It is a grotesque paradox that the neo-Hungarist website refers to the American soldiers fighting in Iraq as terrorists, sometimes even adding that "the US is an Israeli colony." They claim the US leadership is in the hands of an "American government that has been occupied by Zionist supremacists." At the same time, they expect this Zionist government to guarantee them complete freedom.

All extremist thinking leads logically to these kinds of contradictions. Clearly, the US legal order is not founded on a Zionist conspiracy and nor can it be accused of befriending Nazis.

Rather, the government guarantees allows all views to be aired in a spirit of neutrality, whether those views are Holocaust denial, praise for Pol Pot, bigoted fundamentalist religion, the mocking of religion, sexist rap songs or a pornographic and vulgar novella. The country's constitution and its media laws make it impossible to sanction or forbid the kinds of views that would in Germany, Austria or even France be punishable. But a liberal philosophy of law does not mean that everything is permitted, as even these cybernazis will soon discover.

It's not clear why Softlayer, the hosting company, shut down kuruc.info. It's likely that the website has violated some American laws. Personal freedoms may be broad, but they can have consequences.

Citizens may perhaps have more rights, but infractions are regarded more seriously. Both by precedent and legislation, the US punishes those who violate its laws more severely.

For example, although it vigorously upholds the freedom of opinion, the US justice system is very draconian when it comes to violations of privacy. The private sphere is a fundamental principle, one which kuruc.info violated when it published the addresses and telephone numbers of people it didn't like. US laws are draconian when it comes to harassment. And harassment is most certainly what it is when kuruc.info makes available to its readers the address of people it doesn't like and encourages its readers to phone the person in question.

And there are consequences for libel and slander. Kuruc.info makes the wildest claims about people it dislikes. If the news portal were a printed newspaper, its publisher would long ago have gone bankrupt - its owners would have had to sell all their assets to make compensation payments long ago.

It's no coincidence that other right-wing papers like Magyar Forum, Hunnia or Demokrata have never stooped to the level of kuruc.info.

Because if the publisher can be tracked down, then it can be made to pay up. But even internet criminals can be caught, whether they are paedophiles, gangsters laundering money or virtual terrorists calling for pogroms. It's just harder to find people online.

There's no doubt that kuruc.info will reappear on another server in a few weeks. But it would be wrong to blame foreign service providers who have no chance of checking the content of a Hungarian website. We aren't in the favour of illiberal laws restricting the freedom of opinion. But the law has to be applied, people must be called to account. Investigating organised crime on the internet is the job of the National Investigative Office and the National Security Office.

They should be looking for the perpetrators, arresting them, and placing them before a court. Because extremist opinions are not a crime, but inciting extremist actions is.

László Tamás Papp