Imagine, a court fines an encyclopedia publisher for providing various viewpoints.
The story is so flimsy that differing viewpoints are deemed "offensive" to certain chosen ones and must be banned.
Orwell is laughing in his grave.
- Hannover
Sunday, March 30, 2003 Adar2 26, 5763 Israel Time: 05:39 (GMT+3)
French encyclopedia may be fined for citing
revisionist Holocaust figures
By The Associated Press
PARIS - A French court on Friday ordered the publisher of France's
leading reference book to pay fines if it can't prove it took enough
measures to correct a passage raising questions about the number of
people killed in the Holocaust.
Publisher Robert Laffont has 15 days to prove it followed through
with an earlier court order, or it faces fines.
In a section on World War II extermination camps, the Quid reference
book said the official number of deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau was 1.2
million. However, it adds that "other figures have circulated," and
cites one by a revisionist historian, Robert Faurisson, who claims
that 150,000 people died at the camp, of whom 100,000 were Jews.
Quid has been brought to court several times for the affair.
In 2001, five French Jewish groups filed a complaint, saying the
passage violated a French law against publishing revisionist
theories. A court ordered the publisher to remove the passage from
the Quid by 2003, but the publisher failed to heed the order.
The Jewish organizations then demanded that Quid's publishers retract
the 300,000 copies of its 2003 edition that had already been sent to
stores.
In November, Judge Marie-Therese Feydau refused to grant the request
but ordered the publishers to remove the offensive passage from its
2004 edition as well as from its Internet site.
Among other measures, publishers were also ordered to send a
correction notice to all bookstores where the 2003 Quid is being
sold, and to insert the correction in the 100,000 copies that were
still being printed.
On Friday, the court said the Quid failed to follow through with the
order on the correction notices.
It gave the publishers 15 days to prove they inserted a correction in
the 100,000 copies of the 2003 book, or face a fine of 3,000 euros
(US$3,200) for every day it violated the order. For every bookstore
caught not posting the notice, the Quid is also subject to a 400 euro
(US$430) fine.
The Quid is widely consulted, not just by researchers but also by
ordinary French people. A new edition appears every year.
