FIRE STORM ON THE COMPUTER NETS

When TIME published a cover story on Internet pornography three weeks ago, a certain amount of controversy was to be expected. Computer porn, after all, is a subject that stirs strong passions. So does the question of whether free speech on the Internet should be sharply curtailed, as some Senators and Congressmen have proposed. But the "flame war" that ensued on the computer networks when the story was published soon gave way to a full-blown and highly political conflagration.

The main focus of discontent was a new study, Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway, purportedly by a team of researchers at...