Act 1. Compuserve Internet Service has closed more than 200 newsgroups (adult and sex-oriented ones) last Friday, Dec. 22.
Act 2. CIS "Feedback" officials first stressed on the Decency Act to explain this decision -- although the CDA is not a law yet.
Act 3. On Dec. 28, CIS released a communique in which it says that "German government officials, as part of an investigation of illegal material on the Internet, ordered CompuServe to do what was necessary with respect to specified newsgroups in order to comply with German law. German authorities are investigating newsgroups and other Internet content that may contain child pornography, other pornographic material illegal for to adults, as well as content that although not illegal for adults is of such an explicit nature that it is illegal for minors."
Act 4. Netizen has learned today that this declaration is partially false. No "German government officials" were implicated in the "order" to block newsgroups access. Some German sources said that, however, it was a Bavarian Police investigation that lead Compuserve-Germany, with its HQ based in Munich (Bavaria), to "cooperate" with Bavarian Police and shut down "indecent" services. No other CIS comments were obtained.
Kurt Jaeger, from the Computer Center of the University of Stuttgart, told Netizen that no jugement were released yet, "no court has decided as of now on that issue. It was a state police investigation, not federal," he said. "It seems the bavarian police came and visited the CIS Germany bureau in Munich and forced them to "cooperate". CIS wanted to shut down newsgroup access for the german users, but it seems it was not able to limit access for US users only (that's my interpretation of the problem ...). The State investigation was confirmed by other reports in the German Computer press.
Ulf Moller, another academic source in Hamburg, added that "The Bavarian police have been shutting down FidoNet BBSs and seized the operators' hardware for some months. As far as I know, none of these cases has been decided by court yet." It seems that in a recent civil case, Ulf added, "a district court has decided that network operators are not responsible for individual articles. In criminal law, many (including the federal ministry for post and telecommunication) believe that the situation is similar, but it has not been ruled by court. It is unclear, in how far ISPs can be held responsible for carrying newsgroups with predominantly illegal contents."
Epilogue. So Compuserve -- Germany is the biggest Western European market, with 150.000 subscribers -- seems to have decided to cut down worldwide usenet groups after a lonely local German investigation. With no court order to justify this.