I've sent (using wURLd Presence) the URLs of some of the mirror sites to several search engines. -Allen

_________________________________________________________________ The Peanut Roaster _________________________________________________________________ GERMANS PROBE COMPUTER FIRMS OVER ELECTRONIC PAPER __________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 Reuter Information Service

BONN (Sep 13, 1996 4:05 p.m. EDT) - Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office said on Friday it was investigating a number of so-called Internet providers because they were giving computer subscribers access to a radical left-wing electronic newspaper.

A spokesman for the office said the firms were suspected of inciting criminal activity and advertising for a terrorist group because they had failed to block access to the left-wing Internet page "radikal 154."

Among other things, the electronic site provides instructions on how to sabotage railway lines. Prosecutors consider it to be terrorist propaganda.

On Friday, the page was still available via major Internet providers CompuServe Inc, AOL and T-Online, the online service of telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom.

AOL said in a statement that it was technically impossible to block the server where "radikal" originated, and that the page was anyway now available via at least 30 other servers and in thousands of electronic copies.

Authorities have been getting increasingly frustrated that radical left- or right-wing material whose distribution is a criminal offence in Germany can be picked up here on the Internet from computers in foreign countries. The server where "radikal" originates is located in the Netherlands.

Chuckle...

Firms giving access to the Internet -- a network of interlinked computers providing access to millions of electronic pages -- say they are no more responsible for the contents than a telephone company is for the conversations it carries.

On Thursday Germany's office for the protection of juveniles for the first time put an Internet page -- produced in North America by leading Nazi apologist Ernst Zuendel -- on its list of banned publications.

But officials conceded that the move was likely to have little practical effect, and provider T-Online said it had no intention of blocking the page.

[...]

Copyright © 1996 Nando.net