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NYT: German Urges Global Rules on Hate on Web

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/06/biztech/articles/28tech-germany.html

June 28, 2000

German Urges Global Rules on Hate on Web

By REUTERS

ERLIN, June 27 -- The justice minister called today for global rules against hate speech on the Internet and urged stronger self- regulation by Web companies. "What is forbidden off-line must be forbidden online," the minister, Herta Daübler-Gmelin, told a conference here. "Our goal must be to achieve a global value consensus and to agree an international minimum level of regulation."

The associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Abraham Cooper, said the explosion of extremist Web sites in the United States proved the need for action. "We have gone from one hate site on the Internet in 1995 to over 2,000," Mr. Cooper said. "There are dozens of sites that teach people how to build bombs."

In Germany, the number of extreme right-wing home pages has jumped to 330, 10 times more than four years ago, the internal security watchdog said. Germany was especially wary of abuse on the Internet, she said.

Ms. Daübler-Gmelin welcomed the fact that Amazon.com had agreed to stop selling Hitler's "Mein Kampf," which Germany has banned. She added that the company should not sell the book anywhere.

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