FREE SPEECH FOR THE NET

• Share

(3 of 3)

In the meantime, local prosecutors will have to grapple with how to apply existing obscenity laws to the new frontier of cyberspace. As spelled out by previous Supreme Court rulings, those laws use a three-pronged standard to test for obscenity: Does the material depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way? Does it lack artistic merit? And does it violate community standards?

That last question puts the globe-spanning Net into direct conflict with local law enforcement. A private computer bulletin-board operator in California has been successfully prosecuted in Tennessee for making obscene material available to a postal inspector in Memphis. The Memphis jury ruled that the material violated local community standards, even though it might have been found acceptable in California or in the "virtual community" of cyberspace. "The question of community standards hasn't been adequately solved in any medium," says Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe. Bianca, it seems, is not yet out of the woods.

--Reported by Viveca Novak/Washington and Christopher Stamper/New York