A Solution to the Yahoo! Problem? The EC E-Commerce Directive as a Model for International Cooperation on Internet Choice of Law

Instead of attacking or defending the French or the U.S. courts, this Article proposes to focus on the Yahoo! case from a different perspective. As is argued in Section III.D below, disputes like the Yahoo! case over which country’s laws apply to a website and its operator seem likely to proliferate as Internet usage expands, demanding significant enforcement resources from countries and posing important compliance challenges for companies and other organizations operating on the Internet. Thus, it may be useful to consider developing an international agreement that would address, and in many instances resolve, such disputes about “jurisdiction to prescribe” rules for the Internet. In developing this argument, this Article uses as its point of departure a set of rules that already applies to France-one of the protagonists in the Yahoo! case.