Lawyer asks CRTC to block U.S. hate sites
Last Updated: Thursday, August 24, 2006 | 1:03 PM ET
CBC News
Google has closed one of the two U.S.-based websites that an Ottawa lawyer asked the federal broadcast regulator to block from Canadian internet users.
Human rights lawyer Richard Warman says the sites are operated by an American Nazi sympathizer and contain incitements to commit violence against Warman.
He has asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to block access in Canada to the two websites.
The site taken down Wednesday was hosted on Google's Blogger service.
Google spokesman Steven Langdon said Blogger is intended to promote free expression, even of unpopular ideas, but that it cannot be used to advocate violence.
Some of the posts on the websites call for the violent overthrow of the Canadian government and the "extermination" of Canadian Jews.
In his application to the CRTC, Warman said Bill White of Roanoke, Va., urged readers of his websites to "take violent action" against Warman, and even went so far as to post his home address.
In Canada, posting hate material and incitements to violence on a website is a crime.
The CRTC can order internet service providers to temporarily block access of Canadian internet users to specific websites, but must first ask them to do so voluntarily.
The ISPs themselves are not allowed to block access to any site — even ones that promote hatred — without the CRTC's permission.
In June, an Ontario man was brought before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for allegedly posting hate propaganda online.
In 1997, Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel was found responsible by the tribunal of using his website to distribute hate literature. He was deported from Canada to his native Germany, where he is on trial for inciting racial hatred.
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