First, they had to overcome the tremendous goodwill that we could count on from our thousands of satisfied free users, and from large parts of the media, which still saw us as a quixotic organization struggling to do good against established interests.

The battle appropriately began on the Internet. Overnight, dozens of messages began appearing on popular Internet bulletin boards across the country warning that the IIA and IDT were engaged in a secret program of large-scale credit card fraud. This was, of course, ridiculous, and I decided to ignore it. But it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Soon messages were posted on the Net claiming that we were in business to carry E-mail for the Colombian drug cartels. Still other postings said that we had plans to introduce a computer virus into the system of any user who wouldn’t use our toll-free lines. We hadn’t yet been accused of kidnapping or murder, but who knew what they’d come up with next?

We were like the O.J. trial, only for computer nerds. No detail about our company was too small to escape the attention of someone or other. One lunatic went so far as to go to the home of an IDT employee who maintained an Internet link and report on all the comings and goings there. This included a detailed description of the employee’s wife and kids, along with his home address, so that any nut in Net land could just show up there. This was too much; we had to respond.

Many IIA users had already been responding to these vicious postings to tell of their own good experiences with us. But they didn’t have all the facts that we did. We pointed out that more than 80 percent of our usage still came in as regular long-distance calls, for which we received no money. Moreover, we let people know that the toll-free and regular dial-up lines all fed into the same modems, so that there was no priority given to paying accounts. Furthermore, we documented just how much the typical user actually saved when we did bill their credit cards. We even described our revenue stream and profit centers just so people would know that we were not a front for others. Slowly but surely, the tide of postings began to shift, first a little, and then overwhelmingly, in our favor. The libelous postings stopped, and we seemed to have won the battle. But our good name had been dragged through the mud, and I was disillusioned. I had seen the Internet’s dark side.

I was particularly troubled by this, because I have always held freedom of speech as one of the highest ideals known to humankind. Sure, I’d often heard and read that freedom needs to go hand in hand with responsibility, and I’ve even repeated the thought myself. But now I understood firsthand how important this concept really is.

The American media, and people in general, had until now, in my experience, been very responsible about making public pronouncements. Group libel and character assassination are very rare in the American media. Perhaps it is the fear of lawsuits that buttresses this responsibility, or perhaps the press is aware of the important responsibility it has been given in our society, and acts accordingly. Even the Joseph McCarthy era seemed to me to have been an aberration that passed quickly and was fortunately behind us.