Opinion ID: 792900
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: A new, higher burden for proving chilling effect

Text: 240 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 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. 241 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, 122 S.Ct. 1700, 152 L.Ed.2d 771 (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). 20 242 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!. 243 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. 244 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 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.