Source: ZDNet.
Germany's internal security agency called on media giant Bertelsmann Tuesday to help stop its online song swap partner Napster from being used to exchange music by extreme right-wing bands. |
``Napster is a particular challenge because with it, everyone has access to skinhead and Nazi music with its incitement to hatred and its appalling anti-Semitic content,'' said Ruediger Hesse, an agency spokesman in the state of Lower Saxony.
Given the difficulty of tracing the origin of music exchanged over the Internet, online service providers had a responsibility to prevent abuse of their platforms, he said.
``I can only appeal to Bertelsmann's sense of responsibility. They will have to look at content,'' he said.
Andreas Schmidt, head of the Bertelsmann eCommerce Group, the unit that handles the German media giant's alliance with Napster, condemned the use of the platform for the exchange of Nazi music but said the company was powerless to prevent it.
Music on the Napster network is not stored on a central computer but on the computers of more than 40 million users,'' he said in a statement.
Bertelsmann spokesman Frank Sarfeld said users swapping Nazi music on the platform broke Napster rules and could be excluded, which opened up one avenue of possible cooperation with the authorities. But this would depend on the user being detected.
``Of course it's an unsatisfactory situation. But the basic principle of the Internet is that every user can remain anonymous,'' he said.
Normally i am against shutting of users from Napster, but nazi music blerrgh terminate that account!
