In early February the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began considering whether the activities of non-profits, such as linking to a political website, violate the 501 (c) (3) section of the tax code. This development threatens both free speech and development of the Net.

Among other things, the IRS wants to know if linking to a politician's website is 'campaign intervention' -- going so far as to imply that a 501(c)(3) merely linking to another organization which itself links to campaign sites might be a violation. What does this mean to the average web user interested in a cause championed by a non-profit?

Let us suppose you feel passionately about a cause. You decide to investigate it on the Net, going immediately to the site of its best-known advocacy group. It may be the pro-choice NARAL or the pro-life Operation Rescue; it may be the American Civil Liberties Union or the Air Force Association. If the sites you find are uniformly bereft of links, feedback, chat forums, or any of the other interactive or hypertextual features that make the Internet more than text displayed on a screen, you might as well be reading a pamphlet.

The sites of all non-profits could be reduced to thin husks of what they could and should be, solely to be certain that they do not cross the infinitely thin and hazy line between permissible activism and impermissible partisanship.

Given that a few clicks can lead from anywhere to anywhere, asking a charitable organization to make sure it doesn't link to any site which might contain forbidden political advocacy, or even links to some, is tantamount to asking the organization to forego all links or to spend an inordinate amount of time policing links.

The Web is, by nature, interconnected, open, and pseudonymous. The proposed IRS regulations place an unconscionable burden on non-profits seeking to take full advantage of the Net. Being interconnected means charitable sites might unknowingly link to partisan political sites. Being open means discussion or chat areas might contain calls to political action.

And being pseudonymous means you can't easily tell your friends from your enemies. It's this last which offers an interesting, and unethical, means of ideological warfare if the IRS's proposed regulations come to fruition.

Is there a non-profit you dislike? Get together with some friends, go to their message board, or subscribe to their mailing list, and begin a slow, subtle campaign of plugging a candidate or party who favors the issue the non-profit advocates. Start a vigorous discussion. Odds are good the intern assigned to moderate the list or board, full of youthful passion, will jump in and make a statement or two agreeing with the advocacy.

Then send the logs to the IRS, claim the group is clandestinely promoting partisan activity, and get their 501 status yanked. This dirty trickery can be performed in total safety, from the comfort of your own living room.

For the moment, the IRS has been denied access to the profits flowing from e-business. It is now seeking to control content instead of commerce. Congress is morally obliged to take a stand against this threat to free speech and the Internet.

*Lizard has been a unique member of the online community since late 1988 and frequently writes on a variety of tech-related issues. For inquiries about this publication, please contact Sonia Arrison, Director of the Center for Freedom & Technology.