If this week's border-transcending ruling by Germany's highest court proves anything, it's that an enormous distance remains between advocates of a free Internet and watchdogs against racism and hate-mongering.

The court, called the Bundesgerichtshof, issued a ruling on Tuesday that overturned a lower court ruling, and found that German law applies even to foreigners who post content on the Web in other countries -- so long as that content can be accessed by people inside of Germany. Specifically, the court found Australian Holocaust-denier Frederick Tuben guilty of spreading "Auschwitz lies." Tuben, who was born in Germany, uses the website of his Australian-based Adelaide Institute to encourage people in the belief that the Holocaust has no historical basis. International reaction to the ruling differed wildly. Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a leader of Berlin's famed Chaos Computer Club hacker collective and a new Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board member, was blunt in questioning the legitimacy of the ruling. "This German court wants to judge over the whole world in effect," he said. "No one knows what it means. We could easily agree that it seems likely to be a decision made by a judge who does not understand very much." Mueller-Maguhn, something of a celebrity in Germany as a technology visionary, plans to take immediate action. He said he will contact Germany's highest court on Monday morning and invite someone from the court for a debate before Germany's legislature on the ruling - and how it should be applied in the future.