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ADL buys offensive domain names
to curb antisemitism on the Web.

REBECCA ROSEN LUM
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California

San Francisco
he national office of the
Anti-Defamation League
has purchased six antisemit-
ic Web domain names to
prevent hate groups from using them.
ADL officials say that is the only
way to keep such names out of the
hands of those who want to recruit
white supremacists and antisemites
online.
The list of site names ADL bought
includes kike.com, kike.net, "things
with the word like' in the title,"
according to Jonathan Bernstein, exec-
utive director of the ADL Central
Pacific region.
"The opportunity came up for us
to buy, oh, a half a dozen of these
domain names," Bernstein said.
The ADL is not alone in trying to
grab the names before hate groups do.
The NAACP reportedly has been
shopping for potential Internet sites
with anti-black slurs in the titles.
However, Rabbi Abraham Cooper,
associate dean of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles,
said the onus to keep such slurs off
computer screens should not be on
agencies like the ADL or the NAACP,
' but on the companies that form the
backbone of the Internet.
"If you go to these domain reg-
istries — and there are only about 10
companies — you can request lillall-
jews.com' and they'll sign you right
up," he said. "They don't have to dd
that. It's time for these very young
[companies] to grow up and realize
they cannot stand behind the rubric
of the First Amendment. This is not a
free-speech issue. It's a commerce
issue."
He added, "An exchange of ideas?
Yes. But a hate attack is a hate attack
is a hate attack."
The fervor to snap up the rights to
racial and ethnic slurs became public
when a Washington Post reporter dis-T,
covered an unorthodox auction in
progress on eBay, the leading online

auction site headquartered in Menlo
Park, N.J.
An anonymous seller was seeking
big bucks for the rights to the word
n r.
"We're talking about an asking
price of $1 million," Bernstein said.
However, eBay officials stopped the
auction when the story broke.
Advocates for both freedom of
speech and the marketplace applauded
the ADL for buying up the hate
domain names.
"My own feeling is that the World
Wide Web is hierarchical, so taking
out one of these domain names will
have some impact," said Steve
Rothman, assistant director of the
American Jewish Committee's San
Francisco office.
"It is a marketplace, and that's a
good marketplace solution. On the
other hand, the Internet is democratic.
So when you buy a name, you don't
stop the message. You just divert it.
It's a cosmetic solution."
The real solution to curbing hate
speech lies in education, Rothman
said: "I'm sure even the ADL would
say this is only one step."
In fact, ADL officials only bought
the domain names because they were
available at a low price, totaling "less
than $1,000," Bernstein said.
Snapping up offensive names won't
become a major focus of the ADL. It
will continue to pursue those who
would sell Nazi memorabilia online,
Bernstein said.
Officials of eBay have continued to
defend their sale and advertising of
military paraphernalia.
Its recent auction, publicized
online, of Adolf Hitler's telephone
book, his monogrammed bed sheet
and telegrams by Nazi officials
sparked a furor. But Butterfield &
Butterfield, an eBay-owned compa-
ny, cited the practices of numerous
other auction houses and online
traders.
ADI2s Bernstein said, "It's been
pretty difficult to try to get any agree-
ment" with eBay.
"Actually, eBay only got pulled into

this discussion over domain names
because of this one very bizarre auc-
tion," he said, involving Web rights to
the offensive term for African-
American.
According to eBay spokesman
Kevin Pursglove, the seller "suggested
that [his] item would be apropos for a
hate group" when he opened the bid-
ding for the n-word. Specifically, he
claimed the name would be "perfect
for individuals or groups who wish to
promote hate speech."
"That is below the level of behavior
we demand of our users," said
Pursglove, defending the company's
ethical standards.
All eBay members must agree to
abide by company guidelines before
they post an item for sale, he said.
Those guidelines prohibit the sale of
firearms, stolen goods, body parts —
"oh, a long list of things."
However, "it's safe to say [eBay
allows the posting of] other items in
which the word appears as, say, part of
a book title or a record title,"
_ Pursglove said.
With roughly 3 million items for
sale via Internet auction on any given
day, there are simply too many to
review, he said. Customer-service
staffers "are monitoring the site all the
time, but that is largely for illegal
items."
While eBay did take swift action in
the domain name auction, Pursglove
admitted company officials wouldn't
have known about it if they hadn't
been contacted by the Washington
Post.
In a related development, Attorney
General Janet Reno introduced her
vision for a super agency to police the
Internet on Monday. She spoke to an
audience of several hundred before the
National Association of Attorneys
General at Stanford (Calif.)
University.
LawNet would include a data bank
of forensic information that could be
shared by local, state and federal law
enforcement agencies to stop comput-
er-related crimes, including hate
crime. ❑

