The Internet ground to a halt as millions of people around the world tried to discover the fate of Louise Woodward yesterday afternoon.
CNN reported that the American Internet service provider suffered a power failure just as Judge Hiller Zobel's ruling was due to go live. After all the publicity surrounding the "first" of an internationally-awaited legal decision being given on the Net, court officials had to resort to paper copies of the judgment.
The judge's message was the most eagerly-awaited email in the Net's history - but it was beaten by leaks to American television networks from court staff several minutes before anything appeared on the Web.
Judge Zobel's decision to publish his ruling on the Internet not only made legal history but also put certain Web sites and email operations under the kind of pressure they have never faced before.
Mirror Web pages - containing identical information, but hosted on different computers - were set up for various Web sites carrying the judgment.
At the Lawyers Weekly, the Web magazine originally chosen by the judge for the job, a message on the site's front page promised servers had been checked to ensure they would cope with demand. It set up mirror sites in Europe and America to cope with the expected surge of Internet traffic.
But when the clock struck three, no updates appeared on the site as thousands of Internet users jammed the lines trying to see it first.
Judge Zobel's emailed judgment was also sent out to several news organisations around the world to ensure that it could be distributed as fast as possible.
His decision could have been a triumph for the Net - but backfired because as a news medium it is still not up to coping with a worldwide audience. So many people wanted to see the news immediately that access to the pages concerned slowed to a snail's pace.
The Woodward story has made a huge impact on the Internet since the trial began. Only the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, has sparked as much cyberspace excitement. Supporters from all over the world set up Web sites and created an electronic yellow ribbon picture for people to download and put on their own Web sites.
Newsgroups, or online discussion boards, have been full of comments from readers either in support of Louise or agreeing with the guilty verdict of the jury.
One Web site, Townonline (http://townonline.com/woodward) carried many angry exchanges between British and American users attacking each other's legal systems.