Judge Hiller Zobel's decision to use the Internet to satisfy worldwide public interest in his decision in the case of the British au pair, Louise Woodward, was prompted by a suggestion from his son.

Anticipating overwhelming re quests for the ruling, Judge Zobel decided the Internet offered a quick and fair method to distribute his decision to reduce Woodward's second degree murder charge to one of manslaughter.

Ordinarily, the Judge would have filed his decision on paper at the Cambridge courthouse. It would then be copied, at $1.50 a page, for interested parties.

Superior Court decisions have been available on World Wide Web sites in the past, usually several days after the decision was filed. Court officials said this was the first time a Massachusetts judge used the Internet as the primary source for releasing a decision.

The Internet plan was hatched out of necessity. The clerk's office at the courthouse lacks the technology to release the decision in an orderly way to the media.

Judges write their decisions on court-issued laptop computers, so transferring the decision to the Web sites did not involve any complicated technological issues.

At the request of the Judge, officials at Lawyers Weekly, a legal publication which operates a Web site, were contacted. By early afternoon on Tuesday, however, the Lawyers Weekly site was overwhelmed with inquiries from computer users. Several popular sites, including CNN Interactive, further increased traffic by offering its users a link to the Lawyers Weekly site.

By mid-afternoon, most computer users could not access the Lawyers Weekly site. By early evening, court officials decided to add 11 other Web sites as distribution points for the decision. Those sites include those operated by the Boston Globe, the major television networks, the Associated Press, the Press Association of Great Britain, and Court TV.