August 9, 1999

Internet Sale of Nazi Books in Germany Is Assailed

By AMY HARMON

ontending that the two largest online booksellers are violating German laws against the distribution of hate literature, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has called on Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com to stop selling books like "Mein Kampf" to customers in Germany.

In a letter this month to Germany's minister of justice, the center, an educational group in Los Angeles that monitors anti-Semitism, wrote that "the books ordered by Internet are sent directly to the homes of the customers, thereby circumventing the German laws."

Related Article Northern Ireland Book's Allegations Stir International Libel Fight (August 9, 1999)

With electronic commerce making international transactions far more common, the case raises questions about the extent to which cyberspace merchants are bound by terrestrial laws.

Officials of both online booksellers said that their policy is to sell any book in print to any customer who wants to buy it.

"We are a U.S. store," said Lizzie Allen, an Amazon spokeswoman. "We view this as though a German was on vacation here and went into a physical bookstore and bought the books." She said Amazon's German-based site, www.amazon.de, would not sell any literature that was banned in Germany.

The issue arose when a German-based researcher for the Wiesenthal Center successfully ordered "Mein Kampf" and other banned books from the two online booksellers. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, said he had received confirmation on Friday from a German official that the Justice Ministry intended to investigate. The companies declined to say whether they had received any other German orders for the books.

Liz Young, a spokeswoman for the German-based media giant Bertelsmann AG, which owns an equity stake in Barnesandnoble.com, said that the company was also investigating after receiving a letter from Cooper.

"Our lawyers are looking into the applicable law to this specific question," she said. "We want to give a correct response to the letter."

Such circumstances are expected to arise with greater frequency as more companies market their products online. But Jack Goldsmith, an expert at the University of Chicago Law School, said plenty of precedents exist. When a merchant ships a product, he said, the merchant is obligated to uphold the laws of the jurisdiction to which it is being sent.

"The questions are the same but the answers are more important, because transnational transactions are going to be more important," Goldsmith said. "It used to be consumer transactions across borders were rare unless someone was traveling abroad."

Mueller von der Heidi, a lawyer for the 7,000-member German Booksellers and Publishers Association, said he believed that it was illegal for Internet companies to ship Nazi propaganda into Germany.

"It's not permitted to distribute 'Mein Kampf' in Germany," he said. "Our members have long been forbidden to distribute this book."

In a letter to Amazon, Cooper also objected to the Amazon.com feature that recommends books to customers based on the selections of other customers who purchased a given title.

The researcher who ordered "Mein Kampf" from Amazon received e-mail suggesting that he might also like "White Power," by the American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, for instance.

"We never had to worry before that the Book of the Month Club was going to take the lie of the century and make it a selection," Cooper said. "That's what Amazon has done, and to me it raises serious alarm bells."

---

Amy Harmon at amy@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

---