Compuserve Restores Sexual News Groups

Arguing that control of the Internet should be decided by individuals rather than governments, Compuserve Inc., one of the largest on-line services, said Tuesday it would restore worldwide access to most of the 200 sex-related computer news groups that it had banned last year at the suggestion of German prosecutors.

The announcement comes as a number of countries - including the United States - have moved to restrict the availability of sexual material over computer networks.

Last week, President Clinton signed a bill into law that makes it a crime to make indecent material available to children over computer networks. As civil liberties groups contest that new law, on-line companies like Compuserve are proposing another solution: that technology can tailor notions of decency to individual computer users.