Archive/File: orgs/british/jewish-policy-research/internet-regulation.9609
Last-Modified: 1996/11/04

jpr / policy paper
Institute for Jewish Policy Research

    The governance of cyberspace: racism on the Internet

`The Internet has revolutionized communications, bringing
enormous benefits. But we cannot afford to ignore its
negative aspects -- the potential to spread "hate" material
that not only offends, but seriously threatens racial
harmony and public order.'
                        David Capitanchik and Michael Whine

                           Summary

The potential of the so-called 'super-highway' to inform,
educate, entertain and conduct business on a worldwide scale
has caught the imagination of millions. At a relatively
modest cost, and often at no cost at all, vast quantities of
data can be transmitted around the globe-a mutimedia form of
communication combining all hitherto known means such as
printing, the telephone, photography, radio and video. All
that is required is a relatively cheap personal computer, a
telephone line and a modem or connection to a cable
operator.

Among other things, the Internet has provided a vast range
of political parties and pressure groups with the
unprecedented opportunity to disseminate their publications
and messages to an international public, and even to
interact with them on a one-to-one basis. The benefits of
the Internet, it must be said, far outweigh its negative
aspects. Nevertheless, these ca not be ignored.

In this Policy Paper, David Capitanchik and Michael Whine
consider the current debates about free speech on the
Internet and the issues raised by its exploitation by
antisemitic and racist groups. Much attention has focused on
the presence of pornography on the 'net', especially in the
so-called 'First Amendment' controversies in the United
States. However, in most European countries and around the
world, incitement to racial hatred is also a criminal
offence. To many, its appearance on the Internet is just as
disturbing.

 Although it has received less attention than pornography,
'hate' material, in the form of attractive Web pages and
discussion groups or sent by e-mail, not only offends, but
also seriously threatens racial harmony and public order.
The Internet provides far-right groups with the means to
communicate and organize, as well as to distribute neo-Nazi
material which is illegal in jurisdictions other than that
of the United States.

The Internet has now emerged from the university laboratory
into the public domain and the numbers of those with access
to its various facilities are booming. Access to the
Internet is provided for the domestic user by major
international companies as well as in universities,
colleges, and increasingly in schools.

This Paper concludes that because of its ubiquitous nature
and, above all, its appeal to young people, it is essential
now to formulate an Internet policy. It proposes a number of
policy recommendations for organizations in the public,
private and voluntary sectors which provide access to the
Internet.

                        Introduction

The Internet is probably the most powerful medium of
communication to have been developed to date. Gutenberg's
invention of the printing press gave to the many access to
information and knowledge that was previously confined to a
select few. The telephone made instantaneous communication
possible regardless of the distance between the
communicators. Now the Internet provides people with
information unmediated by what publishers decide to print or
the limitations of one-to-one communication by telephone.

     This is a new dimension -- an electronic, virtual
     world where time and space have almost no meaning.
     People in geographically distant lands communicate
     across time zones without ever seeing each other,
     and information is available 24 hours a day from
     thousands of places. The implications of this new
     global communication and information system are
     staggering.<1>

So what is the Internet? Described as an 'informal and
rather anarchic network of networks (almost) spanning the
globe ...<2> the Internet was originally designed as a
communications system that would survive a nuclear attack
and which could not be put out of action by a single strike
aimed at some central facility. It arose out of a US Defence
Department project called ARPANET (Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network), started in 1969 both as an
experiment in reliable computer networking and as a means of
linking the Department of Defence with its military research
contractors, including the large number of universities
doing military research. The reliability of its networking
was based upon a system called dynamic rerouting, under
which if one of the network links was disrupted by enemy
attack the traffic on it would be automatically re-routed to
other links.<3>

From ARPANET, there has evolved an international web of
interconnected government, education, business and many
other computer networks and users. It includes upwards of
34,000 networks in the United States alone with more being
added virtually by the hour. In early 1996, it was estimated
that there were about 50 million users in 70 countries.
About 7 per cent of the population of the United Kingdom,
around four million people, have access to the Internet4 and
it has been suggested that, at current growth

In the early 1990s, the savings to be made from electronic
mail (e-mail) alone were enough to encourage businesses,
universities and many other organizations to invest heavily
in the necessary equipment and network connections. By the
spring of 1995, the number of people who could send an
Internet e-mail message was widely acknowledged to be in
excess of 32 million.
Electronic mail, however, is only one of the services the
Internet provides. In fact it can deliver anything you can
put into binary digits, which are simply bits of information
flowing down wires. Already these include text, graphics,
voices, music, radio broadcasts, digital photographs and
moving video and all can be readily accessed by means of a
relatively low-cost personal computer and modem.

1 The Internet debate

Inevitably, this powerful and ubiquitous medium has given
rise to concern about its impact on thought and behaviour,
and it should not be surprising that there is growing
anxiety about the use of the Internet for undesirable anti-
social purposes.

Pornography, according to a recent newspaper article, is
fast becoming what the Internet is best known for <6> Its
dissemination has been the focus of much attention if only
because the Internet is accessed so easily by young people.
Most of the material to be found on the Internet, however,
originates in the United States where the law and
constitution have been interpreted as upholding the right to
virtually unlimited free speech. It is in the USA that the
most vigorous debates are being waged around what should, if
anything, be done to control it. In June 1995, the US Senate
passed an amendment to an omnibus Telecommunications bill,
entitled the Communications Decency Act, giving the Federal
Communications Commission the power to regulate 'indecency'
on the Internet. A number of state legislatures are
considering similar legislation. The Act, sponsored by
Democratic Senator James Exon of Nebraska, has been fiercely
attacked by Internet enthusiasts and operators who argue
that it is both unconstitutional and unworkable. They
maintain that the E on bill means, for example, that if a
literary magazine were to put its contents on-line and
include a short story containing a four letter word, the
editor could be liable to a punitive fine and up to six
months in jail.<7> Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of
California introduced a bill, following the Oklahoma City
bombing, aimed at removing bomb-making guides from the
internet.<8>

The debate over free speech on the Internet came to a head
in early December 1995. A committee of the House of
Representatives, considering the Telecommunications bill,
agreed to language that opponents claimed would make
criminal 'indecent' images or speech on-line with fines of
$100,000 and two years' imprisonment for violators.<9> The
American Civil Liberties Union has been taking the lead,
along with sixty other groups, in supporting free speech on
the Internet, arguing that indecent (but not obscene) speech
is 'constitutionally protected.'<10> James Warren, who
writes a column for Microtimes and other computer technology
magazines, argues that those who advocate controlling speech
on the Internet 'shouId not use the excuse of a different
technology as a rationale for imposing different standards
on speech'.<11>

On 1 February 1996, however, the US Congress voted
overwhelmingly to approve the Telecommunications bill (HR1
555/S652). The House approved the measure by 414 to 16,
while  the vote in the Senate was 91 to 5.<12> This huge
omnibus measure, designed to remove sixty-two year-old legal
barriers preventing the telephone, cable and broadcasting
companies from owning parts of each other's industries, also
incorporated the Communications Decency Act restricting
'indecent' speech on the Internet. The new Act makes it a
crime for persons knowingly to send 'indecent' material to
minors over the Internet and obliges the manufacturers of
television receivers to install computer chips in new sets
so parents can block violent programmes. The Act was passed
so soon after the bill completed the committee stage that
neither the public at large nor any special Internet group
had a proper opportunity to consider the proposed
legislation. Internet activists immediately reacted, calling
the new legislation too broad and probably unconstitutional.
There is general agreement unconstitutional. There is
general agreement among experts that the enforcement of the
new regulations will be difficult, if not impossible.
Moreover, several organizations have already vowed to fight
the measure in the courts once it becomes law.

Whatever the fate of the current proposals for regulating
cyberspace, the concerns they reflect will not go away. In
the United States, at any rate, the Internet has become a
First Amendment battleground. In particular, whether the
Constitution protects repugnant or defamatory speech in this
new medium has been the subject of controversy.

Elsewhere in the world such a defence does not exist. Most
countries have strict laws against the publication and
distribution, by any means, of pornographic and other anti-
social material. Britain has recently seen its first
successful prosecution and imprisonment of an individual for
downloading pornography on-line. Furthermore, in December
1995 a major Internet access provider, CompuServe, was
informed by the local state prosecutor in Munich that
material contained in about 200 groups on the Usenet (i.e.
Internet discussion groups) violated German law. This took
place when the prosecutor turned up at CompuServe's Office
in Munich unannounced to search for offending material.

In response, CompuServe temporarily restricted all its
members' access to these groups. Due to the centralized
nature of CompuServe's network, it was not possible to
restrict access on a country-by-country basis. Thus, access
by its members to those groups was restricted on a temporary
basis worldwide until CompuServe was able to implement the
appropriate filtering software. This action produced an
outcry, not only from CompuServe's members in the US and
around the world, but especially from advocates of free
speech everywhere. The critics claimed that the values of
the essentially conservative state government in Bavaria
were being forced upon CompuServe's members worldwide.
However, according to The Economist, the case does serve to
highlight two important points: that the Internet can be
regulated like any other medium, be it printed or
electronic; and that regulation ought to be at the point of
delivery rather than origin, controlling what people take
off the Internet, not what they put on it.<13>
In general, across the world there are signs of growing
alarm among governments about pornography and other
undesirable material on the Internet. According to a recent
newspaper report Germany is conducting an investigation of
on-line services including America Online (AOL), the world's
biggest, to see if such services 'can be held responsible
for the material carried on their networks'. According to
the German Research and Technology Minister Jurgen Ruttgers,
Bonn respects free speech, but cannot tolerate a free-for-
all on the Internet. Ruttgers wants to make it impossible to
download child pornography 'and neo-Nazi diatribes such as
Toronto-based Ernst Zundel's article " Did 6 Million Really
Die?", which is illegal in Germany, but freely available on
the Internet' <14>

Impressionable young people, whose manifest technology and
communications skills mark them
as potential leaders of the next generation, are obvious
targets for political extremists using the Internet to avoid
legal sanctions. Anxiety about  this has been heightened by
the increasing  utilization of the Internet by neo-Nazis
intent on spreading race hate material.

Racist material on the Internet has not, until now, been
subject to the same supervision as pornography and this has
provided previously undreamed of opportunities for racists,
terrorists  and other extreme elements to promote their aims
and ideals and to access each other's ideas and resources.

It is in the nature of the Internet that it is difficult to
monitor. Its size and the ease by which the origins of
messages can be disguised ensure that no agency has been
willing or able to devote significant time or resources to
investigate so called 'hate' material. Neither the FBI nor
the Metropolitan Police in the UK have been monitoring race
hate Bulletin Boards (electronic notice boards), although
the latter have recently confirmed that there has been
internal discussion about the matter.<15> Somewhat belatedly
American government agencies have been investigating the
publication of bomb-making manuals on the Net.<16>

The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution
(BfV) has noted the use being made of the Internet, and
other electronic means of communication, to evade state
surveillance.<17>  It can be assumed, therefore, that they
have bee monitoring the Internet, at least for counter-
terrorism purposes.

Concern appears to be growing about the provision of
facilities for racist groups to access the Internet either
deliberately, by non-racists acting on behalf of free
speech, or inadvertent by reputable companies unaware that
their Internet publicity material might be just a 'click
away' from the sites of hate organizations.

Some of America's leading universities, it seer are being
used by free speech activists to make Nazi propaganda
available in Germany. A recent newspaper article <18> states
that through the activities of such activists the University
of California, Carnegie-Mellon University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have all become
hosts to copies of a Nazi wet site carrying Ernst Zundel's
Holocaust denial material which is illegal in Germany and to
which the German telecommunications authorities have been
trying to block access.

While many may accept the presence of neo-Nazis on the
Internet as the price of free speech it is doubtful whether
reputable business organizations would welcome their logos
appearing in such close proximity with hate groups as to
create the appearance of sponsorship. This has been the
subject of an article on Time-Warner's Pathfinder site on
the Internet, which discusses a commercial Hollywood site
called GeoCities. GeoCities of 'Premier Communities' in the
form of free pages for its users. Known as 'virtual
homesteaders', some 25,000 groups have set up pages, the
politically active ones residing in a 'Community' called
'Capitol Hill', which is devoted to politics and national
affairs.<19>

GeoCities' commercial sponsors are probably unaware that
their banners are adorning sites which include, among
others, Tom Metzger's White Racist Web Page, the New Aryan
Movement, Zionwatch, the National Party, Independent White
Racialists, Blood and Honour and the Hate Page. The
Resistance Records Home Page, which sells White Power record
will take credit card orders and the trademark both Visa and
Mastercard are prominently displayed. They appear a few
inches only below SS-style death skulls and record titles
like 'Aryan New Storm Rising'.

2 The far right and the Internet

The term 'far right' is generally used to describe groups
with a neo-Nazi or radical nationalist and racist ideology
or pedigree. Many of these groups regard themselves as
successors to the Nazi regime of Hitler's Third Reich;
others, especially in the United States, are more influenced
by the radical racist nationalism of national
revolutionaries such as Julius Evola, and Georg and Gregor
Strasser. Still others follow the 'leaderless resistance'
ideology of Louis Beam, formerly of the Ku Klux Klan, now of
the Aryan Nations.

Skinheads have also been utilizing the Internet for various
purposes, although they have a less intellectual outlook.
For them, Jews, anti-fascists and foreign workers are all
'scum' to be harassed, expelled or murdered; the
vilification of 'others' serves to define their own identity
in an  ever-changing world. The membership and number of
violent crimes attributed to skinhead groups have been
rising fast. The Anti-Defamation League estimates that there
are some 70,000 committed 'skins' around the world with
branches active in 33 countries including New Zealand and
Japan <20> According to the anti-racist group Klanwatch, the
likelihood of violence is enormous when skinheads get
organized and the Internet is enabling them to get organized
as they have never been before.<21>

For the far right the Internet is of considerable and far-
reaching significance:

     The unique nature of the Internet makes this the
     information battle-ground of the future . . . by
     contrast television and radio require the creation
     of  broadcast quality programmes, and reaching
     listeners and viewers is tied to the amount of
     money one can afford to spend. Books, magazines
     and other printed materials are durable and
     inexpensive, but no way near so freely available,
     and can be confiscated by oppressive governments .
     . . Internet users, though, enjoy free access to
     virtually all information on the system and new
     features are becoming available to allow
     researchers . . . to find everything on the
     Internet in their areas of interest .<22>

Holocaust denial is the link which binds many far-right
organizations. The denial of historical truth and the Nazis'
crimes against humanity have been made a priority by today's
neo-Nazis. Fifty years after the end of the Second World War
they are seeking to re-establish their political legitimacy
and they therefore portray the Nazi crimes as a myth or they
belittle them in order to gain the support of a new
generation.

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) in California is a
major promoter of Holocaust denial with pseudo-academic
pretensions. It holds annual seminars which attract such
luminaries as David Irving, Ahmed Rami and Robert Faurisson,
and it has a major presence on the Internet. In a recent
issue of its newsletter, IHR Update, the Institute reports
the following:

So far only a few IHR leaflets and selected IHR journal
articles are available on the Internet WWW (World Wide Web),
although new items are being added as time permits. Also
available is a listing of every article that has appeared in
the Journal, allowing callers to quickly search for titles
and authors. The multi-media nature of the World Wide Web
means that IHR materials are available in a very readable
and even attractive layout and style. Internet users around
the world can also save copies of IHR material on their
personal computers for later study, or for reprinting and
distribution . . .

We are seeking funds to make this an IHR priority, so that
eventually just about everything that's appeared in fourteen
years of the _Journal of Historical Review_ will be
available on the Internet.<23>

The IHR provides instructions on how to access its material
on the Internet: 'Every computer user with full Internet
access was invited to access IHR materials on the World Wide
Web.' <24> Holocaust denial material now has its own
newsgroup,<25> 'alt revisionism'. Denial material also
appears on various alt.politics and talk.politics
newsgroups. In 1991, Mark Weber of the Institute for
Historical Review published a series of articles on the
newsgroup talk.politics entitled 'The Holocaust-let's hear
both sides, revisionists challenge extermination story'.

During 1993, intense Holocaust denial propaganda coupled
with vehement antisemitism were published on the Swedish
FidoNet BBS by two individuals using the aliases 'Fritz
Goldman' and 'Oscar Andersson'. The former also uploaded a
denial file to several BBSs which included an  accurate
Swedish translation of the Leuchter Report. This report is a
major denial publication by Fred Leuchter, a self-proclaimed
gas chamber expert, who claimed to have carried out a
forensic examination of the gas chambers at Auschwitz from
which he concluded that there were insufficient traces of
cyanide for there ever to have been mass gassings of Jews. A
subsequent court case in his home state of Massachusetts
exposed Leuchter's lies. He has been expelled from the UK
and a short time later he was fined and expelled from
Germany. He was due to stand trial in Mannheim in September
1994 on other charges, but failed to return from America .

Holocaust denial material has appeared in other newsgroups.
For example, Michael A. Hoffman II, an American well known
for denying the truth of the Holocaust, together with an
Alan R. Critchley, published an article on 21 March 1995
entitled 'Spielberg commits fraud in film Schindler's List'
on the soc.culture.palestine newsgroup. In their article the
authors attempt to prove that Schindler's List and the book
upon which it is based, Schindler's Ark, are no more than a
sophisticated hoax. They state that portions of their
article first appeared in Revisionist Researcher Magazine,
published in New York.

3 The Internet as a means of communication

So-called 'hotlines' and BBSs serve also as a means of
communication between far-right groups. The Internet, and e-
mail in particular, are now used extensively to provide
local and international communications for the price of a
local call.

According to a press article, two leading figures in the
Scottish Anti-Nazi League were subjected to a campaign of
telephone death threats from neo-Nazis after their names
appeared on-line. This appears to be the first example of
the use o the Internet for this purpose in the United
Kingdom.<26>

On the whole, British neo-Nazis tend to be markedly less
sophisticated and organized than their foreign counterparts,
while German neo-Nazis are known to have been developing
inter-computer communications since 1980. The so-called
Thule Network was developed specifically to allow different
German neo-Nazi groups to communicate with one another.<27>

The computer magazine Chip estimates that about 1,500 German
far-right extremists are active on the Thule Network. This
consists of at least twelve Bulletin Boards, and derives its
name from the small elite 1 920s movement considered to be
the forerunner of the Nazi Part Names of anti-fascist
activists, codenamed 'Zecken' (Ticks), as well as judges and
journalist can also be obtained. Code names such as 'sch”ne
M„dchen' (beautiful girls) have also bee used to refer to
the police. <28> It is believed that the Thule Network is
located in Baden-Wrtemberg Bavaria and North Rhine-
Westphalia.

The precise planning of German neo-Nazis, and their strategy
of remaining in small groups, rather  than amalgamating with
one or two large umbrella organizations, has been
facilitated by the use of the Internet.

Police have recently been baffled by the precise, military-
style planning of neo-Nazi actions. Provide with passwords
such as Germania or Endsieg (final victory), from a post
office box, personal compute schemes will display a calendar
of forthcoming neo-Nazi events and list contact numbers of
leading right-wingers . . . On Remembrance Sunday police saw
action, for the first time, computer planned coordinated neo-
Nazi action, involving the widespread use of secret codes
and radio communication . . . 'The advantage of electronic
mail boxes is that the are free of censorship and bug-
proof', said Karl Heinz Sendbuhler of the National
Democratic Party. <29>

The stated aims of the Resistance Bulletin Board Service
networks are to strengthen links between German neo-Nazi
groups, rally support for their cause and raise funds for
their neo-Nazi 'political prisoners . They are said to
operate through a telephone line in the Bavarian town of
Erlangen and can only be accessed by use of coded
passwords.<30>

In 1994, a Norwegian neo-Nazi group, Fedrelandspartiet Youth
(FLP), stated that its sponsored Bulletin Board, Nasjonal
Allianse BB' was used to establish links with the German
Thule in order to exchange regular reports. When the BBS was
exposed in the Aftenposten daily newspaper, Arnljot Moseng,
the FLP leader panicked and closed it down.<31>

In 1994, a message defending the British National Party's
ban on Combat 18 appeared on the Internet, apparently
originating from Norway. Although no further details are
known, this appeared to be a means by which Britain's
largest neo-Nazi organization was announcing its
proscription of the small violent group to foreign neo-
Nazis. The text suggested that 'there is growing evidence
that C18 has been heavily infiltrated and probably taken
over by Government agents who are acting as "agents
provocateurs" in order to incite nationalists into criminal
activities, thereby making them vulnerable to arrest and
imprisonment'.

 The article concludes by asserting 'the banning of C18 does
not mean that the BNP "has gone soft" on defending itself
against violent attack. The party will continue to hit back
against any assault by the opposition-and hit back hard. But
we are in the business of serious politics; we are not a
street gang or a "secret army"'.<32>

Publication of contact lists and hate articles

The far right also uses the Internet for the publication of
contact lists. Liberty Lobby, a major American racist
organization which funds other groups, sponsors the Logoplex
BBS. Cyberspace Minuteman appears to be the most active
American BBS and it is said to act as a contact point for
much of the far right in the USA, and possibly Europe. The
neo-Nazi British National Party has a contact on it who uses
the name 'D Man 1'.

Norwegian neo-Nazis have published an international contact
list giving the country, Bulletin Board names, System
Operators (Sysops), contact numbers, etc. for over forty neo-
Nazi groups in Sweden, Germany and the USA. It also listed
two Internet newsgroups used by neo-Nazis and racists: alt
revisionism and alt.skinheads, as well as
alt.politics.radical-left.

In February 1995, an American neo-Nazi sympathizer calling
himself Markus Maximus published on
alt.politics.nationalism.white several lists of neo-Nazi and
white racist organizations in America and elsewhere.

On 8 February 1995, in response to a request from a
correspondent who asked for more information on white power
groups, Don Black published a listing on alt.politics.white-
power. This contained nineteen pages of names, addresses,
contact numbers of white power groups throughout America and
Canada, followed by details of neo-Nazi short-wave and
satellite broadcasts on AM and FM radio stations throughout
America. On 17 February 1994, a similar list appeared from a
Jason.Smith@freenet.carlton.ca. In response to a request
information he stated, 'I am a nationalist skinhead, and I
would be happy to provide you with some addresses to write
to in order to the information from the source.' He then
listed various American neo-Nazi organizations, as well as
the address of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement in
Pretoria, an Australian skinhead group and the BNP.

The Internet is also being used to publish 'hate' articles.
A not untypical example is entitled 'Rothschild-the Head of
the Beast' which attacks the Rothschild family in terms
similar those used in classic pre-Second World War
antisemitic texts:

     You must realize too that Rothschild agents at
     cockroaches crawling around your home. The
     cockroaches crawl all over Europe, they are
     everywhere. They are all around the world: in
     United States, in Europe, Asia, Africa, Japan ;.
     Orient. They are constantly manoeuvring and
     working for the Rothschild purposes . . . When
     this source speaks of the Rothschild purposes, it
     refers to those cohorts, the other twelve
     superworld families that associate or ride the
     coat tails of Rothschilds.<33>

A further example is taken from an article entitled
'Judaism's War against Christianity' by Michael Nile:

     The 'Holocaust' has become adopted as Judaic
     Dogma, it is further sheltered by religious fait
     made sacrosanct. They have tried to replace cross
     with the 'Holocaust and the source of atonement as
     the Jewish people as the world's Messiah, rather
     than Jesus the Christ Who is Messiah and Whose
     blood is the only thing that can wash away sins.
     It shouldn't be surprising the Anti-Christ would
     act any different as they have to destroy the true
     Christ and discredit the Way Jesus the Word came
     and died for. They must destroy the Cross that
     they hate and give people a new sacrifice, i.e.
     six million 'gods', who died because of your sins.
     Make no mistake, you are guilty of their deaths
     according to the Jewish Doctrine of collective
     guilt, and you must believe in  them for salvation
     from your sins. You must make your choice whether
     you will follow Christ or Anti-Christ. As for me,
     I chose Christ.
     
     Therefore, as we approach the year 2000 A.D., two
     major faiths clash, Christianity and Judaism.
     There is no accommodation possible between Jews,
     who hate the person of Jesus Christ and his
     Symbol, the Cross, and Christians who persist in
     their belief that Christ is the ONLY way to the
     Father, the Truth and Life.<34>

For the past six years, some Jews in Britain have been
plagued by antisemitic hate mail. These letters frequently
appear on the forged notepaper of a local synagogue or
church and provide quotations taken out of context, or false
quotations with an air of authenticity. Scotland Yard
detectives have been investigating the origins, searching
several homes in the process. Similar material is now
appearing on the Internet, although it originates in the
United States.

On 22 March 1995, a message entitled 'Jewish Bigotry'
appeared on the alt.revisionism newsgroup:

     Although the Holy Bible is readily available in
     many, many languages, the Jewish Talmud, on the
     other hand, is hidden and secretive and English
     translations, although they exist, are hard to
     come by. In the following quotations you will see
     the word 'GOY'. It serves several meanings: 'non-
     Jew', 'cattle', 'filthy', etc. Here are some
     quotes from the Talmud:
     
     To communicate to a GOY about our religious
     relations would be equal to the killing of all
     Jews, if the GOY knew what we teach about them
     they would kill us openly.' (Book of Libbre David,
     37) 'Every GOY who studies Talmud, and every Jew
     who HELPS HIM in it OUGHT TO DlE.' (Sanhedryn 59a
     Aboda Zora 8-6, Szagiga 13). 'The ears of a GOY
     are filthy, their baths, houses, countries are
     filthy.' (Tosefta Mikwat, Vl) 'a Jew may rob a
     GOY, he may cheat him over a bill, which should
     not be perceived by him, otherwise the name of G-d
     would become dishonoured,' (Schulchan Aruch,
     Choszen Hamizszpat 348) 'If a GOY killed a GOY or
     a Jew he is responsible, but if a Jew killed a GOY
     he is not responsible' (Tosefta, Aboda Zara,
     Vlll).

According to the American Holocaust denier, Tom Marcellus,
the most actively used service is Genie, the major public
subscription and computer Bulletin Board Service owned by
General Electric. Another service used for this purpose is
Prodigy.<35>

This is confirmed by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre which
states that most complaints about racist and antisemitic
messages concerned those on Prodigy, which has an estimated
two million subscribers.  The existence of racist computer
games has been widely reported, and although not strictly
available on the Internet, they are worth mentioning. They
came to public attention in Austria in 1988, although it is
believed that the games first appeared around 1986.

The games themselves are believed to have originated in
Germany, although some initial reports suggested that they
might have been produced in Sweden, while others have
pointed to the American Gary Rex Lauck of the German
National Socialist Workers' Party/Overseas Section (NSDAP-
AO), who was arrested in Denmark in early March 1995.
Following his arrest, German police searched the homes of
German neo-Nazis with whom he was in contact, and seized
computers as well as other material.

The neo-Nazi video games are produced on a clandestine basis
and sold or swapped on the black market; there has never
been evidence to show that they are openly available. The
Austrian and German governments denied any knowledge of
their existence until about 1988, a consequence of the
underground mode of distribution. Had the videos been
available on the open market the manufacturers would almost
certainly have been charged under existing German or
Austrian legislation which forbids the glorification of the
Nazi era, bans overt display of Nazi symbols and forbids
denial of the Holocaust.

Not all the games are anti-Jewish: some are anti-Turk or
anti-immigrant. It is believed that they are now into the
second and possibly third generations and that they are both
sophisticated and Interactive.

There is no evidence that the games are available in
Britain. Should they become available they
would appear to fall within the scope of Sections 19 and 21
of the Public Order Act 1986. In May 1992, Glyn Ford MEP,
Rapporteur of the European Parliament's Commission on Racism
and Xenophobia, reported Amiga Format magazine (a computer
journal) to the Crown Prosecution Service for advertising
the sale of an anti-Arab computer game, Operation
Thunderbolt, which involved the player killing Arab
soldiers. In the event the CPS took no action in this
case.<36>

Originally produced as interactive video games, these are
now said to be available on disk and details about them are
now appearing on BBSs. Researchers at the University of
Regensburg surveyed 165 children and discovered that games
had come into the possession of seven of them.

They included Concentration Camp Manager, in which players
have to decide whether Turks (the largest ethnic minority
group in Germany) should be put in labour camps or
immediately gassed. Achtung Nazi is set in Auschwitz
concentration camp and the object of the game is to gas as
many Jews as possible. Other names are said to be: Aryan
Test, Hitler Diktator 1, Anti-Turk Test.

According to Helmut Lukesch, Professor of Psychology at
Regensburg University, The games are technically excellent
quality and they cost nothing. The distributors have no
commercial interests, only ideological ones.  They build a
world view with these games that children cannot protect
themselves from. <37> The Bonn-based Bundesprufstelle is the
Federal  Government agency for monitoring comics, magazines
and videos for their suitability for children and
adolescents. It has placed on its index of material that is
unsuitable for children 107 games which promote racial
hatred, racial incitement and the glorification of violence,
and banned a further 30.<38> The examiners in Bonn were said
to be convinced, however, that they had only dealt with the
tip of the iceberg.

4 Terrorism on the Internet

Bomb-making manuals have also been transmitted by computer
links, although it is not certain whether via the Internet.
What is certain is that much of this material emanates from
the USA, where the NSDAP-AO transmitted bomb making plans in
its magazine _Endsieg_ by modem to Austria, Germany, France
and Holland and that one issue featured a bomb-making
manual. It might have been from this manual that Austrian
Nazis were able to construct the bombs used in the wave of
terror attacks that took place throughout Austria in 1994
and in early 1995 after the imprisonment of the Austrian
Nazi leader Gottfried Kussel.

Other bomb-making manuals are more readily available on the
Internet. The Big Book of  Mischief-The Terrorists '
Handbook is available in the newsgroup rec.pyrotechnics.
Originally produced in 1991 by the Chicago group Chaos
Industries, it is now distributed by John Cormier of the
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. The origin of this
handbook is believed to lie with the Anarchists rather than
the far right. In this instance warnings are given that the
instructions it contains are merely for 'reading enjoyment,
and it is not intended for actual use'. However, the
material has long been available through neo-Nazi
organizations in Britain and the United States.

An undated file entitled 'Aryan Guerrilla Resistance Warfare
-- Guidelines for Resistance to Tyranny' states that this
file is taken from Army Field Manual 31 - 31 Guerrilla
Warfare and Special Forces Operations. The article lists
tactical aspects of guerrilla warfare and states that a free
copy of Hard Core Survival Book Catalogue can be obtained
from Gaddis Publications, PO Box 411 476-CM, Los Angeles, CA
90041. Gaddis is believed to be a far-right publisher.

5 Regulating the Internet

The Internet's global reach presents a seemingly
insurmountable challenge to would-be regulators. As things
stand, the Internet relies on the good sense of users to
deal with those who 'abuse' its self-proclaimed ethos for
their unacceptable ends. This anarchic situation allows
neither the deletion of supposedly unacceptable messages,
nor does it prevent further unacceptable messages from being
posted.

However, as the author of an article in MacUser magazine
argued, Cyberspace is not set apart from society, it is part
of it.

     Virtual conferencing has real world results.
     Organized groups of fascists may be operating in a
     virtual environment but they intend actual
     physical harm to other people. That's why there
     should be no place for these groups in Cyberspace.

She goes on to argue that users should use the freedom that
is being defended to exercise some direct control: 'If there
are Nazis in a conference you are joined to, drive them out.
<39>

The suggestion that the senders of hate messages be 'flamed
out' by other users, that is, that their machines be
bombarded with thousands of messages, even blank pages, thus
tying up their phone lines, exhausting their fax machines
and ultimately disabling their computers, is no long-term
solution, although it has its appeal:

     The other day I encountered my first Nazi on the
     'Net', a madman shouting hate. You know what
     happened? A bunch of Internet citizens ran him out
     of town. Chased him away, sent him packing. Gave
     him the big heave-ho.'<40>

The practice of 'flaming' is

     a dangerous invitation to digital vigilantism and
     promiscuous computer violence. It turns cyberspace
     into a rude, lawless frontier town in which
     everyone carries a six-shooter and exacts his own
     revenge . . . There is no discourse when everyone
     is free to interrupt and no one is appointed to
     keep order. No human activity can long remain
     unregulated . . . Internet too is a form of human
     behaviour. Computers and modems do not remove them
     from the human orbit.<41>

Clearly the situation that has occurred recently where
racists have broken into electronic mail accounts and fired
off hate messages falls within the terms of the British
Computer Misuse Act 1995. In 1993, a professor at Texas A&M
University reported that someone had broken into his
electronic mail account and sent out racist messages from
the neo-Nazi National Alliance to some 20,000 computer users
in four states. In 1994, at Middlesex University in the UK,
the
e-mail account of the University's Jewish Society was used
to transmit racist messages. In an internal memorandum,
Professor Michael Driscoll, Dean of the University,
threatened disciplinary action, including exclusion, for the
culprits.

Governments might now be prepared to legislate against hate
mail. The new US Communications Decency Act provides
stringent penalties of up to two years in jail for using a
modem to send 'any comment, request, suggestion, proposal,
image or other communication which is obscene, lewd,
lascivious, filthy or indecent'. Although dedicated to
banning pornography on the Internet, the concept may have
relevance for hate mail.

Opposition, however, comes from two lobbies: those who
believe it might prevent more restrictive and effective
legislation by individual states, as was argued at the
Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in San Francisco;
and others, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who
wish to extend to Cyberspace the freedom granted by the
First Amendment to the US Constitution.<42>

In 1992, the US Supreme Court decision in _R.A.V. v. City of
St Paul, Minnesota_, upheld the First Amendment obstacle to
banning or curbing hate expression, and the legal fight
against racism the United States has now increasingly turned
towards adopting other statutes in which a content
'neutrality' is maintained. The fact that the chosen target
has been selected on racial grounds becomes the basis of the
offence.<43>

While in the UK there are legal provisions which can be used
to prosecute those who transmit hate material, the
authorities until recently failed to use these for fear of
failing to secure convictions by juries. However, academic
and practising lawyers and the police suggest that
provisions of Part lll of the Public Order Act 1986 might be
relevant where hate material, or Holocaust denial material,
is transmitted with t intention of inciting hatred against a
group defined by reference to their colour, race or
nationality, ethnic or national origins.

* Section 19 makes it an offence to publish or distribute
written material where the intention is to stir up racial
hatred.

* Section 21 makes it an offence to distribute visual images
likely to incite racial hatred.

* Section 22 makes an attempt to broadcast threatening,
abusive or insulting visual image or sounds on a cable
programme service an offence.

* Section 23 makes it an offence to possess written material
which is threatening, abusive or insulting or record visual
images or sounds which are abusive or insulting, where it is
intended that racial hatred be stirred up.

The Malicious Communications Act 1988 make it an offence to
send to another person:

* a letter or other article which conveys a message which is
indecent or grossly offensive; a threat; or information
which is false or known or believed to be false; or

* any other article which is, in whole or part, of an
indecent or grossly offensive nature

Section 43 (1 ) of the Telecommunications Act 1984 makes it
an offence to send by means of public telecommunications
system a message that is grossly offensive or of an
indecent, obscene or menacing character.

While there is no case law on the matter, the view of those
consulted is that the medium by which the insulting message
is transmitted is  immaterial, and that a criminal
prosecution of material on the Internet is possible provided
that all evidential requirements are met.

Again, the view of those consulted is that the distribution
of prosecutable information downloaded from a computer in
Britain would be an offence, and therefore the owners of
such host machines would have to consider their legal
positions. The sending of such e-mail either internally or
from this country abroad, while technically an offence,
would be hard if not impossible to monitor, and therefore is
unlikely to result in a prosecution.

Likewise, the receipt in this country of material sent from
abroad would similarly be an offence, albeit hard, if not
impossible, to prosecute. If, however, the material is
subsequently transmitted or distributed by non-electronic
methods, or if a UK-based recipient complains, a prosecution
might be possible. The storage of such material in a
physical computer might be considered akin I to being in the
public arena as are paper, video tapes and audio tapes,
whereas the use of the Internet for communication is more
ephemeral, as are telephone and face-to-face conversations.

Denial of the Holocaust, the glorification of the Nazi Third
Reich, the falsification of history and the publication of
Nazi and or racist literature are illegal in some European
countries. An examination of each country's domestic
legislation would be necessary to ascertain whether the
definition of the mode of distribution

 includes or excludes e-mail and the Internet. There is no
case law in international law, but both the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on
the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination
prohibit the incitement of race hatred, and these would also
apply to the Internet.

 6 Conclusion

For dedicated enthusiasts, the Internet exists within a
virtual world of unregulated computer networks where the
right to free speech is unlimited and no restrictive rules
apply. In the real world, of course, societies have long-
standing traditions and laws which they will inevitably seek
to uphold. The rapid popularisation of the Internet -- its
emergence from the university research environment into the
public domain -- has provoked intense debate whenever
legislators have sought to apply the same limitations on
freedom of expression in cyberspace as exist in relation to
the other electronic and printed media.

In all its various components, whether e-mail, the World
Wide Web, Bulletin Boards or newsgroups, the Internet
carries vast quantities of material, much of it of
considerable value, and some-a much smaller amount-either
useless or repugnant. The so-called 'superhighway' is
utilized by a large and rapidly increasing number of
business and commercial organizations worldwide; in Europe,
North America and elsewhere virtually every academic
institution provides some access to the Internet for its
teaching and research staff, and students; and the sale of
equipment and software to access the Internet at home is
booming.

The anarchic nature of the Internet means that there is
little or no control over the content of the many documents
to be found there. Unlike publishing a book or newspaper
article, where the author is subject to the control, taste
and discipline of an editor, on the Internet authors are
free to post their work directly into the public domain
where there is a potential readership of tens of millions of
people undifferentiated by age, sex, geographic, ethnic or
religious affiliation. It is very difficult, if not
impossible, to exclude from the Internet those who would
seek to disseminate potentially offensive material via its
various facilities. And, as we have seen in this paper, the
Internet has provided both an attractive format and a
relatively regulation-free environment for both the
publication of racist material and the organization of the
activities of neo-Nazi and other far-right organizations,
terrorist and extremist groups.

It would not only be difficult to prevent such groups from
using the Internet, but it might be undesirable to do so
even if it were technically possible. Arguably, the freedom
of speech provided by the Internet and its resistance to
controls, especially by governments, should not be lightly
abandoned. Throughout history, those in authority have
sought to restrict, if not suppress altogether, the
expression of independent, critical, and unfashionable ideas
and beliefs. However, as has often been pointed out, the
Internet epitomizes the classic 'liberal dilemma'. In this
case maintaining the principle of free speech means
extending that right to those who would use it to 'promote
violence, threaten women, denigrate minorities, promote
homophobia and conspire against democracy'.<44>

The campaign to maintain the right to free speech on the
Internet has been given added impetus since the United
States Congress approved the massive Telecommunications Act
1996 which includes the Communications Decency Act (CDA). As
President Clinton was signing the Act into law, the American
Civil Liberties Union and nineteen other groups filed a
lawsuit in the US District Court in Philadelphia,
challenging the anti-indecency provision.45 On 12 June 1996,
the panel of federal judges granted a preliminary injunction
against the CDA. The judges ruled unanimously that the CDA
would unconstitutionally restrict free speech on the
Internet. The US government has appealed to the Supreme
Court, but the earliest an appeal could be heard is October
1996, with an eventual decision in 1997.

However, the arguments in favour of unrestricted speech on
the Internet have to be weighed against the evidence in this
Paper of its abuse, albeit by a small minority. There are
signs of continuing and increasing racism, xenophobia,
intolerance and bigotry across the world. Across Europe anti-
immigrant feelings are running high with governments
responding by introducing tighter controls on immigration
and asylum-seekers.

The technical and libertarian arguments against attempting
to control the posting of undesirable material on the
Internet at source are compelling. It would be all too easy
for groups who find their sites blocked or 'flamed' to
change their Internet addresses (IPs), use encryption
techniques to conceal the content of their messages from
official prying eyes, and, in general to go electronically
'underground'. The libertarian case has been reinforced
recently by the controversy over the Chinese government's
attempts to control what its citizens are permitted to
access in cyberspace. The Chinese government is attempting
to control its citizens' access to the Internet by ruling
that they must use the state telecommunications system for
their access, thus allowing the Chinese authorities to
monitor and filter content <46> On the other hand,
Singapore's government does not resort to physical
enforcement but keeps a tight reign on its citizens' speech
by prosecuting individuals for 'defamatory' comments about
the government.

However, if it is either undesirable or technically
impossible to restrict what goes on the Internet, there is a
much stronger case for restrictions o what comes off it.
Where countries have legislated against incitement to racial
hatred or, indeed, against the publication and dissemination
of pornography, those responsible for providing access to
the Net would probably have a legal, well as a moral,
obligation to block such material from their machines.

Disturbed by what they have described as the unbridled
promotion of 'racism, antisemitism, mayhem and violence' on
the Internet, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles has
called upon major access providers such as CompuServe,
America On-Line and Prodigy, as well as universities, to ban
those with an 'agenda of hate and violence'. Rabbi Abraham
Cooper, Associate Dean of the Centre, has proposed a 'code
of ethics' to be applied largely against the Internet's
World Wide Web, which is made up publicly-accessed pages of
text and graphics, rather than against newsgroups, which
consist bulletin boards that encourage open debate.<47>

Already, some access providers and universities have banned
certain material. One example is CompuServe's highly
controversial ban on indecent photographs and other material
under threat of prosecution in Bavaria. Rabbi Cooper argues
that his ethical code is similar to that followed by
bookshops when they refuse to carry certain books.

The Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) has been seeking
public comment on the need for code of practice for the
development of the or line services industry. The idea is
that the code would represent a public statement of an
industry's responsiveness to community need and concerns and
would provide for an appropriate complaints handling
mechanism. an issues paper, the ABA, which already has a
classification scheme for broadcast material, a range of
concerns expressed to the authority including material which
racially vilifies.<48>

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has applied the
British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion to UK
advertising on the Internet. The ASA has established a
working group on self-regulation by advertisers on the
Internet. In effect, the ASA has brought the Internet into
line with press, poster and other non-broadcast media.<49>

A further classification scheme, this time to protect
children from accessing unsuitable material on the Internet,
has been considered by the powerful Microsoft Corporation,
Netscape and Progressive Networks who have formed the
Information Highway Parental Empowerment Group. They have
been working on a new system which relies on Internet
content providers conforming to a rating system that
identifies the type of material they offer. It has been
claimed that because Microsoft is so powerful, content
providers can be persuaded or pressurized into the scheme
which could then be about 95 per cent effective.<50>

Voluntary codes of behaviour may indeed work well in the
majority of cases. However, they are unlikely to deter
groups on the far right of the political spectrum determined
to get their messages across. They have already condemned
Rabbi Cooper's code of ethics as an attempt to quash free
speech. Tom Metzger, director of the White Aryan Resistance,
has said that 'We are not going to allow the Simon
Wiesenthal Centre or the Anti-Defamation League or any
Jewish pressure group to limit our speech in any medium.
'<51>

Those who are responsible for providing access to the
Internet in the home and in public institutions such as
schools, colleges, universities and public libraries cannot
rely on voluntary codes of practice to prevent objectionable
material being accessed on their machines. They will
inevitably be held legally and morally responsible for the
material they carry and such material, anyway, might well
prejudice, among other things, their Equal Opportunities
Policies and  their claim to be free of all racial prejudice
or bias. Nor should they permit access to racist or
pornographic material which they would not consider suitable
to acquire for their library shelves.

Considerations such as these have led to a proliferation of
new software initiatives designed to permit censorship at
grass-roots level. While still incomplete, they already
provide a good first line of defence. These so-called self-
censoring programmes are designed to block out undesirable
Internet sites and come with lists of such sites that are
regularly updated. They should work particularly well with
any new rating system introduced by, say, the Microsoft-led
partnership referred to above. Already a number are on the
market, some for domestic use and others intended for large
networks. They range from the unfortunately named 'Net
Nanny', a home product, to Cyber Sentry, WebTrack and
Netscape Proxy Server, which are intended to be installed on
servers in large organizations.<52>

Recently, Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web
Consortium at MIT, who is credited with having started the
Web, has offered a free screening programme to people who
want to keep objectionable material from entering their
computers from the Internet.53
Censorship alone might not be the answer to the 'hate' sites
on the Internet. Increasingly, the Internet itself is being
used to assert historical truths and to put the record
straight. In Canada, for example, the Nizkor project,
established by Ken McVay, counters hate propaganda and
Holocaust denial by education on the Internet.<54>

In general, it is desirable to keep censorship of the
Internet to a minimum consistent with the values of liberal
democratic societies. Moreover, the need for any kind of
censorship whatsoever is strongly contested by civil
liberties groups everywhere and especially in the United
States. The Internet, it is claimed, is unique in that it is
technically impossible to impose any effective controls on
it. It should therefore be protected as the last bastion of
the absolute right to free speech, guaranteed in the United
States by the First Amendment to the constitution. For
others, this right is all too often abused by those seeking
to disseminate racist and pornographic material. Thus it is
important to reconcile the imperatives of free speech with
the minimum controls necessary to limit the exploitation of
the Internet by racists and pornographers.

7 An Internet policy

What has clearly emerged both from this Paper and
discussions with experts is that any policy designed to
restrict, control or remove from the Internet material which
is either illegal or repugnant must take account of some key
principles:

 It is important to respect the right to freedom of speech.
This right is not unconditional, even in democratic
societies, and would not extend, for example, to the
commission or promotion of criminal acts; sexual, racial or
other forms of discrimination deemed contrary to the public
good.
 It is desirable to avoid state imposed statutory controls
or censorship of speech itself and the media through which
it is expressed.

 Controls should be aimed at what can be accessed on the
Internet, i.e. at the receiving end, since it is technically
impossible to prevent material-which is illegal or
specifically designed to offend-to be put on the Internet at
source.

 The Internet is used by far-right and other extremist
groups to disseminate their ideas with a view to influencing
opinion and recruiting new adherents. While there IS little
evidence at present to show that this is having much effect,
this does not mean that we should be indifferent towards the
presence on the Internet of material which is inherently
offensive.

 The Internet should not be regarded differently from other
means of publishing and disseminating speech and ideas. The
same laws and controls which already apply to other means of
publishing, whether electronic or printed, should be applied
to the Internet.

Policy proposals for immediate implementation

1 We urge the adoption now -- by those in the public,
private and voluntary sectors who own, control or manage
institutions -- of an interim Internet policy and
accompanying code of good practice, pending the development
of a more comprehensive policy (see recommendation 8). This
policy would determine what materials can legitimately be
accessed on their computers. We are not recommending that
there should be a statutory requirement for such a policy.
Instead, it would be similar to other initiatives
 such as policies which many institutions already have in
place to provide for equal opportunities in employment or to
regulate substance abuse. Indeed, institutions could adapt
their policies relating to race and discrimination and
extend these to cover the Internet.

2 Education authorities-as the initial base for public
education-should take the lead in introducing an interim
Internet policy. They have a particular responsibility for
ensuring that they do not permit access to materials via the
Internet that they would not consider suitable for their
library shelves.

3 The policy should be reinforced by the use of so-called
'blocking software' which either only permits access to
certain materials and denies access to everything else, or
which permits access to everything except certain proscribed
material.

4 Where open access is permitted, the criteria upon which
any controls should be based should first be to exclude any
material which is illegal (e.g. in England and Wales falls
under the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964 Computer
Misuse Act 1990, incitement to racial hatred legislation
included in the Public Order Act 1986, etc.). Second it
should exclude material which is designed to offend or
contradicts other policies such as those relating to equal
opportunities, substance abuse, etc.

5 The underlying principles upon which any exclusion policy
should be based would be those which by regulation or custom
govern the acquisition of materials for any libraries. In
the case of some institutions, universities for example,
special regulations already exist restricting access to
certain materials.

6 In the Internet policy attention should be paid in the
first instance to the graphical World Wide Web rather than
the so-called news groups, bulletin boards, etc. Many
organizations already exclude such groups from their servers
altogether or allow access to a limited few. However, it is
the increasingly professional and well designed pages of the
World Wide Web which give cause for concern. Their content
cannot readily be refuted or debated as can the content of
news groups, which anyway are essentially forums for
discussion and debate.

7 Relevant groups should be widely consulted about the terms
of any policy.

Longer-term proposals

8 We recommend the establishment of a body to develop a
comprehensive policy and accompanying model code of practice
on Internet access for institutions in the public, private
and voluntary sectors. Ideally, this body would be
international in scope and might properly be under the
auspices of an organization such as the Council of Europe or
UNESCO. National bodies would also be  required, and in the
UK, an organization analogous to the Press Complaints
Commission or Broadcasting Standards Authority should be set
up. Such bodies would  monitor the dissemination of racist
and pornographic material on the Internet and would
investigate complaints. They should also consider a broader
range of issues such as challenges to privacy versus freedom
of expression, and copyright versus freedom of information.

9 For purposes of standardization, on the national level,
education authorities and bodies such as the Committee of
Principals and Vice Chancellors of the Universities of the
United Kingdom should be involved. In the private sector,
business organizations such as the Confederation of British
Industry and Chambers of Commerce should be involved in
devising guidelines for employers. For them the issue is
urgent because of the increasing commercial use of the
Internet for advertising and the need for companies to
observe prescribed advertising standards. However, given the
global nature of the Internet and the  multiplicity of
different legal, moral and ethical systems involved, it is
difficult to imagine that there could be any international
agreement to control its contents. However, such agreement
should be possible on a European level where the
responsibility for setting guidelines could lie with
agencies such as the Council of Europe.

10 As the Internet becomes more widely accessed
internationally, police and similar authorities should be
granted resources, currently not available to them, so that
the surveillance they normally exercise over extremist
groups can be extended to cyberspace .

11 We believe that Internet service providers have an
obligation to prevent access, via the services they offer,
to material which is either racist or pornographic. In view
of this, we recommend that such service providers should  be
regarded as 'publishers' rather than 'common carriers' like
the Post Office. Procedures should be established by the
watchdog body referred to in recommendation above to ensure
that service providers continue to prohibit access to such
material once they have been put on notice.

                          Footnotes
                              
1 Tracy Laquey (with Jeanne C.Ryer) The Internet Companion:
A Beginner's Guide (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company 1992), 2.
2 Paul F Burton, 'Freedom of Speech and Censorship on the
Internet', paper delivered at Queen Margaret College,
Edinburgh, 23 November 1994.
3 For a clear jargon-free description of the Internet and
its facilities see John R. Levine and Carol Baroudi, The
Internet for Dummies (San Mateo, California: IDG Books
Worldwide Inc. 1993).
4 Internet Magazine, December 1995, 8.
5. Ibid.
6. Paul Vallely, 'Sex on the net: a very modern morality
tale', _Independent_, 6 January 1996
rates, everyone on the planet could be connected by the year
2003.
7. E. Diamond and S. Bates, 'Law and order comes to
cyberspace', _Technical Review_, October 1995
8. See Diamond and Bates
9. _Interactive Age Media and Marketing Report_, 12 December
1995
10. Ibid.
11. Keith Stone, 'Jewish organization asks Internet
providers to cut access for hate groups', _Los Angeles Daily
News_, January 1996
12. _Reuters Tech News_, 1 February 1996
13. _The Economist_, 6 January 1996
14 Aberdeen Press & Joumal, 5 February 1996.
15. Conversations between M Whine and the Metropolitan
Police, 1994 and 1995
16. Ibid.
17 Dr Eckart Werthebach, _Verscharfen sich
Extremismus/Terrorismus in einem Europa offner
Grenzen?_, BfV, 12 September 1994.
18 Andrew Brown, 'Internet activists foil ban on Nazis',
Independent 3 March 1996.
19 Steve Baldwin, 'Nazis in the virtual hood', Digital
Pulse, 18 January 1996.
20 Michael McCormack and Crawford Killian, 'Fascism Begins
at Home', .net magazine, October
1995.
21 Ibid.
22 IHR Update, California, February 1995.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid .
25 Newsgroups are Internet discussion groups to which
participants subscribe, usually free of charge.
26 Neo Nazis use computer linking in campaign against left',
Scotsman, 1 June 1994
27 'L'extreme droite se met sur ordinateur', Le Figaro, 21
May 1994.
28 Antisemitism WoHd Report 1995 (London: Institute of
Jewish Affairs and American Jewish Committee, 1995), 136.
29 'Neo Nazis go hi-tech with electronic mailboxes',
Guardian, 19 November 1993.
30 'Neo-Nazis use computer games of hate to recruit',
Evening Standard, 14 May 1993
31 'The far right in Norway', Antirasistisk Centre, Oslo, 31
December 1993.
32 'Combat 18 banned from BNP', Norwegian BBS, undated.
33 Newsgroup alt.fan.rumpole, 24 October 1994.
34 Newsgroup. WWW URL http: //www ummah.org.uk
gampaign/shanti.htm, October 1995
35 IHR Newsletter, May 1992.
36 Correspondence sent to the Board of Deputies of British
Jews by Glyn Ford MEP 15 June 1992.
37 _Times Educational Supplement_ 17 February 1995.
38 _Guardian_, 24 November 1988; German Tribune, 29 January
1989.
39 Caroline Bassett, 'Censors in space', _MacUser_, London,
8 July 1994.
40 Jim Carrol, 'I know the Internet, and it's not a cauldron
of evils', Globe and Mail, Toronto, 21 March 1995.
41 Sol Littman, 'Some thoughts on the regulation of
cyberspace', Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Canada, 4 November
1995.
42 Andrew Brown, 'Free-speech battle as Congress declares
global war on cyberporn', Independent, 3 April 1995.
43 Dr Stephen Roth, 'The legal fight against antisemitism:
survey of developments in 1993', Israel Yearbook on Human
Rights (Tel Aviv University Project for the Study of Anti-
Semitism, Wiener Library and Israel Yearbook on Human Rights
1995), vol. 25.
44 Keith Stone, 'Jewish organization asks Internet providers
to cut access for hate groups', Los Angeles Daily News, 11
January 1996
45 CNN, 9 February 1996.
46 Newsweek, 25 December 1995; James Pringle, 'Peking acts
to police Internet', The Tmes, 9 February 1996
47 Los Angeles Daily News, 11 January 1996.
48 News Release, 20 December 1995.
49 Advertising Standards Authority Press Release, 15 July
1996.
50 Internet Magazine November 1995
51 Los Angeles Daily News, 1 1 January 1996.
52 Internet Magazine, Novermber 1995.
53 CNN reporting an Associated Press Report, 11 February
1996.
54 Antisemitism World Report 1996 (London: Institute for
Jewish Policy Research and American Jewish Committee 1996), 19.

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