They've scored victories by throwing racist and anti-Semitic messages off commercial online services like Prodigy. But Black and other racists surf freely on the noncommercial Internet. An online ad last year for a free video turned out to be a 30-minute propaganda piece claiming that the gas chambers at Auschwitz never existed. Black says he's protected by current law and by waivers that place the responsibility for information on his bulletin board on 200 or so people who tap into his service each week. The Clinton administration is studying ways to restrict the outpouring of hate on the Internet, Gore said last week.
Censorship goes against the freewheeling roots of the Internet.
While McCray finds Black's messages reprehensible, he doesn't know how they could be stopped legally. Cypergate has threatened to cut off subscribers who inspire outraged readers to deluge the company with letters. But Black boasts any resourceful hacker can get back on the Internet. In person, Black is soft spoken, intelligent, appearing the benign househusband in a white polo shirt, khakis and knockabout walking shoes. While he's left the KKK since, it's only a change of tactics, he says, not of ideology.