Germany investigates AOL for providing Zundelaccess

["Declan B. McCullagh" <declan+@CMU.EDU>]

German prosecutors appear to be using the *threat* of charges to force
AOL and CompuServe to block access to web sites. I suspect they'd rather
not actually file formal charges...

This is escalation. Faced with criminal charges for "inciting racial
hatred" or with enraged customers if they block access to web servers in
the U.S., what will AOL do? Try to block by URL?

-Declan

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February 2, 1996

      BERLIN (AP) -- Prosecutors trying to keep Germans from reading
neo-Nazi propaganda on the Internet have notified America Online Inc.
that it may be charged with inciting racial hatred.

      Last week, prosecutors served similar notice to another
U.S.-based computer on-line service, CompuServe Inc. of Columbus,
Ohio, and T-Online, a division of the German phone company.

[...publishing neo-Nazi lit is illegal...]

      Prosecutors in Mannheim are considering bringing incitement charges
against the three Internet providers in Germany for allowing access to
material posted on the Internet by Ernst Zuendel, a German neo-Nazi living
in Toronto.

[...easy to create a web site...]

      T-Online, Germany's largest Internet access provider, responded
to the prosecutors' investigations by blocking its 1 million
subscribers from gaining access to the computer in California where
Zuendel had posted his tracts.

      Computer users accused T-Online of overreacting because the
block also prevented them from reaching more than 1,500 other sites on
that part of the network.

      CompuServe, with 4 million subscribers worldwide, including
220,000 in Germany, has not blocked the California server but said it
was working with the prosecutors to find a solution.

      America Online spokesman Ingo Reese in Hamburg said his company
also was happy to work with the prosecutors. The company is ``totally
opposed'' to illegal propaganda, he said, but argued that commercial
on-line companies have as much control over materials posted on the
Internet as telephone companies have over their customers'
conversations.

      America Online, based in Vienna, Va., only began operating in
Germany in December in a joint venture with a German company,
Bertelsmann AG. The joint venture has 40,000 subscribers in Germany;
America Online has 4.5 million customers worldwide.

[...]