When it comes to crackdowns on fan club Web sites, Derek Gorman is the David battling the Sony Music Goliath.

It seems the Internet's lack of respect for geographical borders has finally

hit Sony Music where it hurts -- and the 17-year-old Oasis fan from

Britain may have cast the most damaging stone.

Gorman is the London teenager who used to host the OasisWorld Web

page, and who last week received an email letter from lawyers for Sony

Music U.K. and Creation Records, the band's English label, threatening legal action resulting in fines or imprisonment. The missive ordered him to remove from OasisWorld sound clips of five songs from the band's Be Here Now album, due out Aug. 26 in the U.S. (Aug. 21 in Britain).

What Sony didn't realize is Gorman copied the sound files from the Web site of Sony's own Brazilian division, which has since removed them.

Although he did remove the clips, Gorman is not done yet. He said that he welcomed legal action from Sony. Speaking with bravado worthy of Oasis' Noel and Liam Gallagher, he explained, "I don't think they could do anything in court whatsoever. I'd like to see them take action..."

The proceedings against Gorman are symptomatic of the extraordinary lengths

Sony and Oasis have gone to protect the band's material. For the past

two months, the label has attempted to shroud Be Here Now in secrecy

worthy of FBI files. When, for example, three British radio stations played the single "D'You Know What I Mean" before they were issued official copies, Creation Records (a Sony subsidiary) called police to investigate how the stations obtained the song.

Prior to that, the band's management office sent an email letter to nearly

every Oasis site on the Net, which forecast legal action against fan pages

if they did not remove all copyrighted material (including the photos,

sound clips and the band's logo) or obtain permission to display such

items. Although no litigation is known to have stemmed from the threat,

dozens of sites shut down in its wake, or altered their graphics to only

include material from the band's official site.

Laurence Gilmore, head of the entertainment and intellectual properties

department at the law firm of Hamlin Slowe, which represents Sony U.K.,

said that Gorman's site was in violation of British copyright law. "He was

publishing/performing sound recordings without consent," he said.

Gilmore said that despite the Internet's border-blind nature, Sony Music

Brazil only has the right to distribute Oasis' music within that country,

and that the company does not have the right under its contract to license

clips to Webmasters such as Gorman.

Meanwhile, Gorman claims he's done nothing wrong. "The clips were on their site, Sony's site, already. They were very short clips, and in the copyright

laws, there's a loophole that says you can use it for 'fair use.' It's

for fair use, not making money or anything. And I haven't made a penny off

my site, so they can't do anything, I don't believe."

But Sony already has. Although Gorman's OasisWorld was hosted by the

Clearlight Internet service provider, 1,500 fans a day visited the site

through a link Gorman maintained at a domain bearing his own name. Under

pressure from Sony, Easynet, the provider of Gorman's domain, revoked his

page, despite the fact that, according to Gorman, no Oasis sound files were

kept on any Easynet server.

As the worldwide explosion of the Internet continues, big business and law

have found it difficult to keep pace with savvy Net users such as Gorman. In a related case, the entire record industry is battling enterprising computer users who are using new computer sound technology to trade entire CD quality songs over the Net.

For the time being, however, copyright laws written for the non-cyber world

still apply, according to Shari Steele, an attorney for the Web freedom

advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. After Oasis' management

sent its letter about copyrighted materials, Steele said, "Sound files,

pictures and even lyrics belong to the folks who created them, or the folks

who have been given ownership rights in them."

Thus, even if Sony itself posts Oasis sound files, it can still refuse others the right to do the same.

Gilmore said that Sony's action against Gorman was just one piece of a

larger effort to crack down on the unauthorized use of Oasis material.

Included in the letter to Gorman was a copy of an injunction issued against

Steven Pockett, a webmaster charging to make dummies of an advance copy of Be Here Now that he had obtained.

Pockett was ordered to turn over his copy of the album and reveal the

source from which he received it, as well as the number of copies he made,

and the names and addresses of recipients of those copies. Although

Gilmore refused to discuss Sony's further legal proceedings, citing their

unfinished state, he said one action "may well be" litigation to determine

who leaked Be Here Now to Pockett and perhaps others.

Jack Martin, founder of the Oasis Webmasters for Internet Freedom, wondered

if Sony would have taken the same action with Gorman had Be Here Now already been released. "I don't see how this is very much different than getting a sound clip off the official page of 'Don't Look Back in Anger' or

'Wonderwall' and putting it up, except for the fact that the album hasn't

been released yet. But it's already on the Internet for free through an

official agent of the band."

After Gorman received Sony's letter ordering him to remove the Be Here

Now sound clips, he spoke to lawyers at Hamlin Slowe offices and signed

an agreement they drew up. "It said I would never sell, make, copy, etc.

anything to do with Oasis," Gorman said.

But if, under pressure from Sony, his service provider Easynet refuses to

reinstate his Gorman-named domain, the 17-year-old vowed to continue to use

the Net to his advantage. He said he'll provide links on his existing page

to other Web sites with Be Here Nowsound samples.

"There's nothing saying that I can't do that," Gorman said.