History of the Complaints Bureau (MDI)
The Complaints Bureau for Discrimination on the Internet in the Netherlands (MDI) was founded in March 1997 by the Magenta Foundation. Starting as a volunteer organisation, the MDI is now a fully state-funded (Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Internal Affairs) professional organisation.

The MDI concerns itself with getting discriminatory expressions removed from the Dutch part of the Internet and from Dutch language websites abroad. Based on complaints sent by Internet users, the MDI assesses expressions. If an expression is deemed to be a criminal offence, a so called request to remove is sent to the user where the expression originates. In most cases the expression is removed within 48 hours. If the request is ignored, a complaint is filed directly with the District Attorney responsible for discrimination cases. Prosecution is important to our Bureau, although our first priority is to get the discriminatory expressions removed from the Internet. (Successful) prosecution gives the Complaints Bureau its necessary credibility and deterrent force.

The idea of ‘freedom of speech no matter what’ and the export of the first amendment of the American constitution has an ever increasing group of followers on the Dutch part of the Internet. Where in real life there is some apprehension to make discriminatory statements (in whatever form), on the Internet many don’t hesitate at all. The few convictions we have had in the Netherlands up till now have shocked the Internet community and has put our ‘regular customers’, those who seem to be on Internet only to spread hate, on their guard.

The current situation on the Dutch part of the Internet.
Where formerly the stencilling machine diligently churned, and one had to frequent seedy bookshops and where individuals or small groups of people would send anti-Semitic or Holocaust denying literature to schools, now the Internet has taken over as a cheap and fast means of communicating this kind of expressions to the masses. I need not elaborate on this I think, since a few years reports by (amongst others) the Simon Wiesenthal Centre make it clear that the Internet has become a hotbed of hatred. Apart from the racist expressions and ‘general’ hate, the increase of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial is alarming, especially because the scope for this material is so much larger than it used to be with ‘the old methods’.

Nowadays there are thousands of websites dedicated to (racial) hatred of which hundreds are virulently anti-Semitic or promote holocaust denial. In the Netherlands itself holocaust denial and Anti-Semitism on the Internet is a relatively new category. In the past years there has been the odd anti-Semitic expression that sometimes included Holocaust denial, but there were too few to really attract attention. This has changed since 1998. The number of reported anti-Semitic expressions doubled from 17 to 31 in 1998, tripled to 91 in 1999 and the provisional count for 2000 again shows a sharp increase: 208 complaints about anti-Semitic expressions and 20 about Holocaust Denial on a total of 550 complaints. The amount of complaints about Holocaust Denial has previously been included in the complaints about anti- Semitism but has been counted as a separate category for the year 2000.

Once a year the MDI does a so-called scan of Dutch-language newsgroups. This yearly ‘scanner-research’ was, for the year 2000, done with a focus on anti-Semitism. In total 92.791 postings (newsgroup articles), posted in the period from October 1st, 2000 to October 31st, 2000, in 93 Dutchlanguage newsgroups, were scanned on anti-Semitic or biased expressions. The result was 1532 postings of which 636 were judged as harmless but 896 as strongly Anti-Semitic or biased against the Dutch Jewish community or Jews in general. We think these results are very disturbing. The Internet knows around 300 Dutch-language newsgroups in which monthly about 250.000 messages are posted (placed). A new development are the webforums, in fact newsgroups ‘made easy’ by providing a simple interface on a website. More and more complaints are coming in about those and we will included a number of them in our next ‘scan’.

The Dutch legislation on Discrimination.
Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution prohibits discrimination in General terms. Similar provisions have been included in Dutch Constitutions for a very long time; the current comprehensive formulation dates from the 1983 revision. It reads:
All persons in the Netherlands shall be treated equally in equal circumstances. Discrimination on the ground of religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex or on any other grounds whatsoever shall not be permitted.
The ban on discrimination enshrined in this Article is elaborated in numerous legislative provisions.

Criminal law
The criminal law contains several specific articles defining discrimination and racism as criminal offences. Discrimination is defined as a criminal offence in Article 90 quater of the Criminal Code. In Articles 137 c to g and 429 quater, various acts of racism and discrimination are defined as indictable or summary offences. They include defamation, incitement to hatred, discrimination or violence, and discriminating against people in one’s official capacity, profession or business on the grounds of race, religion, personal belief, sex or sexual orientation. These provisions have been evaluated several times and adjusted accordingly.

Internet, a separate environment?
In the early days of Internet in the Netherlands, 1993/1994, one of the first postings in one of the first Dutch newsgroups was a racist posting. Luckily we were there too and the fight was on. A fight between supporters of freedom of speech grafted on the U.S. model and supporters of the right not to be discriminated against. To the former Internet was a separate environment, a new world were the laws of the physical world were null and void. To them, Internet was -and had to be- an anarchistic free space. The Dutch Internet Providers were of the opinion that they were not responsible for content, they were ‘common-carrier’ , just like phone companies.

The publicity generated by us over the first racism on the Dutch part of the Internet led to questions being asked in parliament and (in the long run) to amendments made on the Dutch law on Computer Criminality. In the years after it was also established that the Dutch law is in force on the Dutch part of the Internet and since the establishment of our Bureau in 1997 the Society of Dutch Internet Providers (NLIP) decided to support the Complaints Bureau, although up till now this is mainly lip-service. The level of liability of Dutch Internet Providers for illegal content on their servers is to be changed shortly, when the amended law on Computer Criminality comes into force. The amendments will make it possible to persecute Providers who do not want to remove illegal material after it has been reported to them. This will make the work of our Bureau much easier. We will however keep a focus on the perpetrator, the Internet user who commits the illegal act itself.

Effectivity
The MDI works together closely with the National Expertise Centre on Discrimination, a department of the Attorney’s Office. By making assessments of complaints about discrimination the Bureau also functions as a filter between the public at large, police and Justice department. The MDI is rather successful in getting discriminatory content removed from the Internet. In 1997, out of 29 illegal expressions the MDI got 27 removed, in 1998 out of 47 illegal expressions 30 were removed, in 1999 out of 178 illegal expressions 158 were removed. A preliminary count for the year 2000 shows 550 complaints, of which about 440 are illegal. Out of these, about 410 were removed after our request to do so. The exact figures will be published in March in our annual report for the year 2000. In 1999, the MDI got two persons, board members of a Dutch right wing party, convicted and in 2000 a Dutch civilian who was notorious for posting high-volume anti-Semite, revisionist and racist expressions on Usenet (the Internet newsgroups) was convicted by a police-court to a fine of 1.500 Dutch guilders or 30 days in jail. On top of this he got another two-week jail sentence with a probation period of two years. More court cases are scheduled for this year. Over the last 3 years, most cases the MDI has handled were about individuals placing expressions on WebPages or in newsgroups (Usenet). The amount of on-line hate originating from extremeright organisations in the Netherlands is rather small.

The MDI gets more and more complaints about Dutch language hate sites which are hosted by Providers abroad. Especially the so-called free Providers in the U.S. like yahoo/geocities. Tripod/Lycos and others are a haven for jurisdiction-shopping extremists, hate groups and racists. The good news is that the free-Providers have changed their policies to meet the ethics of their main customers (U.S. users, advertisers) by banning content which is (partly) not punishable under U.S. law but is unwanted by the customers or seen to be unwanted by the customers and advertisers. The moment they got wise to the fact that most advertisers do not want to be associated with racism, Anti-Semitism or Holocaust Denial, they all changed their Terms of Service.
Nowadays a simple e-mail sent to one of the free-Providers with a complaint about text or images on a site, sometimes provided with a translation into English, is enough to kill a hatesite overnight.

I will show you a few sites and expressions which were removed after we had taken action.

Future
Our Bureau has started to train the ‘In Real Life’ Complaints Bureau’s in the Netherlands in how to use the Internet. The MDI advises companies, institutions, police departments, political parties, local and national governments and governmental bodies abroad on a broad range of issues related to discrimination on the Internet and is preparing to train a number of organisations in EU members states in setting up Complaints Bureau’s for Discrimination on the Internet. The MDI publishes her annual reports in Dutch and English which can be found on the website http://www.meldpunt.nu
We think that racism on the Internet should be fought by a combination of legislation and awareness campaigns, letting NGOs like the MDI and others play a big part. This is the Dutch model and it works rather well. Right now we have 2.3 million Internet users in the Netherlands and the number is still growing. This explains partly the increase in discriminatory websites and expressions.
The other part is: we still do not succeed in getting the message home; no place for discrimination in society, no place for discrimination on the Internet. Sometimes it seems hopeless, especially when confronted with opinions of (young) Internet users:
“it is nonsense to pay money to those Jews, they are wealthy anyway, why do they need to be paid damages”
“Slavery? Did we have slaves then? Those blacks are always trouble and they blame it on the past”
“Hitler was Jewish wasn’t he? And he hated himself so he built that burning oven Auschwitz
or something to burn them all”
“All those Turks are lazy and unemployed, into the sea with those vermin”

International
What we need right now, apart from Complaints bureau’s in other countries, is co-operation on a international level. There are promising developments. During the European Preparatory Conference for the World Conference Against Racism in Strasbourg, October last year, Dutch Minister for Urban Policy and Integration of Ethnic Minorities Roger van Boxtel called for adding a protocol to the Council of Europe’s proposed convention on computer and Internet crime (Crime in Cyberspace). A protocol that defines the distribution of racism, hate speech and racial discrimination on the Internet as a criminal act, making it possible for those parties to the convention that want to counter cyberhate to be able to do so by signing and ratifying that protocol. That still leaves the U.S. as the main problem. Most hate sites are hosted by (commercial) U.S. Providers. There are organisations like the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation who put pressure on Providers to remove hate sites. Sometimes this works, sometimes not.
Sometimes a combination of criminal and civil suits will be successful, like our Bureau plans to do (in co-operation with the Anne Frank Foundation) against one of the most notorious Holocaust Denial sites in the world, Vrij Historisch Onderzoek (European Foundation for Free Historical Research). VHO is a Belgian organisation headed by the infamous Mr. Siegfried Verbeke, but the domain is owned by a publishing company in the United Kingdom and hosted by a provider in the United States. However, since VHO has started to provide translations of material into Dutch on their website, we think we have a case.

The success which LICRA, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism had against the ‘nazi clubs’ on yahoo and the auction of nazi ‘antiques’, replicated memento’s and propaganda material strengthen our cause and will to fight. For us this proves what we already knew: if you lean hard enough on a provider by making bad publicity, the economics of allowing racists on you diskspace are all of a sudden not so attractive anymore. Sadly, there are numerous commercial Internet Providers in the U.S. who have no problem at all hosting the most terrible material, some Providers are in fact owned by extreme right-wing organisations or individuals, for example Yoderanium. We think that economic pressure brought on by the Council of Europe might be a way to get the United States to take measures against the hosting of ‘foreign’ hate by U.S. Internet Providers. Of course we are not the only ones presented with the problem of hate-sites hosted abroad. The number of German-language hate-sites more than doubled during the year 2000, from 330 in 1999 to 800 in 2000. Some 90 percent of the sites are made available by Providers in the United States.

After this round of U.S. badgering which I hope my U.S. colleagues will forgive me I have to make it clear that other countries, also European countries, present problems too. What we need to do is sit down and try to figure those problems out in a way that will benefit the fight against on-line hate in all countries. Thank you all for your attention.