The online auction site eBay has banned the sale of items associated with Nazi Germany, hate groups and murderers, in response to pressure from anti-hate activists around the world.
The ban followed a similar move by Internet portal Yahoo!, which removed memorabilia associated with hate groups earlier this year after a storm of controversy and a legal battle.
The decision also came a day after eBay removed from auction the sale of a piece of door, allegedly the one an unarmed African immigrant was standing near when he was shot and killed by New York police in 1999.
In a statement, eBay said it already had policies that prohibit many hate-related items from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and neo-Nazis, but eBay had allowed the sale of related goods if they claimed to be at least 50-years old.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had lobbied for the change in policy, praised the decision, saying eBay had become the largest online retailer for Nazi material.
The Internet did not invent this niche market but it certainly has mainstreamed it, Rabbi Cooper said.
The company is also banning items such as personal letters, artwork or novelty goods bearing the names or images of notorious criminals out of respect for members of the victims' families, the company said.
Material to be banned in that category included drawings and paintings by convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy, several of which were still posted for sale on eBay yeserday.
Mr Arthur Rosenblatt, a Florida-based collector, who has sold thousands of items related to crime through eBay over the past three years, said the change in policy was a mistaken attempt to enforce a particular view.
I'm Jewish and I think if people want to sell Nazi memorabilia on eBay, that's their business, he said.
Mr Rosenblatt, who is currently offering the helmet used in the 1927 executions of Niccola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti on eBay, said the notice seemed directed at him and a few other collectors by singling out capital punishment items among the banned material.
"That's just silliness. That's American history," he said.