The British have been battling Internet porn for years, but a ruling from the summer has privacy advocated even more skittish - a landmark ruling that the content of American Web sites could be subject to British jurisdiction.
"This is a free speech issue and a privacy issue," says Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties UK director Yaman Akdeniz. "The message the police, courts, and government are sending is, if you are a U.K. citizen, you won't be able to sell pornography because anything you sell could be considered obscene."
Britain's Obscene Publications Act of 1959, which bans distributing porn for profit, was amended five years ago to include computer-related porn. Akdeniz says British law is too far behind American law on obscenity issues.
"An erect penis would be obscene in the UK," he says. "So that would mean that most of the stuff on the Internet itself would be considered obscene."
