B. Material That Vilifies People On The Basis Of Race, Gender, Sexual Preference Or Disability Or Incites Or Promotes Hatred On Those Bases.
Australia
According to a recent report by the Australian Broadcasting
Authority
- the Crimes Act 1914 and the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 may apply
to communications made to the public which are made online regarding
racial
vilification. Other state laws may apply to communications to the public
made online which incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or
severe ridicule of any persons on the grounds of race.
France
In March 1996, French ISPs were subpoenaed after a French Jewish
student organisation brought charges against them for alleged
"complicity"
in making available propaganda that denies the Holocaust, such
propaganda
being illegal in France.
Germany
On August 30th 1995 - the Federal Prosecutor's Office sent a fax
to the Internet Content Task Force (the "ICTF") requesting them to
inform
all Internet service providers affiliated with the ICTF that a criminal
investigatory procedure against the parties disseminating a leaflet
entitled
"radical Nr.154" a small ultra-left magazine, which the officials
claimed
"promoted a terrorist organisation". The service providers were warned
that they might be subject to criminal prosecution for aiding and
abetting
criminal activities if they continued to allow the pages to be
called
up via their access points and network nodes. The ICTF issued a press
release
a few days later stating that they could not find any tangible legal
reasons
why an ISP would be subject to prosecution for aiding and abetting
communal
activities if it does not block access to illicit documents via the
World
Wide Web, that blocking access to certain WWW pages was not technically
possible without at the same time blocking a host, an entire network or
the WWW part of a host and that they did not feel they could recommend
that the ISPs block the URLs given. Following discussions with the
Public
Prosecutor General, it emerged that their view was that an ISP would
definitely
be guilty of aiding and abetting criminal activities if it failed to
act
after being informed about the URL of an illicit document.
The ICTF therefore recommended to its affiliates that, given that
parts of the magazine "Radikal" were apparently illicit, German ISPs
could
not fully avoid responsibility during this investigation.
The ICTF also stated that the blocking of the URL was unnecessary
and unreasonable, but that the URL or the hosts should be blocked
immediately,
though only for a period of 28 days.
Consequently, data packets coming from XS4all and Datarealm, the
two Dutch providers who were hosting the Radikal pages, were blocked by
some ISPs . This obviously had the effect of not just blocking the site
but email requests were also unable to route through EUnet Germany.
Datarealm
removed Radikal from their site. XS4all sent out a cry for help having
heard what was happening in Germany and the site was "mirrored" on over
30 times. A spokesperson from the Public Prosecutor General confirmed
that
executives of XS4all faced arrest if they entered Germany and refused
to
rule out action against those people who had set up mirror sites. More
recent news suggests that the executives of XS4all have not been
arrested,
the Dutch authorities have taken no action at all and that Germany is
no
longer insisting that ISPs screen all their customers content, but that
ISPs do still have a duty to monitor for pornography or Nazi propaganda
which they have the technical means to block. It is unclear whether
this
applies to German ISPs only. This highlights the fact that although the
German authorities have jurisdiction over the German ISPs, there is no
indication that they have any jurisdiction or means of action over
non-German
ISPs. In a further report in the press, it is claimed that the German
authorities
have filed charges against a member of the Communist Party of
Democratic
Socialism, Angela Marquardt, for linking to the banned Radikal from her
Website.
In January 1996, Deutsche Telekom blocked access to Internet sites
which were spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, a crime in Germany. This
followed a request by Mannheim prosecutors who were investigating Ernst
Zuendel, a German-born neo-Nazi living in Toronto. Deutsche Telekom
also
blocked access to a Californian company, Web Communications, because it
provided access to
Zuendel's site, the company maintaining that although it did not
agree with Zuendel, it was not its policy to censor users. Although
Deutsche
Telekom blocked access, the site was still available through CompuServe.