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By now it's a cliché: The Internet is changing the way we share information. And because information is power, it also is changing the way we do politics.

The Internet is democracy with a vengeance, in which citizen-activists wield unprecedented power — without the checks and balances of an older, slower way of doing things.

Case in point: the recent flap over online mega-bookstores that sell the notorious anti-Semitic slander "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

A handful of e-mails from angry Jews quickly turned into a tidal wave. Successive generations of mailings became more threatening, less accurate.

The effort was swift and potent. Ultimately, it may have influenced the decision by the errant booksellers to change the way they marketed the book.

But it also undercut a process for doing battle in such situations that calibrates and measures the Jewish response. It was powerful, but anarchic and ultimately unaccountable.

Nobody knows exactly how it began, but this much is clear. Last month, several e-mails started circulating on the Net, pointing out that barnesandnoble.com was selling the "Protocols" and — adding insult to injury — categorizing it as "Judaica."

By that standard, "Mein Kampf" could be sold as a Jewish classic.

Some of the initial e-mails were sober and balanced, expressing concern about the misrepresentation of the book but also making it clear that censorship is not the answer.

But the rhetoric quickly escalated. More damaging, the e-mailed warnings became less and less accurate as they were forwarded to new recipients in wholesale lots.

Meanwhile, the e-mail activists had discovered that amazon.com, the other big online bookseller, was also offering the anti-Semitic work.

The tone of the e-mail complaints grew shriller still and their claims more exaggerated — including the assertion that amazon.com had "favorably reviewed" the book. In reality, the listing included a few inane reader reviews from obvious anti-Semites, as well a puffy publisher-supplied review.

This put mainstream Jewish defense agencies in a bind.

Clearly, there was a problem here. There was plenty of evidence that the book was being misrepresented in the online bookstores in a way that could lead prospective buyers to think it was a legitimate analysis, not the scurrilous fake that it is.

Under normal circumstances, groups such as the Anti-Defamation League would quietly approach the companies with the implicit threat that if negotiations failed, they would make a public stink.

At the same time, their strategic calculations would factor in other variables, including constitutional questions and community relations implications.

But on the Internet, there isn't time for such niceties.

Suddenly, concerned individuals — self-appointed, instant Jewish leaders — have the ability to get their message out on a vast scale, without geographical or financial limits. It's as cheap to send 1,000 e-mails as it is to send one.

In the "Protocols" battle, the fight was led by anonymous individuals, some well meaning but none with a shred of accountability.

The ADL is accountable to its lay leaders, and when it errs, it is accountable to the Jewish community as a whole. An individual starting an e-mail boycott is accountable to no one.

Likewise, the ADL will pay the price if it picks unnecessary fights — or if it shies away from ones it should wade into. The individual cyber warrior will not.

Jewish defense organizations, for all their faults, have hard-won credibility; the cyber warriors depend on the medium itself to provide a veneer of legitimacy and rely on their anonymity to protect them if their efforts backfire.

In the end, barnesandnoble.com responded by posting a number of reader reviews castigating the "Protocols," and a statement from ADL describing its place in the hate literature cosmos.

Amazon.com now has a "special note" attached to its listing for the "Protocols," stating that the book is "one of the most infamous, and tragically influential, examples of racist propaganda ever written."

But it also blasts the mostly anonymous Jewish activists who quickly turned a legitimate complaint into an example of a "hoax e-mail," in amazon.com's words.

There's the danger — that legitimate complaints, handled without care, calibration or accountability, can spin out of control in the hyper-connected world of cyberspace.

James D. Besser is a Washington-based correspondent who has been writing about Jewish Web sites since the early 1990s. His columns alternate with those of Mark Mietkiewicz. Besser can be reached at [email protected]