I monitor neo-Nazi and other Internet hate sites in German. A number of these sites actively deny the Holocaust and attract thousands of visitors. Holocaust denial is a crime under German law, punishable by up to four years in prison. How do these sites get away with publishing their poisonous content? Easy, the anonymous owner/operators simply pay to have their sites hosted in the United States.
A couple of years ago the Chicago Tribune wrote about this phenomenon:
Hundreds of foreign-language Web sites – some tied to the Chicago area –are using U.S. servers to dodge laws abroad that prohibit Holocaust denial or racist and anti-Semitic speech. Run by hosts in the United States, they thrive out of reach of prosecutors in Europe, Canada and elsewhere.
One site I follow is a "Catholic" extremist portal kreuz.net, which has close ties to the Pius Brothers sect. Not only do the contributors to this site deny the historical fact of the murder of six million Jews, they also support the persecution of gays and lesbians, and the many anonymous commenters fantasize openly about the assassination of the "Blut- und Homo-Praesident" Barack Obama.
I tracked down the host of kreuz.net to a technology company in Chicago. It turns out that this company has created a profitable niche business in trafficking in hate. Not only were they aware of the premise of kreuz.net but the company is proud that it facilitates anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial sites. In response to my inquiry they wrote back:
We're quite clear about content hosting policies; we comply with US law and otherwise do our best to uphold free speech. Blithely denying the Holocaust, while certainly ignorant and not in line with views of any of our staff, is fully legal here.
The company's CEO even implies on his blogthat hosting hate sites is somehow patriotic, that he is standing for freedom of speech:
With free speech, you need to take the bad with the good; you can't just have the good. Sure, we could restrict certain speech, but then do we truly have free speech? Who is to determine which ideas can be freely expressed and which cannot? What if we were not allowed to speak against our government in times of war or unable to profess a religion just because it was unpopular at the time?
It would appear that this technology company is actively seeking hate sites and profiting from their activities. The executives wrote to me that as long as the sites were not promoting "physical violence" they could publish anything they wanted. The problem is these sites give comfort and support to those who are contemplating physical violence against Jews, gays, women, etc... Yes, they are obeying the laws of the United States and conforming to the First Amendment, but, by making profits from hate, they are - at the very least - extremely unethical.