Exploding hate on the web

"Data stored on the Internet will explode by a factor of 1,000 in the next five years -- a proliferation that will make it impossible for governments to control the flow of hate material, an international conference was told yesterday.

"There is no way any government can control the amount of hate material that is going to be out there," said Michael Nelson, Washington-based director of IBM's internet technology and strategy systems and technology group development. "The Net is going to be as versatile and ubiquitous as paper."

Dr. Nelson's warning to the conference, organized by B'nai Brith Canada, encapsulated a view held by one faction of those in attendance. This faction espoused a belief that a wide array of strategies will be necessary to fill the government void and curb the spread of virulently racist websites and blogs on an estimated 500 billion existing websites.

An opposing faction, while not denying the need for creative solutions, stressed the need for police, governments and human-rights tribunalsto remain front-and-centre in the fight to detect and prosecute Internet hate mongers."

So reports The Globe and Mail here. Whatever one concludes from the article the web will undoubtably explode in the next years - and bring with it a multitude of issues not the least of them "using" the internet to disseminate hate, bile and revising history [witness the Holocaust revisionists].

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