Internet sites that market racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazism to a young audience are spreading like wildfire in cyberspace, according to a new study.
Supporters say there is a constitutional right to log on and sound off, but critics argue these webs of hate go far beyond the boundaries of free speech.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which published the study, said the Internet offers terrorists instantaneous recruiting throughout the world.
"You can just put in who you hate in Google (search), push the button and you're going to find out who your potential allies are throughout the world," Cooper said.
Last month 16-year-old Jeff Weise (search) went on a deadly school-shooting spree in Red Lake, Minn., and killed nine people before taking his own life.
The youth had posted more than 30 messages on a neo-Nazi Web site's bulletin board before the incident, a fact that adds fuel in the fight to delete hate sites.
But kicking unwanted sites off the Internet — even if they have hateful messages — is a violation of the First Amendment, said Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA Law School.
"Under the First Amendment, Nazi advocacy, communist advocacy — all sorts of such advocacy — is constitutionally protected," Volokh said.
Germany, Canada and France all have regulations that prohibit hate sites. France was embroiled for years in a court fight with Yahoo! (search) over removing Nazi and Ku Klux Klan-related links from the popular search engine's list of results. Yahoo! finally complied.
The Wiesenthal Center applauds Yahoo! and says removing the links was a critical step in fighting hate sites. The center says the private sector must refuse to help racists and bigots, even if the U.S. government cannot.
Click in the video box above for a full report by FOX News' Anita Vogel.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox