Berlin - The German hate-rock band Landser has been outlawed since March 2005, its members sentenced in court and their song lyrics banned. But it's still possible to see and hear them on the internet site YouTube. By keying in the word Landser, a web surfer will find 472 films of the extreme right-wing group, most of them music videos that often containing photos of Adolf Hitler, swastikas and other Nazi regalia.
Words such as "We are Proud to Wear the Swastika" or "Our Idols are the Waffen-SS" - the Nazis' elite fighting force - are harmless when compared to other lyrics that are anti-Semitic, racist and glorify war.
Videos by Landser - the name means "foot soldier" in German - are just a small collection of extreme right-wing propaganda available on the world wide web.
Some of the material contains links to other internet pages such as the those of Blood and Honour, a racist organization that its banned in Germany.
Until recently the anti-Semitic Nazi World War II film, Jud Suess, was available on YouTube, a subsidiary of the US search engine Google, which is enormously popular with young people in Germany.
Experts know this and German law has made provisions to counter the threat. The tele-media law states that internet providers have to remove pages with racially inflammatory or unconstitutional propaganda as soon as they are made aware of them.
This is the theory. But things are different in practice. For this reason, the Central Council of Jews in Germany is considering filing a criminal complaint against the US concern.
One of those who looks into internet trends posing a danger to young people is Thomas Guenter, a lawyer with the state-run jugendschutz.net (youth protection net).
Guenter says he has often alerted YouTube to extremist right-wing videos on their website. "When we last checked, the provider had removed only about one-third of the videos we criticized," he said.
Asked if that was in response to his complaint, Guenter replied: "I don't know. We don't get any feedback from YouTube."
Another problem is that sites which are outlawed in Germany often reappear a short time later on foreign servers. This makes it difficult for German legal authorities, whose power to stop such propaganda ends at the German border.
Police have to rely on the help of their colleagues abroad when investigating the activities of suspect foreign internet servers. They also lack the resources to conduct a thorough search of the millions of pages on the web.
Guenter says providers should be required to ensure that once a film has been taken down from a website it should not appear again. Google says it is working on a filter programme towards this goal.
Up till now, the market leader has relied on a voluntary control by users, who can alert the operator to material promoting pornography, racial hatred or war by clicking the English icon "Flag as Inappropriate."
At present there is no German equivalent. "YouTube is an American company, but we are cooperating with the German authorities," says Kay Oberbeck, Google's spokesman for Germany.
When necessary, the company will provide the IP address of a customer if the police request such information, he added.
But this is might not be enough, as user "AlJoKo21" pointed out a in a discussion forum when he said: "YouTube does not pay enough attention to rightist propaganda material."
Oberbeck had said Tuesday that his company would take action and delete all the Landser clips. They could still be viewed on Wednesday.
