Are the German governments tactics for barring extremist material on the Internet realistic?
5:03 pm PST 21 Jan 97—The German government, never shy about expressing its disdain for left- and right-wing radicals inside its borders, has taken to combing the Internet for signs of extremist activity. But Germany’s effort to stop the distribution of terrorist manuals and Nazi propaganda is like pointing a fire hose at a beehive—instead of quashing the bees, it only scatters them, and makes them more insistent. Last week, German authorities filed charges against a member of the communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS, Angela Marquardt, for linking to the banned left-wing magazine Radikal from her homepage, causing Net activists to anticipate another incident like that last September, when several German ISPs temporarily blocked Radikal’s server, XS4All. In response, the magazine was mirrored on more than 50 Web sites around the world. The decision to prosecute for linking to Radikal will probably bring yet another escalation of events, where this censored magazine will become a
