The number of web sites promoting hate and violence has almost quadrupled in four years, according to a survey published in May by SurfControl. The e-mail filtering company found that between 2000 and 2004 the number of hate and violence sites that it monitors increased from 2,756 to 10,926, or about 300%.
Concern about a growing number of racist and xenophobic attacks, particularly in Europe, led to last week's conference on hate speech, hate crime and the internet. The two-day meeting, which took place in Paris under the aegis of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, concluded on Thursday with the thought that, while no agreement had been reached, at least the issue had now been raised globally
The main discussion of the conference focused on the split between the European and US positions, with the Europeans, most notably France, keen to regulate web sites and the US unwilling to suppress them.
"Today, the internet, like the printing press, can be used to promote unpopular ideas," Stephan Minikes, US Ambassador to the OSCE, told the conference. "However, the United States believes that ultimately the ability of the internet to promote discourse and disseminate ideas is the very solution to - and not a problem in - the fight against racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism."
"Rather than fear the purveyors of hate, let us confront them in the marketplace of free ideas, where the bright light of truth will expose their bigotry and their lies can be unmasked," he added.
The split between Europe and the US on this issue has been raised before - during negotiations for the Cybercrime Convention.
The Convention, which is due to come into force on 1st July, is the first international treaty on criminal offences committed against or with the help of computer networks, but ran into difficulties over clauses relating to the dissemination of racist or xenophobic propaganda via computer networks.
Eventually these had to be separated from the main text in order to avoid alienating the US and are now contained in an Additional Protocol which, once it comes into effect, will require signatory countries to criminalise racist and xenophobic material on the net.