CHARACTER ASSASSINATION AT WARP SPEED

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

Matt Drudge, the Liz Smith of cyberspace, reported in his E-mail dispatch last week that a White House aide is a wife beater. Bad news for the Drudgester: he now says the story, which initially went out to more than 60,000 readers, is untrue. So he retracted it and apologized. O.K.?

No-K., says William McDaniel, the aide's lawyer, who says he's preparing to sue the Wagging Tongue of the Web for libel. "People who use the Internet feel they're not subject to the same constraints as everyone else," McDaniel says. A lawsuit will "deter Drudge and people like him from doing this in the future."

The Net lets anyone with a computer and a modem compete mouse to mouse with mainstream media. (Drudge's publishing empire is the living room of his Hollywood apartment.) But many of the Net's would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins are journalistic novices and wouldn't think, say, to ask court or police sources to confirm a rumor. Character assassination, like everything else online, happens at warp speed, which is why some say there's no way to correct damage to one's reputation--or protect one's privacy.

It's a point that has recently been driven home to a number of celebrity victims of Web-smear, such as designer Tommy Hilfiger, falsely accused of racism; film star Brad Pitt, who can be seen online--and nude--in unauthorized photos of his buff vacation; and writer Kurt Vonnegut, who found himself depicted, if not unflatteringly, as the author of a commencement speech he never made. "Once a piece of information is out there, it's nearly impossible to obliterate," says Christine Varney, a former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission and a privacy crusader.

Nonsense, says Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who argues that because all of us have equal access to it, the Net relegates libel and slander suits to the slag heap of history. "People can say bad things on the Net and circulate them to a million of their closest friends," says Godwin. "So what? The Net's a level playing field." In other words, if someone defames you, you can get online and fight right back. After all, Godwin points out, the Net has been around in one form or another for decades, and no libel suits of the Aide-v.-Drudge sort have made it to court. Yet.

--By Joshua Quittner