Bill Owens was quietly filing paperwork last May when he felt the distinct presence of another person's hand fondling the front of his pants. Startled, he spun on his heels and found a female co-worker, who, giggling and playfully calling him "Buck Hunter," made a rather lewd sexual offer.

Sure, there are some guys who'd kill for this sort of attention, but Owens--happily married for 13 years--is not one of them. "She grabbed me in front of God and everybody," recalls Owens, who had been a star salesman at the Home Depot in Salisbury, Md., for nearly nine months.

The incident at Home Depot might have been a simple case of girl-on-guy sexual harassment but for the fact that "Buck Hunter" is an alias Owens uses on the pay-per-view pornographic Website he and his wife have maintained since late 1999. On the site, which nets as much as $6,000 a month, Owens and his beloved bare themselves completely in caught-in-the-act photographs and real-time streaming video.

Owens had never mentioned his Web business at work, but it didn't take him long to figure out that his bawdy co-worker had somehow located the site. He thought it might happen someday, and expected jeers and chuckles. But not this.

He reported the incident immediately. His boss, however--the very same boss who had given Owens the nickname "Money Machine" for his slick salesmanship--was not supportive. "He said he could protect me from the physical stuff, but he can't control what comes out of people's mouths," explains Owens, who suspects his boss' attitude was influenced by his knowledge of Owens' electronic exhibitionism.

Within days, Owens was pressured to quit his job. He now has a pending sexual harassment lawsuit against Home Depot. "What someone does on their own time shouldn't reflect on their job," Owens says. "No one said anything to the girl. I think the situation could have been addressed differently."

Workers have never been immune from on-the-job retribution for their off-the-clock private activities. In the past, it was entirely possible to be branded a rabble-rouser if your boss happened to see a newspaper photo of you being arrested at an antiwar rally or a gay-rights march.

But the Internet adds new size and scope to those random situations. A small but growing number of U.S. households--3.3 million in 1999--build and tinker with personal Websites in their free time, according to Forrester Research. And as more Americans use the Web as a platform for personal expression--sometimes creating Websites that espouse objectionable but perfectly legal sexual or political views--employers are becoming more jittery about those off-duty activities.

The big worry, of course, is that an employee's Website might reflect poorly on the company she works for, possibly affecting business dealings, sales, or worse, exposing the company to all manner of lawsuits.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) doesn't tabulate cases of Web-related discrimination complaints, but officials estimate that only a small fraction of the 80,000 filings it handles annually have anything to do with the Net.

Still, as the phenomenon grows, it raises interesting questions. Namely: Can anyone expect private boundaries on a global public medium such as the Internet? And more importantly, how much, if any, control should companies have over their employees' personal lives?

Lawyers say the courts have yet to make any clear judgments on these matters. "As with everything else online, it's new and there's very little guidance for employers," says Mike Overly, an intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Los Angeles. "As a result, these personal Websites are a great source of frustration for them."

A handful of cases that might offer guidance are wending their way through the courts. In possibly the highest-profile dispute thus far, George and Tracy Miller filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC in December 1999 after they were fired from their nursing positions at a Scottsdale, Ariz., hospital. They contend their dismissal was retaliation for their online porn site. Even though the Millers never mentioned their real names or their employer on the site, the hospital claims the couple's presence created a hostile and offensive work environment.

"This is a completely recreational activity that has nothing to do with work," insists the Millers' lawyer, Larry Walters of Wasserman & Walters in Winter Park, Fla. "People should be free to do whatever they want unless their employer can directly point to material losses in revenues."

Corporate defenses

Walters, whose practice has made its name defending employees who've been fired for participation in sex-themed Websites (see "They'll Stand Up for Your Rights," p32), also represents Bill Owens in his case against Home Depot. The Millers' case is pending.

In the meantime, companies are seeking legal help. Mike Overly, author of E-Policy: How to Develop Computer, E-mail, and Internet Guidelines to Protect Your Company and Its Assets, says he receives at least three or four phone calls each week from corporate managers who've discovered a poor-taste Website maintained by an employee.

Those personal Web venues range from porn pages and hate sites to forums that host gripe sessions for company workers. Often corporations have one thing in mind: "They want to know how--or whether--they can force an employee to dismantle his site," says Overly.

No such luck. Sites containing content protected by First Amendment rights are legal. "We almost always advise them to do nothing. In the end, they may spend more money trying to prevent this conduct and develop tremendous adverse publicity," notes Overly. In his book, he suggests that court-shy companies set a clear, concise, written policy forbidding employees from using workplace computers to access or maintain their personal Websites.

Even without legal precedent to direct them, employers still have overwhelming legal advantages. If a company can't quash an employee's personal site, there's little to prevent a manager from simply firing a worker who's moonlighting as a Web nudist.

The reason: Most workers in the United States toil under a legal principle known as "employment at will." It essentially means companies can fire employees at any time, without explanation. In order to offer workers some protection, 29 states have laws that prevent employers from firing an employee for use of "legal products" outside the workplace.

Indeed, workers have few legal options, unless they can prove discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

That explains the strange legal contortions in Paul LaViolette's complaint against the U.S. Department of Commerce. LaViolette, dismissed in 1999 from his job as an examiner of MRI patents for the art unit of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, says his superiors objected to information he presented on his personal Website.

LaViolette used his site to promote the First International Conference on Future Energy, a forum for discussing alternative energy technologies, and provided a link to the Website of the Integrity Research Institute, which organized the event. LaViolette alleges that a rival organization, the American Physical Society, lobbied the Patent Office to have him fired as part of a campaign to discredit the Integrity Research Institute.

"My views didn't affect my performance, so the PTO has no business saying or doing anything," says LaViolette. He argues that his scientific theories are akin to religious beliefs and should therefore be protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Commerce Department, which oversees the Patent Office, is still reviewing the case.

Some have argued that with cases such as Owens', the Millers', and LaViolette's becoming increasingly common, the EEOC should broaden its definition of protected parties as a way to limit discrimination based on recreational activities and political views. Federal laws that redefine the boundaries between home and work could reduce corporate liability for things workers do and say in their free time.

Developments in the Owens case could signal which way the EEOC is headed. In late September, it granted Owens permission to pursue his sexual harassment case against Home Depot in federal court.

In the meantime, it seems clear that judges and attorneys need to be increasingly aware of the nuances the Net can add to cases of harassment in the workplace.