Internet providers asked to censor racist groups ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1996 Nando.net Copyright 1996 The Associated Press BOSTON (Jan 10, 1996 09:34 a.m. EST) -- White supremacist groups that once spread their racist messages at rallies and in leaflets are now going high-tech on the Internet -- a trend a leading Jewish human rights group wants to stop. The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday began sending hundreds of letters to Internet access providers asking them to refuse to carry messages that "promote racism, anti-Semitism, mayhem and violence." Good idea? No, say providers and civil libertarians. They argue that public debate is the way to defeat hate. The Internet allows users to "show the whole world what's wrong wrong about what the hate speakers are saying," said Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group dealing with computer communications. "The correct place to try and put pressure is on the people who create the content, not the person who provides access to it," said CompuServe spokesman William Giles. The roughly 250 hate groups in the United States, whose previous methods reached a limited audience, now "have a magnificent marketing technology dumped in their laps," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal center, based in Los Angeles. "They are able to dress up their message in a way that looks ... presentable." Slick web sites are springing up every day, with names such as Aryan Nations, Skinheads U.S.A. and The Aryan Crusader's Library. Ernst Zundel, a prominent Canadian Holocaust revisionist who has a homepage called Zundelsite, says he should have as much of a right to post a web page as anyone else. "The Internet is the first and last truly free marketplace of ideas, for the time being. It levels the playing field," Zundel said. "To curtail the freedom for some will curtail the freedom for all." The Wiesenthal Center's request is part of a growing debate over whether Internet service providers should be viewed as publishers responsible for what moves on their networks, or carriers who simply provide access to a service without monitoring what is communicated. The Wiesenthal Center argues that the services are publishers who have a civic responsibility not to promote bigotry. Godwin says Internet service providers should be treated like bookstores, which exercise some control when they decide to specialize in science fiction instead of mysteries, but are not expected to read every book and be held responsible for the books' contents. Prodigy spokesman Brian Ek said the service does employ systems operators who monitor content on its proprietary bulletin boards and can remove any messages with "blatant expressions of bigotry, racism or hate." But what exactly meets that definition is hard to pin down: "You make a decision when you see it." For example, when one subscriber pointed out a "repugnant" bulletin board message saying the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews was a good thing, Prodigy removed it Joe Bunkley -- who operates the "1st WWW Banned Media Page," a web site that links to virtually every other white supremacist and neo-Nazi Internet site -- had a strong message for those who would want to stop him from posting his views. "You cowards who want my page shut down can't deal with either the diversity or the free interaction of ideas," he said. "You, the intellectually dead, are hereby formally notified that my intentions are not to offend anyone. It is to speak the truth as I know it and to ensure, to the best of my abilities, the survival of the White Race."