8. Sociocultural cluster Internet public policy issues in the sociocultural cluster reflect the broad impact of the Internet on the social and cultural life of modern society. The cluster includes a wide range of issues, from content, promotion of cultural diversity, and multilingualism to online education and the status of the Internet as a global public good. 8.1 Content policy How to define acceptable online content is one the most complex and contentious issues in Internet policy. The problems are based in the gap between, on one hand, the local cultural and religious specificities of content policy and, on the other hand, ubiquitous access to any content on the Internet. This gap has triggered a wide range of reactions. The 2001 Yahoo! case in France addressed the gap between the prohibition under French law to exhibit and sell Nazi-related objects and the possibility for French citizens to access Nazi-related materials at the Yahoo.com auction website, hosted in the USA where the display of such materials is not illegal. The court judgement required Yahoo! to identify and block access from France using geo-location software. Status of governance mechanisms for content policy Typically, content policy is addressed at national level. One of a few international instruments that address content is the Council of Europe’s Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime. The Additional Protocol defines hate speech as ‘any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as a pretext for any of these factors’. Courts are becoming more active in this field. The European Court of Justice ruling on the right to be forgotten (May, 2014) affects content policy by requesting Google to filter certain types of content for users in EU countries. Content policy is an intersectoral issue. The question of jurisdiction is often raised in deciding which court or national authority has the right to address specific issues of content policy. Content policy is closely linked to discussions on net neutrality and the risk that traffic management could be the back door for de facto content policy (slowing down access to a specific website). In the field of child protection, web standards have been used to help parents filter access to inappropriate content for their children. Freedom of expression and access to information are often seen through the prism of content policy. In some cases, protection of copyright could be on the border zone with the filtering of content regardless of its copyright status. The other Internet policy issues that are related to content policy include data protection, e-commerce, access, cloud computing, education, cultural diversity, and multilingualism. 42