French court says Twitter must identify racist tweeters

A French court ruled that Twitter, which has steadfastly refused calls to police its millions of users, must hand over data to help identify the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets.

In a test case that pitted the right to free speech against laws banning hate speech, the court granted a request lodged in October by France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) which argued that many tweets had breached French law. The union had been pressing Twitter to exercise tighter control of what appeared on its Internet site following a deluge of anti-Semitic messages posted under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew). Twitter later removed some of the offending tweets. The UEJF took legal action aimed at forcing Twitter to identify the authors of some of the posts.
The court in Paris ruled that the site must do this "within the framework of its French site."