Australian Jews win landmark web case

Reuters, Sep. 17, 2002
http://www.reuters.co.uk/

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia’s Jewish community has won a landmark court case when a judge ruled a website that Adelaide Institute website within the next seven days.

The offending material denied the deaths of millions of Jews during the Nazi era and said Jewish people who were offended by, or challenged Holocaust denials were of limited intelligence.

“The court was satisfied..that the respondent…has published material on the World Wide Web which is reasonably likely, in all of the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate Jewish Australians,” Branson said in the court’s judgement.

The court, sitting in Adelaide, also ordered Toben to issue a written apology to the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Jeremy Jones, who brought the legal action, and to pay the court’s costs.

Toben, said on his website he would appeal the ruling.

A former school teacher, Toben was jailed in Germany in 1999 for seven months on charges of inciting hatred through pamphlets.

However, he was acquitted on charges of doing the same over the Internet after a court said the website was run on computers outside Germany and outside its jurisdiction.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which first ordered Toben to remove the material from his site two years ago, said this was the first Australian court decision on race hate and the Internet.

“This case confirms that, at least for Australian sites, the Internet is subject to the same legal standards as other forms of communications such as print, TV and radio,” acting Race Discrimination Commissioner William Jonas said in a statement.

Jonas said he was aware of other Australian websites that may breach the standards of the Racial Discrimination Act.

“Those who disseminate ideas based on racial superiority or hatred through the Internet in Australia need to take heed of this decision,” he said.

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