The US judge in the arms trafficking trial of Viktor Bout expressed worry Wednesday that the ex-Soviet air force officer is so notorious that Googling his name could ruin a juror's impartiality.

Portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the film "Lord of War," targeted by the United Nations, and finally extradited to New York after a US sting operation in Thailand, Bout has his own Wikipedia page and nearly half a million Google search entries.

Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin said that this could be "a major problem" in making sure that the jury trial, which starts October 11, is fair.

"I'm concerned too," she told defense lawyers at a pretrial hearing in New York. "This is an easy case to Google. All you have to do is get the spelling right."

Bout, 44, is alleged to have run a global arms network with his fleet of old Soviet transport planes and a dizzying list of shady contacts across the world's war zones.

The Russian's trial is on the more narrow charges of attempting to sell an arsenal including surface-to-air missiles to Colombia's FARC guerrillas, who in turn allegedly planned to turn the weapons against US aircraft in the cocaine-producing country.

A Google entry of "Viktor Bout" summons about 478,000 entries ranging from a supporters' website, "where the truth is not manipulated," to news headlines like "Viktor Bout's Secrets Frighten the Kremlin."

There are also tens of thousands of images of the mustachioed Russian, who is said to speak multiple languages fluently.

Jurors in all US trials are instructed not to read about the case in newspapers, on the Internet, or even to discuss the trial with friends -- the idea being that they keep an open mind until deliberations.

But Scheindlin said that in the Internet age, that rule was becoming increasingly hard to enforce, noting, "It's a problem now in any high-profile case."

She said she could not sequester the jury for a trial that could last several weeks.

"I can't seize their computers... I can't lock them up," she said.

Defense lawyers asked the judge to make jurors sign an affidavit pledging not to consult the Internet about Bout, while a prosecutor, agreeing that "we do not want the jury to be tainted," said an admonition from the judge would be enough.

Ironing out the final preparations for the trial, Scheindlin ruled on the dozens of questions that will be put to jurors in an attempt to weed out bias against the Russian.

Questions to the jury pool will include details on ties to Russia and Colombia.

Scheindlin also ruled against prosecutors who wanted to show the jury an instant messenger exchange in which Bout and an unidentified correspondent known only as "Think Big" discuss anti-aircraft missiles.

"I have no idea who 'Think Big' is," the judge said.

She did allow introduction as evidence of an email exchange with a contact in Bulgaria in which a weapons deal is mentioned, but said multi-million-dollar weapons invoices attached to the mails would not be shown to the jury.

Last month, Scheindlin dealt prosecutors a blow when she ruled that some of the statements made by Bout during his arrest in the US-Thai sting operation had been coerced with threats and therefore could not be used in the trial.

Defense lawyers argue that Bout never sold weapons, although he may have carried them as part of his air transport activities.

"My position is he never sold arms, he never brokered arms. He is in the air freight business," attorney Albert Dayan told the court Wednesday.

"During the course of that business, judge, in the late 1990s, he did transport arms -- for governments, for factions of governments. We're not disputing that. But he was not an arms dealer."

The chief US Drug Enforcement Agency agent who organized the elaborate sting operation told CBS News in a 2010 interview that the Russian is "one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth."

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