GERMANS DENY COMPUSERVE STRONGARM

A week after CompuServe blocked access to certain sexually explicit newsgroups, German authorities say that company officials decided on their own which newsgroups to ban. German prosecutors denied claims by CompuServe that the government told the firm which newsgroups to block and reiterated that they never explicitly threatened CompuServe with criminal charges if they did not comply. CompuServe last week had blocked access to some 200 newsgroups on Usenet, a portion of the Internet, touching off a storm of speculation that online services might be held accountable anywhere in the world where material available on the service is considered illegal. A CompuServe spokeswoman repeated the company's initial explanation that it was German authorities who drew up the list of offending topics.