24 February 1999
revised 3 March 1999

Sorry for the presentation but this page has been hastily thrown together.

An appeals court here (Paris, France) has just booted out the appeal of a guy named Valentin Lacambre in the civil case brought against him by Estelle Hallyday. Estelle is well known in France as a model and she might well be in the archives of wonderful-women.com -- I don't know, I'm writing from work and the sysadmin won't let me check :(

The upshot of the whole affair is that the guy who runs a free hosting service, on which photos of a model were published by another person who opened a subdomain, has been found responsible for the content. The domain is closed and over 47000 email and web subdomain accounts with it.

Before I go on I am well aware of the French delusions regarding the notoriety of their citizens outside of the French-speaking world -- in fact it's not even that, more the conviction that there is NOTHING outside of the French-speaking world -- in any case there are some pictures here : http://www.geocities.com/Paris/4252/estelle.htm. You can also search altavista with the keywords 'estelle hallyday' simply by clicking>here. I got 1302 matches this morning (3 March 1999). Estelle is married to David Hallyday, son of France's ageing national rockstar Johnny, and is they are all part of the Parisian jet-set but anyway, back to the plot !!

Valentin Lacambre, who was completely unknown even to the French-speaking world until last week, is a computing enthusiast in his early 30's. He used to work as a content designer for Minitel companies in France -- see the end of my message for en explanation of Minitel -- until he decided in 1995 that working for other people was a mugs' game and he set up his own business. He used the cash generated by his own Minitel business to fund a web hosting business, altern.org, offering free web space to individuals, not-for-profit organisations, local government agencies... in short anyone who wanted a bit of web space for non commercial activities.

He probably was the first to offer such a service in France. Since then, apart from the web space that comes with virtually every ISP subscription now, there maybe a dozen free web hosting services, but the important differences between altern.org and the rest of the field were:

1. the editorial line -- read censorship (or absence thereof) and
2. the advertising content (or lack thereof).

The free web hosting business is of course cash consuming, and unless you have another business to fund it you're not going to be in business for long. The big ISPs, catering for the general public, and mindful of the fact that there has been as yet no test case or legislation defining their limits of responsibility regarding the making available of adult material are pretty sqeamish about their subscibers' adult related sites. The tend to have a pretty tough stance on adult content, even on pretty inoffensive material. The me-too free web hosters who set up shop after Valentin imposed advertising through on-screen ads on their "clients" to make ends meet.

Valentin didn't have either of these constraints, and he ended up with a large number of sites with adult material and other "celebrity nude" type sites, for the main set up by frustrated teenagers -- I'm liberally quoting Valentin himself here.

To get web space on altern.org you didn't need to enter any valid personal details at all. You could use a hotmail account and fill in anything you wanted in the "personal details" fields when you opened an account. Now Valentin knows that with a cooperative ISP you can find out from the logs whose account was used at such and such a date and time, and even if the ISP is not that cooperative the police can get them to be so. He knows that anonymity does not exist to the extend that the media would have the general public believe, and I would put the juges of the original case and the appeal in the "general public" category as far as their knowledge of internet os concenerned.

Anyway one day in Q1 1998 Estelle Hallyday takes offence to some photos of her on some "frustrated teenager's" celebrity nudes site hosted by altern.org and she send the cops over. The photos in question -- that she would have preferred were kept private -- are taken down by Valentin in the minutes after he learns of the complaint (via the police). At that time he provided the police with the log that would permit them to find the individual in question, silversurfer. Nevertheless *he* is taken to court by Estelle and the court finds that Valentin is not simply a "technical intermediary" as his defence would have it, but that he is responsible for the content of the (at that time 30000+) sites hosted by altern.org

Valentin's defence went something like this (free translation of the court's deliberations):

- The obligation to withdraw the photos from altern.org can only be upheld agains the author of the site.

- Supposing that the Internet is a method of audiovisual communication relative to which he would be the "editor" under the relevant legislation, the same legislation protects his from prosecution in asmuch as the content of the web site may be modified at any moment by it's author and is not subject to control before publication.

[My note: it's the same for radio stations that take live phone calls: they are not deemed responsible for the ravings of anybody who manages to get on air.]

- Its unfeasable to censor the content of the thousands of websites hosted by altern.org.

- A number of email addresses -- abuse@ webmaster@ etc... had been created specifically to deal with complaints and law-breaking accounts were closed instantly.

However the juge found the plaintif's arguments more convincing:

- It's the basic responsablilty of any "editor of an audiovisual communications method" to verify whether the content is authorised for broadcast/publication, and that her rights under the European Convention of Human Rights had thus been infringed.

- That altern.org had failed in its duty to have each of the hosted subdomains declare [my note: to the state] the creation of an audivisual communication service and as such was responsible for the content of the same.

And came to the conclusion that:

- That Estelle Hallyday had suffered a prejudice to her image and private life.

- As the subdomains at altern.org were opened anonymously Valentin's role exceeded that of "technical intermediary" and was solely responsible for the material published therein.

Is this the test case that everyone has been waiting for ? It's too early to say. Of course there is strong support for altern.org amongst the internet community who feel that:

- Estelle Hallyday obviously consented to having the photos taken, she even seems to be enjoying herself :)

- She is a public figure, a model and as such makes a living out of her looks. This kind of "leak" is to be expected, and is even encouraged by certain personalities.

- This type of court case is a game played between celebrities and the tabloid press. The game benefits everyone when its played between the celebrities and the commercial press, but the amount of damages awarded after the appeal (400 000 FF = $70 000) have put this guy out of business.

- The judiciary have covered themselves in ridicule by showing total ingorance of how the internet really works.

Please note that there is no notion of "offensive" material or copyright here. These are just photos that a public figure would have preferred not become public.