In German criminal law, Volksverhetzung (literally "agitation of the populace") is a punishable offense under Section 130 of the Strafgesetzbuch (Germany's criminal code) and can lead to up to five years imprisonment. Volksverhetzung is punishable in Germany even if committed abroad and even if committed by non-German citizens. The law bans the incitement of hatred against a segment of the population.
There is perhaps no better example of Volksverhetzung in the German blogosphere than the hate site kreuz.net. The allegedly "Catholic" news Web site (the Roman Catholic Church in Germany has condemned it) routinely engages in Holocaust denial, hatred against Jews, and virulent homophobia - all illegal under German law as Volksverhetzung.
How do the anonymous German operators get away with flagrantly breaking the law? By cleverly hiding behind the freedom of speech protections in the US constitution. As I wrote about earlier, the owners/operators have set up the site in the US. An American company (Global Net Access in Atlanta) hosts the site. But it is still unclear to me that merely hosting in the US protects the operators of the site, since the content is in German and is written for consumption in Germany.
An amendment to the German Criminal Code in 2000 (BGB 1 StR 184/00) would seem to deal precisely with situations such as kreuz.net:
1) Stellt ein Ausländer von ihm verfaßte Äußerungen, die den Tatbestand der Volksverhetzung im Sinne des § 130 Abs. 1 oder des § 130 Abs. 3 StGB erfüllen ("Auschwitzlüge"), auf einem ausländischen Server in das Internet, der Internetnutzern in Deutschland zugänglich ist, so tritt ein zum Tatbestand gehörender Erfolg (§ 9 Abs. 1 3. Alternative StGB) im Inland ein, wenn diese Äußerungen konkret zur Friedensstörung im Inland geeignet sind. (BGHSt)
A Gay/Lesbian University Student organization in Trier bas basically come up the same conclusion(pdf):
Es muss
die Plicht der deutschen Politik sein, auf eine Kooperation mit den USA in
dieser
Sache
hinzuarbeiten, damit die Urheber in Deutschland auch zur Rechenschaft gezogen
werden können.(German politicians have the duty to seek cooperation with the US in this matter so that the orginators in German can be dealt with accordingly.)
I agree with the students, and so far have contacted the German Embassy in Washington and the office of German Justice MJnister Brigitte Zypries, but so far have not gotten any response.
I should point out that not everyone agrees that kreuz.net should be shut down or censored. The Distraught Queen writes:
Es täte, denke ich, uns besser, nicht gleich nach dem Staat zu rufen. Besonders dann, wenn es besser wäre, die Verrückten einfach mal machen zu lassen, damit jeder Mensch sehen kann, was im klerikalfaschistischen Universum abgeht. Das bringt für unsere Sache mehr als Zensur. Manchmal ist es eben so dialektisch…(I think it's better not to call in the state. Especially when it's better to let these nutjobs keep doing what they do, so that everyone can see what's going on in the clerical-fascist universe. This will do more for our cause than censure. Sometimes it's just dialectic....)
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