French court says Twitter must identify racist tweet authors

PARIS - Agence France-Presse

The UEJF (Union of Jewish Students in France) and several other associations obtained a decision from a civil court on January 24, 2013 in Paris, after they sued Twitter to get informations in order to identify antisemite bloggers. AFP PHOTO FRED TANNEAU

A French court ruled Thursday 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.

The ruling follows a legal complaint lodged in October by France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) which argued that numerous tweets had breached French law prohibiting incitement to racial hatred.

The union had been pressing Twitter to exercise tighter control of what appeared on its 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 on Thursday said the site must do this "within the framework of its French site".

In October, Twitter suspended the account of a neo-Nazi group in Germany following a request from the government in Berlin. It was the first time the US firm had acted on a request of that nature from a government.