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August 13, 1999/1 Elul 5759, Vol. 51, No.45
Germany probes illegal Internet book sales
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Germany is investigating whether the two largest Internet booksellers are illegally shipping Nazi and racist literature to customers in Germany.
A spokesman for the German Justice Ministry confirmed it is looking into a complaint by the Simon Wiesenthal Center that one of its German researchers had successfully ordered Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and the anti-Semitic "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Both books are prohibited in Germany and are not sold by the German affiliate of amazon.com. However, a German customer can easily circumvent the law by ordering directly from U.S.-based sites and having the books sent to a home address.
Amazon.com followed up its confirmation of orders for Hitler's book and "The Protocols" by suggesting additional reading, including "White Power" by George Lincoln Rockwell, the late leader of the American Nazi Party.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, initiated the complaint through letters to German Justice Minister Herta Daubler-Gmelin and to the CEOs of Amazon.com and of Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate that owns 50 percent of barnesandnoble.com. Bertelsmann recently appointed an international commission to investigate the company's activities during the Nazi era.
The initial reaction of the two online booksellers was to reaffirm their policies of selling any book in print to any customer, The New York Times reported Monday, Aug. 9. However, a news report from Berlin quoted Bertelsmann spokesman Markus Payer as saying his company was taking the matter very seriously.
"There is a conflict between the freedom of expression on the one hand and our duty to protect society from these totalitarian influences," Payer said.
When a merchant ships a product, he is obligated to uphold the laws of the jurisdiction to which it is being sent, Jack Goldsmith of the University of Chicago Law School told The New York Times. Beyond the question of whether it's legal, Cooper observed, "Just because something is technologically possible, it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
"We also have a generational gap here," he added. "The online search engines are being developed by Generation X people and even younger ones. I wonder if they pay any attention to their social responsibilities."
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