable. 502 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME Yahoo! was afforded a three-month safe harbor to allow it to implement the French court’s orders, and only then would any fines be assessed. As with a U.S. civil contempt order, the fines were entirely “avoidable through obedience.” Because the French coercive fines’ aim is enforcement of an underlying injunction that is civil (preventing the continuation of harm the French court found LICRA and UEJF had already suffered) rather than penal (benefitting French public justice or vindicating the French court’s dignity and authority), the California rule of comity announced in In re Stephanie M. might well apply, were it not for the orders’ substantive unconstitutionality.18 See 867 P.2d at 716. For these reasons, unlike the majority we cannot take the monetary penalty out of the ripeness analysis and assume that Yahoo! is not harmed by the very threat of the French orders’ possible enforcement. Once again, at the least this is another issue that could and should be remanded to the district court for appropriate briefing and factfinding. 3. A new, higher burden for proving chilling effect Finally, the majority dismisses the chilling effect of the orders by placing the burden on Yahoo! to identify other speech it wants to engage in but which is foreclosed by the French orders. What more should Yahoo! have to specify 18 Even if the exact accruing fines as calculated by the French orders were not directly enforceable under California law, Yahoo! could face the possibility that a California court would enforce a foreign injunction with its own state contempt proceedings under comity doctrine (again, assuming no substantive constitutional defect). Cf. Biewend v. Biewend, 109 P.2d 701, 704 (Cal. 1941) (“Upon the basis of comity, however, as distinguished from the requirements of full faith and credit, the California courts have in numerous cases ordered that a foreign decree for future payments of alimony be established as the decree of the California court with the same force and effect as if it had been entered in this state, including punishment for contempt if the defendant fails to comply.”), overruled on other grounds by Worthley v. Worthley, 283 P.2d 19, 22-23 (Cal. 1955). YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 503 about the exact manner in which the objectionable content would appear on its site? Millions of postings and other material flow through Yahoo!’s networks each day.19 Yahoo! cannot possibly predict when and how specific content prohibited by the French orders will make its way onto its service. For example, a user could decide at any time to post a message or a link to a website containing impermissible content. Because it acts as a platform for other speakers, Yahoo! cannot, as the majority demands, identify the specific speech it wishes to engage in that is prohibited by the injunction. Nor should it have to. To place such a requirement on an Internet provider — essentially forcing it to speculate as to the particular speech activity its millions of users “might” engage in as senders or recipients — is to afford it no First Amendment protection at all. As the Supreme Court has recognized, “ ‘[t]he Internet . . . offer[s] a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.’ ” Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564, 566 (2002) (quoting 47 U.S.C. § 230(a)(3) (1994 ed., Supp. V)); see Batzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018, 1027 (9th Cir. 2003) (emphasizing that Congress, in insulating Internet service providers from liability for certain content published on their sites, recognized the importance of protecting the “unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet”).20 19 The record indicates that as of July 2000, Yahoo! and its subsidiaries had 146 million users worldwide. Each month Yahoo! users added or edited more than 15 million Geocities web pages and posted more than 6 million classified advertisements. There were more than 2.5 million active auction items viewable on Yahoo! each day and 200,000 Yahoo! clubs were accessed each day by members who posted messages, uploaded photos or added Internet links. 20 Batzel analyzed the rationale for the provisions protecting Internet providers under 47 U.S.C. § 230, which Yahoo! invoked before the district court as a statutory basis for preventing enforcement of the French court orders here. 504 YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME The majority would impose on Yahoo! far greater burdens and litigation risks than those alleging First Amendment violations by domestic parties would have to bear. Yahoo! is expected to try to persuade the French court to narrow or eliminate the very injunction Yahoo! has unsuccessfully fought against in France from the beginning. Unconstrained by our First Amendment, the French court might well take the opportunity to sanction Yahoo! for noncompliance — and do nothing to alleviate the sweeping restraint on the content of the website. If the defendants want to narrow the injunction such that it might warrant comity, that burden should fall on them, not Yahoo!. But even if Yahoo! went to the French court and obtained a ruling that its current auction site policy and Internet services content comply with the orders, that would not resolve Yahoo!’s First Amendment problem unless the sweeping injunction itself were permanently withdrawn or narrowed. All Yahoo! would obtain would be clearance for its current operations; it would remain exposed to the risk of violating the orders and incurring penalties should it deviate from those current practices or should the defendants decide that Yahoo!’s content has become objectionable. The very nature of Yahoo!’s business is inherently mutable — that is the essence of the Internet, because of the sheer number and constantly changing identity of its users and of the content those users may seek or themselves post on . Only a United States court can provide Yahoo! with a legal resolution of its claim that the injunctive order, as written, cannot be enforced in the United States without infringing the company’s First Amendment rights, thereby relieving it of the coercive threat hanging over its website and the operation of its business. By denying adjudication, the majority abdicates our proper role in protecting Yahoo!’s constitutional rights. In so doing, it leaves in place a foreign country’s vague and overbroad judgment mandating a U.S. company to bar access to prohibited content by Internet users from that country. This YAHOO! INC. v. LA LIGUE CONTRE LE RACISME 505 astonishing result is itself the strongest argument for finding Yahoo!’s claims ripe for adjudication. Are we to assume that U.S.-based Internet service providers are now the policing agencies for whatever content another country wants to keep from those within its territorial borders — such as, for example, controversial views on democracy, religion or the status of women? If the majority’s application of the First Amendment in the global Internet context in this case is to become the standard — whether as a matter of constitutional law or comity — then it should be adopted (or not) after full consideration of the constitutional merits, not as a justification for avoiding the issue altogether as not ripe for adjudication.