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Mr. Staehle soon discovered that his virtual supermarket might be permanently closed, too. When he called Verio to ask why his entire network had been unplugged instead of the sole offending site, he said, a Verio lawyer told him that the Thing had violated its policies repeatedly and that its contract would be terminated.

Verio had shut down part of the Thing once before. In 1999 the online toy retailer eToys.com asked a California court to stop an online arts group from using its longtime Web address etoy.com. The Electronic Disturbance Theater, a Thing client, staged a virtual protest by overloading the retailer's site with traffic during the holiday season. Verio blocked access to one of the Thing's computers until the protest site's owners agreed to take it offline.

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These two episodes may give Verio enough cause to bump the Thing from the Internet. If so Verio would appear to be a surprising censor. In January the company earned praise from Internet-rights supporters when it refused to grant a request by the Motion Picture Association of America to shut down a Web site containing DVD-copying software.

Mr. Staehle said he had no knowledge of the Yes Men site. "I am not in the business of policing my clients," he said. "I am just a carrier."

Although some Thing customers pursue a radical political agenda, most do not. Even RTMark.com was included in the Internet-art section of the 2000 Whitney Biennial exhibition.

One might assume that museums and other cultural organizations could provide a safe haven for challenging works. But they are just as susceptible to legal threats and technical restrictions. For instance, in May the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York was forced to remove a surveillance-theme artwork from the Internet after its service provider said it violated its policies.

Mr. Staehle said he was considering several plans that would keep the Thing alive. While he is confident that he will find another pipeline provider, he said, he is worried that customers will abandon the Thing during the transition, financially ruining it.

The Thing is one of the oldest advocates of online culture. Mr. Staehle, who moved to New York from his native Germany in 1976, started the Thing in 1991 as an electronic bulletin board where artists could exchange ideas about how the new medium would affect the arts. The electronic forum continues at bbs.thing
.net, where artists post projects and review works.

Charles Guarino, Artforum's associate publisher, said that should the Thing vanish, "it would be a terrible loss." But he noted that the Thing's customers would simply find new, if less sympathetic, Internet service providers. Mr. Guarino said, "Everyone will still continue to exist, probably even the people who got them into all this trouble in the first place." He added, "Poor thing."