Ray Van Eng (06/24/97)                               

Increasingly, authorities everywhere are feeling the pain of trying to tighten the grip on the free flow of information on the global Internet.

Recently, the British government attempted to ban the publication of one of its most controversial reports on the Internet originally written in 1990 by the Nottinghamshire County about the investigation of an alleged underage sexual abuse, incest and baby murder case involving 10 adult men and women and 21 children in their immediate family with the use of Satanic rituals and gruesome killing techniques.

The never before published Joint Enquiry Team (JET) report which was highly critical of the British social services department's handling of the investigation was first discovered by three British journalists -- Nick Anning, David Hebditch, and Margaret Jervis -- who decided that it was worth taking the risk to blow the whistle and disseminate it on the Internet earlier this month and have web sites in other countries mirrored the content.

When a 21 year old Canadian student in British Columbia named Jeremy Freeman got the whiff, he though he was being a good netizen and post the report on his web page. As soon as the Nottinghamshire officials found the Canadian site, they sent email warnings to Freeman threatening legal action on the ground that the County owns the copyright to the story.

Freeman complied and took down the page but left a link to a mirror site. The UK feds came back to him again and demanded that the link be canceled or else... Freeman felt he was being bullied but at the same time he was terrified since he neither has the time or money to fight such as case in court, so he erased that link and instead choose to tell his side of the story at his web site.

The three British journalists suffered a similar fate at the hands of their own government and have complied to take down the site. But as far as the Brits are concern, the damage has been done.

So far, Peter Junger, a U.S. professor at the Case Western Reserve University and an attorney himself has refused to yield to the pressure. A full copy of the JET report is still available at his web site. It was reported that more than a dozen other mirror sites have copies of the report.

While Junger acknowledged Notthinghamshire County's copyright to the report, he regarded his action as fair use. He also believes that the Brits has no jurisdiction over him and it was certainly improper for them to go after people like Freeman who merely provide links to the actual report.