German prosecutors and politicians are pushing harder than officials in other Western democracies to govern the seemingly ungovernable reaches of cyberspace. They have pursued individuals like Ms. Marquardt, they have tried to block access to other distributors of material they consider obscene, violent or a danger to society, they have assigned police who surf the Net looking for outlaw sites and they are pressing for a law that commercial online services fear could land their executives in jail. So are sites on the World Wide Web that offer swastikas and other celebrations of Hitler's Third Reich. Those efforts are now sparking protests from services that do business here, including America Online and Compuserve, which worry about being prosecuted over things they cannot control. Just last month, prosecutors in Munich indicted the head of CompuServe's German subsidiary on charges of aiding in the distribution of pornography and violent computer games.
Industry has the liberty to move to Ireland, Denmark and Holland.
If Germans are not up to speed, it makes no difference to the customers. Legal experts said the situation here was just the beginning of a broader wrestling match between national governments and the nationless Internet. The Internet gives rise to jurisdictional problems that never happened before. But Germany is pushing the issues further. German officials have been threatening for months to file charges against more than a dozen Internet access providers, including the German subsidiary of UUNet Technologies, because they failed to block access to a Dutch Internet site called XS4All.