Law enforcement officials from Germany to Minnesota are nosing around the Internet and getting results. Congress wants to regulate smut, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center wants to erase hate speech. If there is any theme in recent headlines about the First Amendment in cyberspace, it is that the days when anything goes on the Internet are over.
Government is very interested.
Making sure that interest does not intrude on the First Amendment has been tricky, and the battle is far from over. Fitting the new wine into the old legal bottles will take time-and sometimes will be impossible. One of the most difficult aspects of establishing a legal framework for thinking about cyberspace is jurisdiction. The flap over Compuserve bulletin boards in Germany is a prime example. The threatening words of a German prosecutor in Munich prompted Compuserve to block access to 200 of its newsgroups for all its 4 million subscribers worldwide.