The ADL Web site is just one among several that are doing hard battle with the hate sites. The tradition in American business is self-policing. The First Amendment means the government can't restrict speech, he notes, but private businesses can impose any legal restrictions they feel are warranted. The notion that the major Internet providers are serving as portals to hate has pitted one kind of advocacy group against others. While the anti-bigotry groups want to at least marginalize the hate sites, others, like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, want to keep the Internet as free and open as possible.
Some European countries outlaw certain bigoted material, but the Internet, of course, is borderless.
The ADL, for one, recognizes the immutability of the Constitutional question, and offers another way to shield young people from hateful material. It sells a HateFilter software program that uses the technology of Cyber Patrol to block access to Web sites that advocate racial or ethnic hatred. Of course, it might well be that children whose parents care enough to buy a hate filter would be less susceptible to the influence of hate groups in the first place. But as Metzger and Curtis surely know, it's not just their followers who are watching from the shadows. Right there with them are the anti-hate groups and law enforcement task forces that are using their own powers of persuasion and technology to keep them in check.