From news.eff.org!soprano.clari.net!e.news Mon Aug 19 13:07:55 1996 Path: news.eff.org!soprano.clari.net!e.news Comment: O:4.1H; Distribution: cl-3,cl-edu,cl-4 Approved: editor@clarinet.com From: C-reuters@clari.net (Reuters) Newsgroups: clari.tw.new_media,clari.world.europe.germany Subject: Germans probe dismemberment photos on Internet Keywords: urgent Organization: Copyright 1996 by Reuters Message-ID: Lines: 25 Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 4:30:15 PDT Expires: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 4:30:15 PDT ACategory: international Slugword: GERMANY-INTERNET Threadword: germany Priority: important ANPA: Wc: 209/0; Id: a0621; Src: reut; Sel: reute; Adate: 08-14-N.A Xref: news.eff.org clari.tw.new_media:2221 clari.world.europe.germany:904 BONN, Aug 14 (Reuter) - German authorities are investigating a series of 12 grisly photos posted on the Internet that show a man and a women sawing the head and other body parts off a corpse, Munich police said on Wednesday. The pictures were fed into the worldwide computer network from Hawaii, a police spokesman said, but investigators were still unsure who distributed them. According to police, text accompanying the pictures said they showed a crime committed in the United States in the early 1980s. The couple was supposedly convicted for shooting and dismembering the victim. ``We are checking with Interpol to see if it is true that this had to do with a murder case from 1980,'' he said. Child-welfare advocates and other lobby groups have been pressing the German government to counter the proliferation of smut and violence on the Internet. But German Justice Minister Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig has said planned legislation will make clear companies who provide access to the Internet are not expected to police cyberspace on the lookout for pornography or neo-Nazi propaganda. Technology experts point out that the Internet's decentralised and international nature poses huge problems for would-be regulators and censors.