By Ian Traynor in Bonn
In a crucial test case bearing on the policing and freedom of the Internet, the former head of a major online provider went on trial yesterday charged with disseminating child, animal, and violent pornography in cyberspace.\n Arguments on cyber-censorship, commercial pressures, and transnational restrictions on the use of the Internet will feature in the trial of Felix Somm, 34, a Swiss national, former head of the German subsidiary of CompuServe, the Internet provider.\n The Bavarian authorities allege that he "knowingly" facilitated the dissemination of illegal pornographic pictures and could have erected electronic "firewalls" to prevent the spread of criminal material.\n Mr Somm went before the judges in Munich contending that commercial companies selling access to the Internet cannot be held responsible for the contents of material distributed by its subscribers.\n When he was charged last year, Mr Somm warned that CompuServe, with more than 300,000 customers in Germany, would quit the country for France, but he later resigned and returned to Switzerland.\n Cracking down on Internet porn and crusading to regulate what is available via computer screens and telephone lines, the Bavarian police raided CompuServe's Munich offices in December 1995, initiating Europe's first attempt to criminalise an online provider because of information put on the Internet by its clients.\n CompuServe complained, but the then US parent closed access to more than 280 news sites to four million subscribers worldwide, provoking accusations of pointless censorship of electronic communication. The company restored access to all but five sites.\n Expert evidence to the court yesterday by a government adviser supported the defence, saying that it would have been "practically impossible" for CompuServe to control the material. But the official said the parent US company could have banned suspect news groups from using the provider, although they could then have turned to other providers.\n Ulrich Sieber, a law professor, in evidence for the defence, said the state was prosecuting the wrong person. The Bavarian authorities were seeking a "scapegoat because of a lack of national solutions in global cyberspace".\n Professor Sieber has been engaged by the German justice ministry to help combat Internet child pornography. New German multi-media legislation last year ruled that providers could not be held accountable for information put into cyberspace by customers.\n CompuServe and other such companies say they are about as responsible for what is on the web as are phone companies for conversations. The Bavarian government, however, is drafting legislation to make Internet providers accountable for customers' activities.\n Two years ago, prosecutors ordered Deutsche Telekom's T-Online provider to block access in Germany to the website of Ernst Zuendel, a leading German neo-Nazi operating from Toronto, Canada, to restrict access to pro-fascist propaganda illegal in Germany. Deutsche Telekom said it moved voluntarily to block access to Zuendel's site.\n That case highlighted the dilemmas triggered by transnational cyberspace set against national laws, sovereignty, and cultures. Dissemination of neo-Nazi propaganda, for example, is not illegal in the US.\n Professor Sieber, a computers and law expert of Wurzburg university, Bavaria, says neither Mr Somm nor CompuServe has a duty to censor the Internet.\n If found guilty on the child pornography charges, Mr Somm faces five years in jail.
The case continues.
