Net effect of CDA unclear worldwide

 
special feature Like all online entrepreneurs, Sebastien Socchard knew there would be risks in starting his business. But he hadn't counted on serving time in jail.

"We're just the operators, like France Telecom, which puts its telephone lines in the hands of its clients," the manager of World-Net, an Internet access provider based in Paris, said in an interview with conservative newspaper Le Figaro after his arrest on charges of allowing child pornography to be distributed over his network.

Socchard, it is now clear, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he had only been in business about 250 kilometers to the east, for example, he might not have been arrested at all.

Such is the fickle nature of law in cyberspace, where a citizen of reputedly libidinous France might stand a better chance of avoiding pornography charges under newly revised policies in Germany, its more conservative neighbor. And his odds in the United States would be even more of a question mark, depending on the outcome of the current challenge to the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in federal court in Philadelphia.

In classic U.S.-centric fashion, many Americans are under the impression that the verdict in that trial will draw the legal Internet parameters for the rest of the world. But the resulting law could serve only to create even more confusion in the international legal arena by spawning more rules for other countries to dispute.

"There's no way that's clear. That's the big story," said William Giles, a spokesman for CompuServe, the second-largest online service and veteran of international disputes. "It's a huge task just in the United States, much less when you go outside U.S. boundaries. This is a very diverse planet with very different cultures and different legal systems."

Industry analysts, Silicon Valley executives, cyberspace libertarians, and international diplomats all agree that conflicts among countries over online regulation will inevitably arise as Internet usage continues to boom. An estimated 36 percent of all Web sites are created outside the United States.

What no one knows, however, is how these disputes will be resolved--or if they can be at all.

Updated: 4:39 AM PDT