PULLING THE PLUG ON PORN

ANYONE WHO WANTS TO CENSOR THE Internet first has to understand this about the world's largest computer network: there are no borders in cyberspace. In order to restrict local access to a picture, story or idea, you have to block it all over the world.

That's just what happened last week, when prosecutors in Munich asked U.S.-based CompuServe, with 4 million members in 140 countries, to stop letting German subscribers see 200 discussion groups and picture databases that, according to the Bavarian state police, violated German pornography laws. The suspect newsgroups are all part of the freewheeling computer conferencing system called Usenet, which is distributed globally via the Internet. The only way CompuServe could promptly comply with the German request was to pull the plug on the newsgroups throughout its system. As a result, U.S. subscribers who try to reach them will find that their access has been blocked.

It was the most dramatic and far-reaching attempt yet to restrict the free flow of information online. CompuServe says the ban is only temporary, and it is looking for legal and technical ways to get around the problem. Says a spokesman: "It wasn't us deciding what's naughty and nice."

The crackdown, however, sent a chill through the Internet community, which spent much of 1995 fighting what appears to be a losing battle against a U.S. bill that would criminalize "indecent" computer messages. The new restriction confirmed the net's worst fears about what may lie ahead: Germany's little list included sexuality support groups for the handicapped and a bulletin board for homosexuals that has served as a lifeline for thousands of gay youth.