During his appeal hearing, Felix Somm, 36, was sentenced in May 1998 to a two-year suspended jail term in connection with the publication of child pornography on Web sites and chat rooms hosted by Internet service provider CompuServe. Somm was not held fully responsible by Judge Laszlo Ember, the Agence France-Press reported Monday.
Judge Ember told the France-Press that there "could no longer be any question" of holding Somm fully responsible and that it was unfortunate there had only been a partial testimony by representatives from CompuServe's U.S. headquarters, which is now owned by America Online. This marked the first time in Germany that an ISP had been held responsible for the content of Web sites or discussions in chat rooms, the France-Press said.
At Somm's initial hearing, prosecutors had argued that CompuServe's U.S. headquarters had the power to screen out such material, but defense lawyers denied the company was capable of doing this in Germany. After an expert testified, the prosecutors decided the German branch of CompuServe wasn't able to filter the pornographic material from its Web sites and chat rooms.
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