Nannies again will be in the news in 1998 -- cyber-nannies, that is. The kind who want to shush free expression on the freewheeling, free-speaking World Wide Web.

The fan home page is one Internet child that is being sent to its room without supper.

Andrea Berman, a 26-year-old aerospace engineer from Houston, can attest to a chilling effect in this area.

A few years ago, she hammered together a Web site in her spare time dedicated to Elvis Presley.

It didn't take long for the king's estate to send her a letter demanding she remove all copyright material from the site -- which were postcards, pictures and soundbites. She complied immediately.

Since then, she has received e-mails from other folks who have been discouraged from putting up Web pages devoted to people or characters in entertainment. The Simpsons and Winnie the Pooh are two recent examples she cites.

"Now that big business is taking it over, it's kind of forcing out the little person," Berman said. "If this snowballs, people will be afraid to put up Web pages."

Wired magazine reported a new term for this trend in its November 1997 issue: foxed.

"Used to describe a Web site threatened with legal action for copyright infringement, the term was coined after 20th Century Fox sent cease-and-desist letters to unofficial X-Files and Simpsons Web sites," the magazine said.

Berman said fans erect sites for love, not cold profit.

"They said I was taking potential business away. I thought I was doing the opposite. giving them potential business."

Paul Jones, director of the MetaLab at the University of North Carolina, says this kind of chilling effect on the Web is comparable to "the taming of the West."

 1. Dynamic HTML
 2. New Domains
 3. Metered Bandwidth
 4. Web-TV
 5. Rich Ads
 6. The Big Chill
 7. Middlemen
 8. Digital Detente
 9. Cybercommerce
10. Web standards

 1. Push
 2. Windows CE
 3. 56K
 4. Cable Modem
 5. Web-TV
 6. Net Magazines
 7. Apple's Demise
 8. Mac Clones
 9. E-Cash
10. Comdex '96