by John Perry Barlow

About the author: John Perry Barlow is a cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that promotes awareness of and supports litigation on issues of civil liberties and computer networks.

Two weeks ago, a prosecutor in Munich managed, almost casually, to strike a global blow against freedom of expression. Though he is a person of such obscurity that most of the accounts I’ve read of this incident didn’t even mention his name, he has been able to constrict the information flow for some 4 million people in 140 countries.

He did this merely by telling CompuServe, the world’s second largest online- service provider, that it was breaking Bavarian law by giving Germans access to Usenet discussion groups believed to include explicit sexuality. A strangely terrified CompuServe responded by...