ctor. Is the moderator of an email discussion list to be held responsible for the contributions of subscribers? Most likely. The President of the Internet Society has indicated that the ISOC has drafted guidelines for behavior on the net but this will probably not deter anti-Semitic and racist groups because it is a form of free speech. As the Internet becomes even more commercial there will probably be less forms of offensive material because these large corporations will censor anything that may offend. The best way to think about the Internet is to think of it as a huge river. If you think of it that way, preventing access to newsgroups is easy because all that is required is to cut out the link coming into an organization, thought this could have the effect of cutting off other organizations further down the so-called river, unless secondary feeds, or tributaries, can be arranged. That is not a complete solution, though, because it is possible to obtain newsgroup feeds from other sources. Material from the Internet is much more difficult to control because of the nature of the net. It is largely for this reason that governments will have to fall back on legislation over possession, rather than distribution. The only other solution, right now, is for organizations to licences sites and then have the servers use their power to exert control over the content or the space and then licences would be withdrawn as a means of punishment or censorship. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has spoken out against a proposed government ban on sexually explicit material on the Internet, calling it "clearly a violation of free speech and...a violation of the rights of adults to communicate with each other." Even with Gingrich's support for free speech there was an overwhelming vote in early June, the Senate amended a telecommunications bill to make it a criminal offense to place "indecent" material on-line anywhere children might view it. After the Oklaho...
