Scenario
For Debate
A graduate student at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, Lewis McCarthy, was among those who choose to protect
freedom of speech on the Internet by fighting the censorship levied against the
web site of Ernst Zuendel. Officials at
U Mass requested that McCarthy remove the materials that he posted on the
school's computer system.
McCarthy said he posted Zuendel's materials to
protest attempts by the German government to censor the Internet. McCarthy
commented that he is not a neo-Nazi, just an advocate for absolute freedom of
speech. McCarthy's actions were a
response to Deutsche Telekom's decision to prohibit its customers from viewing
world-wide-web pages stored at Web Communications in California, the company
that Ernst Zuendel uses to post his materials.
The
censorship of the Internet by Deutsche Telekom resulted in protests from
computer-users worldwide. Free-speech advocates around the world began creating
"mirror-sites," sites which "mirror" or duplicate the material
from another site. These free-speech supporters had hoped to put Zuendel's
material on so many web sites that Germany would have to cut itself off from
the Internet entirely or give up their censorship efforts. McCarthy joined the
cause by posting Zuendel's materials to the computer at the University of
Massachusetts.
David
Stemple, chairman of the university's computer science department, explained
that the university's policy prohibits use of public resources for political
purposes. According to Stemple it was
not Zuendel's page per se that was the political issue, "The issue was
freedom of speech being denied by the German government ... a political action
in respect to a foreign government."
The
Associated Press 02/02/96
Last updated 2000/07/31