A CHAT ROOM OF THEIR OWN

...One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that it permits a knowledgeable person with a few thousand dollars to become nationally known—as Matt Drudge has recently done...

...That day is here...

...If all cyberspace gives you is an Godwin e-mail address . . . What most of us will want in the future, I think, is a place where we're known and accepted on the basis of what Martin Luther King Jr...

...evidence that the need is real and that the Internet can fill it the experience of a handful of chat groups: The Well on the West Coast, for example, and Echo in New York...

...And he cites as David Frum is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...called 'the content of our character.'" Actually, what most of us want is a cheap and convenient way to send letters and buy books and compact discs...

...Godwin's views are important primarily because the rules of the Internet are being laid down before most Americans have more than a glancing involvement with it...

...And in his newly published Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age, Godwin speaks for these old-timers...

...The cultists hate that...

...But then, if we had listened to them, the nation's newest conduit for goods, ideas, and services would be merely a high-tech background for endless games of Dungeons and Dragons...

...You can, of course, create a Web site of your own in reply...

...But what kind of solution is that...

...But what is wrong is when they begin to insist that the rules that govern the Internet should be written to suit themselves alone...

...Think, for example, of the difficulties that Web sites have in charging money for their services: The fanatical objection of the Internet cultists to paying for anything—an objection originating in the hippy-utopian culture of the Web's first days—has helped to shape the expectations of tens of millions of Americans about what is fair and reasonable on-line business practice...

...It's equally ominous for users of intellectual property: If the next edition of Microsoft Windows can be effortlessly pirated and distributed, Microsoft will take a lot less trouble to produce it—to the loss of those of us who would have been willing to pay for it...

...Back when the Internet was new, its aficionados used to worry about a corporate takeover of the Internet— the day when the New York Times and Disney and Charles Schwab would displace the electronic newsletters and chat groups as the main attractions on the World Wide Web...

...But the Internet has also given such individuals a power to damage reputations once possessed only by the largest media enterprises...

...This is a situation in which small, interested factions have an influence far greater than their numbers warrant...

...That's ominous for the creators of intellectual property...

...Godwin looks at this with insouciance: "The greatest interest at stake is not that of the copyright holders or that of the database companies—it's the interest in a free and open society of ensuring that everyone has access to the facts, regardless of their economic backgrounds...

...Godwin can't see this because of his hobbyist's blinkers: When he thinks of libel on the Internet, he thinks not of a defamatory remark on a Web site, but of a chat-group "flame"—a nasty remark that will be seen only by the people in a discussion group and can be answered by a posting to the same group...

...Over the next few years, American courts and legislatures will have to decide a series of important questions about the regulation of the Internet, and Godwin's book is a brief for the interests of his fellow hobbyists...

...This would not seem to warrant tilting American libel law even further in its already remarkably pro-defendant direction...

...Godwin approaches libel law in the same spirit...

...For most computer-literate people, the Internet is a device for communicating rapidly and cheaply, finding information, and—increasingly— buying and selling...

...Suppose, however, that you are defamed by an AP story posted to the Yahoo Web site...

...But for a die-hard band of early users, the Internet is not a thing like a phone or a TV, but a place like a bar or a coffee shop...

...But surely the Net, which has the power to empower everyone to answer injurious false statements, can change all that...

...Your site will never attract the traffic of the Yahoo...

...Only for a handful of really odd people does the Internet represent an escape from the loneliness of the modern condition...

...Libel law exists, he says, because a defamed person has no other way to repair his reputation...

...The Internet, for instance, makes it easy to appropriate and distribute intellectual property...

...The Net is not merely a hobby or a game (or, worse, an addiction), but instead an opportunity to meet a very real need—the desire for community," Godwin explains...

...Sad to say, the answer is yes—and not any old anybody, but Michael Godwin, a lawyer at the Foundation, a San Dinding, Francisco think tank devoted to on line issues...

...site, and the defamation will go unanswered and unpunished...

...For most of us, that's good news: Quite a lot of people are interested in what the Times and Disney and Charles Schwab have to offer...

...And yet, that's just what Godwin does argue...

...Now that the Internet is an integral part of American society, it must be governed by the same rules that govern mass communication elsewhere...

...There's nothing wrong with that, of course: Really odd people are entitled to their obsessions, just like the rest of us...