Mark Cuban's lawyer attacks Facebook over Holocaust denial groups

Mark Cuban's lawyer attacks Facebook over Holocaust denial groups
by Chris Matyszczyk

Mark Cuban's brother and attorney for his companies, Brian, has written to Facebook demanding to know why the social-networking site allows Holocaust denial groups.

In a sustained and persuasive argument in his own blog, the Cuban Revolution, and his Twitter feed, Brian Cuban lays out his objections to five Facebook groups with names such as "Holocaust: A Series of Lies" and "Holohoax."

His opinion is that this is not a First Amendment issue.

"The belief that the First Amendment protects speech in the private social media arena or at your place of employment is a common misconception," he says.

Facebook is able, as a private entity, to choose its own rules with regards to free speech. However, he believes its terms of service very clearly limit the content that can be featured on any Facebook page.

You cannot "upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law."

This is Auschwitz. I have been there. It is undeniably real.
(Credit: CC Lumiere/Flickr)

Although Holocaust denial is not illegal in the US, it is a crime in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Israel, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

To Cuban, any Holocaust denial group is clearly committing an illegal act in those countries. He has therefore written to Facebook asking the company why it permits the five Holocaust denial groups he has found on the site.

He says Facebook has not replied.

According to a tweet he sent Monday, Cuban suspects that Facebook's belief is: "if the countries in which H(olocaust) D(enial) is illegal do not complain, why do anything."

However, last week Facebook saw fit to remove a KKK group from the Isle of Man with 95 members.

So one might think it would have the manpower, legal judgment, and basic humanity to at the very least address the existence of these five groups that appear to have a total of 357 members, some from countries in which Holocaust denial is a crime.

Silence seems a very peculiar response indeed.