Internet

internet

[′in·tər‚net] (communications) A system of local area networks that are joined together by a common communications protocol.

Internet

[′in·tər‚net] (computer science) A worldwide system of interconnected computer networks, communicating by means of TCP/IP and associated protocols.

Internet

the global, distributed packet-switching network that interconnects computers. The Internet was initially developed by the US Defense Department in the 1970s as a safeguard against the failure of military communications systems during a nuclear attack. By the mid-1980s Internet technology was being appropriated by educational and research institutions as well as businesses and government organizations where it was widely viewed as an opportunity to document and access information. The Internet is now present in millions of organizations and private households around the globe and is essentially available to anyone with access to a personal computer and a telephone line. Its wide variety of uses range from what are regarded as legitimate applications such as advertising, shopping, library catalogues, newspaper archives, and financial pages, to its use for recreational or illicit 'S urfing’: ‘chat-rooms’, gossip, and eroticism. Because of its use by individuals and groups wanting to broadcast and access illicit or illegal material, the Internet is often regarded as providing a democratic forum for underground subcultures and organizations to communicate their desires, beliefs, and political agendas. These democratizing implications also extend to the economy with consumers being able to access the best (cheapest) prices and products available. However, there is the issue that these possibilities remain limited to those with access to the technology and knowledge. The immense amount of information available on the Internet and the know-how required to make effective use of the technology restrict the applications for the average 'S urfer’ who may spend hours moving between trivial sites. Alongside possibilities for global networking runs the danger that information-rich countries will monopolize both the technology and know-how required to distribute information and exclude dispossessed nations from the advantages available to those with access to the World Wide Web. See also CYBERCULTURE, INFORMATION SOCIETY, NETWORK SOCIETY.

Internet

A worldwide system of interconnected computer networks. The origins of the Internet can be traced to the creation of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) as a network of computers under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense in 1969. Today, the Internet connects millions of computers around the world in a nonhierarchical manner unprecedented in the history of communications. The Internet is a product of the convergence of media, computers, and telecommunications. It is not merely a technological development but the product of social and political processes, involving both the academic world and the government (the Department of Defense). From its origins in a nonindustrial, noncorporate environment and in a purely scientific culture, it has quickly diffused into the world of commerce.

The Internet is a combination of several media technologies and an electronic version of newspapers, magazines, books, catalogs, bulletin boards, and much more. This versatility gives the Internet its power.

Technological features

The Internet's technological success depends on its principal communication tools, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). They are referred to frequently as TCP/IP. A protocol is an agreed-upon set of conventions that defines the rules of communication. TCP breaks down and reassembles packets, whereas IP is responsible for ensuring that the packets are sent to the right destination.

Data travels across the Internet through several levels of networks until it reaches its destination. E-mail messages arrive at the mail server (similar to the local post office) from a remote personal computer connected by a modem, or a node on a local-area network. From the server, the messages pass through a router, a special-purpose computer ensuring that each message is sent to its correct destination. A message may pass through several networks to reach its destination. Each network has its own router that determines how best to move the message closer to its destination, taking into account the traffic on the network. A message passes from one network to the next, until it arrives at the destination network, from where it can be sent to the recipient, who has a mailbox on that network. See Electronic mail, Local-area networks, Wide-area networks

TCP/IP

TCP/IP is a set of protocols developed to allow cooperating computers to share resources across the networks. The TCP/IP establishes the standards and rules by which messages are sent through the networks. The most important traditional TCP/IP services are file transfer, remote login, and mail transfer.

The file transfer protocol (FTP) allows a user on any computer to get files from another computer, or to send files to another computer. Security is handled by requiring the user to specify a user name and password for the other computer.

The network terminal protocol (TELNET) allows a user to log in on any other computer on the network. The user starts a remote session by specifying a computer to connect to. From that time until the end of the session, anything the user types is sent to the other computer.

Mail transfer allows a user to send messages to users on other computers. Originally, people tended to use only one or two specific computers. They would maintain “mail files” on those machines. The computer mail system is simply a way for a user to add a message to another user's mail file.

Other services have also become important: resource sharing, diskless workstations, computer conferencing, transaction processing, security, multimedia access, and directory services.

TCP is responsible for breaking up the message into datagrams, reassembling the datagrams at the other end, resending anything that gets lost, and putting things back in the right order. IP is responsible for routing individual datagrams. The datagrams are individually identified by a unique sequence number to facilitate reassembly in the correct order. The whole process of transmission is done through the use of routers. Routing is the process by which two communication stations find and use the optimum path across any network of any complexity. Routers must support fragmentation, the ability to subdivide received information into smaller units where this is required to match the underlying network technology. Routers operate by recognizing that a particular network number relates to a specific area within the interconnected networks. They keep track of the numbers throughout the entire process.

Domain Name System

The addressing system on the Internet generates IP addresses, which are usually indicated by numbers such as 128.201.86.290. Since such numbers are difficult to remember, a user-friendly system has been created known as the Domain Name System (DNS). This system provides the mnemonic equivalent of a numeric IP address and further ensures that every site on the Internet has a unique address. For example, an Internet address might appear as . If this address is accessed through a Web browser, it is referred to as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), and the full URL will appear as .

The Domain Name System divides the Internet into a series of component networks called domains that enable e-mail (and other files) to be sent across the entire Internet. Each site attached to the Internet belongs to one of the domains. Universities, for example, belong to the “edu” domain. Other domains are gov (government), com (commercial organizations), mil (military), net (network service providers), and org (nonprofit organizations).

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (WWW) is based on technology called hypertext. The Web may be thought of as a very large subset of the Internet, consisting of hypertext and hypermedia documents. A hypertext document is a document that has a reference (or link) to another hypertext document, which may be on the same computer or in a different computer that may be located anywhere in the world. Hypermedia is a similar concept except that it provides links to graphic, sound, and video files in addition to text files.

In order for the Web to work, every client must be able to display every document from any server. This is accomplished by imposing a set of standards known as a protocol to govern the way that data are transmitted across the Web. Thus data travel from client to server and back through a protocol known as the HyperText Transfer Protocol (http). In order to access the documents that are transmitted through this protocol, a special program known as a browser is required, which browses the Web.

Commerce on the Internet

Commerce on the Internet is known by a few other names, such as e-business, Etailing (electronic retailing), and e-commerce. The strengths of e-business depend on the strengths of the Internet. Internet commerce is divided into two major segments, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). In each are some companies that have started their businesses on the Internet, and others that have existed previously and are now transitioning into the Internet world. Some products and services, such as books, compact disks (CDs), computer software, and airline tickets, seem to be particularly suited for online business.

Internet

(networking)(Note: capital "I"). The Internet is the largestinternet (with a small "i") in the world. It is a threelevel hierarchy composed of backbone networks, mid-level networks, and stub networks. These include commercial(.com or .co), university (.ac or .edu) and other researchnetworks (.org, .net) and military (.mil) networks and spanmany different physical networks around the world with variousprotocols, chiefly the Internet Protocol.

Until the advent of the World-Wide Web in 1990, the Internetwas almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporateresearch departments and was accessed mostly via command line interfaces such as telnet and FTP. Since then ithas grown to become an almost-ubiquitous aspect of moderninformation systems, becoming highly commercial and a widelyaccepted medium for all sort of customer relations such asadvertising, brand building, and online sales and services.Its original spirit of cooperation and freedom have, to agreat extent, survived this explosive transformation with theresult that the vast majority of information available on theInternet is free of charge.

While the web (primarily in the form of HTML and HTTP) isthe best known aspect of the Internet, there are many otherprotocols in use, supporting applications such aselectronic mail, Usenet, chat, remote login, and file transfer.

There were 20,242 unique commercial domains registered withInterNIC in September 1994, 10% more than in August 1994.In 1996 there were over 100 Internet access providers in theUS and a few in the UK (e.g. the BBC Networking Club,Demon, PIPEX).

There are several bodies associated with the running of theInternet, including the Internet Architecture Board, theInternet Assigned Numbers Authority, the Internet Engineering and Planning Group, Internet Engineering Steering Group, and the Internet Society.

See also NYsernet, EUNet.

The Internet Index -statistics about the Internet.

internet

(networking)(Note: not capitalised) Any set of networksinterconnected with routers. The Internet is the biggestexample of an internet.

Internet

The term internet, spelled with a lower case "i," has always meant a large network made up of smaller networks. Today, the term mostly refers to the global Internet, properly spelled with an upper case "I" but increasingly written as lower case.

The global Internet comprises a billion Web, email and related servers in more than 100 countries. Originally developed for the U.S. military, it became widely used for academic and commercial research with access to unpublished data and journals on many subjects. Today, not only is the "Net" the largest source of information on every subject known to humankind, it is also the largest source of misinformation, poorly written articles and outright lies. In addition, it has become a global mail-order catalog and video transport. As of 2019, more than three billion people use the Internet, and it has become indispensable to the world economy.

Email Lit the Fuse
In the mid-1990s, the Internet surged in growth, increasing a hundredfold in 1995 and 1996 alone. The first reason was email. Up to that point, the major online services, such as AOL and CompuServe, provided email only to their respective customers. As they began to reach out to Internet users by interfacing with the Internet's mail system, the Internet took on the role of a global email gateway. For the first time, an AOL member could send messages to a CompuServe member, and vice versa. The Internet glued the world together for email, and every service eventually switched to the Internet's own mail protocol (see SMTP).

The Bomb Exploded with the Web
Secondly, with the advent of graphics-based Web browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer close behind, the World Wide Web took off. The Web became available to users with PCs and Macs rather than only to scientists and programmers at Unix workstations. Delphi was the first proprietary online service to offer Web access, and the others followed. Coming out of the woodwork, Internet service providers (ISPs) offered access to everyone, and the Web grew exponentially, soon becoming the majority of Internet traffic. Later, video streaming superseded Web pages as the dominant data traversing the Internet. See ISP, HTTP and HTML.

Newsgroups
Although daily news and information is available on countless websites, long before the Web, information on myriad subjects was exchanged via the User Network newsgroups (see Usenet). Still around, newsgroup articles can be selected and read directly from a Web browser.

Chat Rooms
Chat rooms provide another popular Internet service. Internet Relay Chat (see IRC) offers multiuser text conferencing on diverse topics. Dozens of IRC servers provide hundreds of channels that anyone can log in to and participate via the keyboard.

The Original Internet

The Internet started in 1969 as the ARPAnet. Funded by the U.S. government, ARPAnet became a series of high-speed links between major supercomputer sites and educational and research institutions worldwide, although mostly in the U.S. A major part of its backbone was the National Science Foundation's NSFNet. Along the way, it became known as the "Internet" or simply "the Net." By the 1990s, so many networks had become part of it and so much traffic was not educational or pure research in nature that it became obvious that the Internet was on its way to becoming a commercial venture.

It Went Commercial in 1995
In 1995, the Internet was turned over to large commercial Internet providers (ISPs), such as MCI, Sprint and UUNET, which took responsibility for the backbones and have increasingly enhanced their capacities ever since. Regional ISPs link into these backbones to provide lines for their subscribers, and smaller ISPs hook either directly into the national backbones or into the regional ISPs.

The TCP/IP Protocol
Internet computers use the TCP/IP communications protocol. An Internet server, no matter its size, is a "host" and always online via TCP/IP, providing email, Web and other services. In the past, the Internet was connected to non-TCP/IP networks through gateways that converted TCP/IP into other protocols. See TCP/IP.

Access Was Command Driven in the Past
Before the Web and graphics-based Web browsers, academicians and scientists accessed the Internet using command-driven Unix utilities. Some of these utilities are still widely used for all platforms. For example, FTP (file transfer program) is used to upload and download files, and Telnet lets a user log in to a host and run a program. See FTP, Telnet, Archie, Gopher and Veronica.

The Next Internet
Ironically, some of the original academic and scientific users of the Internet have developed their own Internet once again. Internet2 is a high-speed academic research network that was started in much the same fashion as the original Internet (see Internet2). See Web vs. Internet, Internet of Things, World Wide Web, how to search the Web, intranet, NAP, hot topics and trends, IAB, information superhighway and online service.

Modest Beginnings

These four nodes were drawn in 1969 showing the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, SRI International and the University of Utah. This modest network diagram was the beginning of the ARPAnet and eventually the Internet. (Image courtesy of The Computer History Museum, www.computerhistory.org)

How the Internet Is Connected

Small Internet service providers (ISPs) hook into regional ISPs, which link into major backbones that traverse the U.S. This diagram is conceptual because ISPs often span county and state lines.

Internet

Related to Internet: Internet radio, Internet explorer 8, Internet Service Providers, Internet providers, Internet Download Manager

Internet

A worldwide Telecommunications network of business, government, and personal computers.

The Internet is a network of computers linking the United States with the rest of the world. Originally developed as a way for U.S. research scientists to communicate with each other, by the mid 1990s the Internet had become a popular form of telecommunication for personal computer users. The dramatic growth in the number of persons using the network heralded the most important change in telecommunications since the introduction of television in the late 1940s. However, the sudden popularity of a new, unregulated communications technology raised many issues for U.S. law.

The Internet, popularly called the Net, was created in 1969 for the U.S. Defense Department. Funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) allowed researchers to experiment with methods for computers to communicate with each other. Their creation, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), originally linked only four separate computer sites at U.S. universities and research institutes, where it was used primarily by scientists.

In the early 1970s, other countries began to join ARPANET, and within a decade it was widely accessible to researchers, administrators, and students throughout the world. The National Science Foundation (NSF) assumed responsibility for linking these users of ARPANET, which was dismantled in 1990. The NSF Network (NSFNET) now serves as the technical backbone for all Internet communications in the United States.

The Internet grew at a fast pace in the 1990s as the general population discovered the power of the new medium. A significant portion of the Net's content is written text, in the form of both electronic mail (E-Mail) and articles posted in an electronic discussion forum known as the Usenet news groups. In the mid-1990s the appearance of the World Wide Web made the Internet even more popular. The World Wide Web is a multimedia interface that allows for the transmission of text, pictures, audio, and video together, known as web pages, which commonly resemble pages in a magazine. Together, these various elements have made the Internet a medium for communication and for the retrieval of information on virtually any topic.

The sudden growth of the Internet caught the legal system unprepared. Before 1996, Congress had passed little legislation on this form of telecommunication. In 1986, Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) (18 U.S.C.A. § 2701 et seq. [1996]), which made it illegal to read private e-mail. The ECPA extended most of the protection already granted to conventional mail to electronic mail. Just as the post office may not read private letters, neither may the providers of private bulletin boards, on-line services, or Internet access. However, law enforcement agencies can subpoena e-mail in a criminal investigation. The ECPA also permits employers to read their workers' e-mail. This provision was intended to protect companies against industrial spying, but it has generated lawsuits from employees who objected to the invasion of their privacy. Federal courts, however, have allowed employers to secretly monitor an employee's e-mail on a company-owned computer system, concluding that employees have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they use company e-mail.

Should the Internet Be Policed?

Few observers could have predicted the fuss that the Internet began to generate in political and legal circles in the mid-1990s. After all, the global computer network linking 160 countries was hyped relentlessly in the media in the early 1990s. It spawned a multimillion-dollar industry in Internet services and a publishing empire devoted to the online experience—not to mention Hollywood movies, newspaper columns, and new jargon. But the honeymoon did not last. Like other communications media before it, the Internet provoked controversy about what was actually sent across it. Federal and state lawmakers proposed crackdowns on its content. Prosecutors took aim at its users. Civil liberties groups fought back. As the various factions engaged in a tug-of war over the future of this sprawling medium, the debate became a question of freedom or control: should the Internet be left alone as a marketplace of ideas, or should it be regulated, policed, and ultimately "cleaned up"? Although this question became heated during the early- to mid-1990s, it has remained a debated issue into the early 2000s.

More than three decades after Defense Department contractors put it up, the network remains free from official control. This system has no central governing authority for a very good reason: the general public was never intended to use it. Its designers in the late 1960s were scientists. Several years later, academics and students around the world got access to it. In the 1990s, millions of people in U.S. businesses and homes signed on. Before the public signed on its predecessors had long since developed a kind of Internet culture—essentially, a freewheeling, anything-goes setting. The opening of the Internet to everyone from citizens to corporations necessarily ruptured this formerly closed society, and conflicts appeared.

Speech rights quickly became a hot topic of debate. The Internet is a communications medium, and people have raised objections to speech online just as they have to speech in the real world. The Internet allows for a variety of media—text, pictures, movies, and sound—and Pornography is abundantly accessible online in all these forms. It is commonly "posted" as coded information to a part of the Internet called Usenet, a public issues forum that is used primarily for discussions. With over 10,000 topic areas, called news groups, Usenet literally caters to the world's panoply of interests and tastes. Certain news groups are devoted entirely to pornography. As the speed of the Internet increased dramatically with the development of broadband access in the late 1990s and early 2000s, not only has more of this type of information become more available, but also users have been able to access this information in greater quantity.

Several signs in 1994 predicted a legal crackdown on the Internet. Early on, U.S. attorney general Janet Reno said criminal investigators were exploring the originators of online Child Pornography. In July 1994, federal prosecutors won an Obscenity conviction in Tennessee against the operators of a computer bulletin board system (BBS) called the Amateur Action BBS, a private porn subscription service. Quickly becoming a cause célèbre in the online world, the case raised the question of how far off a general Internet crackdown could be.

In December 1994, a college student's fiction raised a furor. Jake Baker, a sophomore in linguistics at the University of Michigan, published a story about sexual torture in the alt.sex.stories news group on Usenet. Its lurid detail was not unique in the news group, but something else was: Baker used the name of a female classmate for one of his fictional victims. Once the name was recognized, campus critics of pornography lashed out at Baker.

Baker's case demonstrated how seriously objections to Internet material would be taken. In January 1995, the University of Michigan opened an investigation, and soon, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents began reviewing Baker's E-Mail. Baker insisted he meant no harm, suggesting that he wanted to be a creative writer. He even submitted to a psychological profile, which determined that he posed no danger to the student named in his story or to anyone else. But on February 9, 1995, federal authorities arrested him. He was charged with five counts of using inter-state communications to make threats to injure—and kidnap—another person. Lacking any specific target for Baker's alleged threats, yet armed with allegedly incriminating e-mail, prosecutors charged that he was dangerous to other university students. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) came to his aid, arguing in an amicus brief that the accusations were baseless and moreover violated Baker's First Amendment rights. A U.S. district court judge threw out the case.

The U.S. Senate had its own ideas about online speech. In February 1995, Senator J. James Exon (D-NE) introduced the Communications Decency Act (S. 314, 104th Cong., 1st Sess. [1995]). Targeting "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent" electronic communications, the bill called for two-year prison sentences and fines of up to $100,000 for anyone who makes such material available to anyone under the age of 18. In its original form, the bill would have established broad criminal liability: users, online services, and the hundreds of small businesses providing Internet accounts would all be required to keep their messages, stories, postings, and e-mail decent. After vigorous protest from access providers, the bill was watered down to protect them: they would not be held liable unless they knowingly provided indecent material.

Several groups lined up to stop the Decency Act. Opposition came from civil liberties groups including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, as well as from online services and Internet access providers. They argued that the bill sought to criminalize speech that is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment.

Although Congress eventually outlawed obscene and other forms of indecent sexual material on the Internet in the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C.A. § 223, the statute was challenged immediately. In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 117 S. Ct. 2329, 138 L. Ed. 2d 874 (1997), the Supreme Court found that most of the statute's provisions violated the First Amendment. Congress subsequently sought to focus its attention on legislation that proscribes the transmission of child pornography, though the Supreme Court in a series of cases found that these statutes were likewise unconstitutional.

The central concern in Reno and the subsequent cases was that Congress has prohibited constitutionally protected speech in addition to speech that is not afforded First Amendment protection. Some members of Congress and supporters of such legislation suggested that restrictions on obscene and indecent information are necessary in order to protect children who use the Internet. But opponents of these restrictions noted that the Internet cannot be reduced to include only that information that is appropriate for children, and the Supreme Court reached this precise conclusion.

Although the debate about whether the government should regulate pornography and other obscene material continued, much of the focus about Internet policing shifted to other issues that involve the Internet. One important issue has been how the government can protect Copyright and other Intellectual Property owners from Piracy that is somewhat common on the medium. Another major issue is how the government can prevent the dissemination of unwanted advertising, usually sent through e-mail and commonly referred to as spam. Likewise, computer viruses have caused millions of dollars of damages to computer owners in the United States and worldwide in the 1990s and 2000s, and most of these viruses have been distributed through the Internet.

Many Internet users, some of whom may otherwise object to government regulation of the medium, view governmental regulation that protects users from such problems as piracy, viruses, and spam more favorably than other forms of regulation. Nevertheless, even regulation of Computer Crime raises issues, such as whether such regulation may violate users' First Amendment rights or how government regulation protecting against these harms can be effective. As the Internet continues to develop, and even as the medium gradually becomes more standardized, these questions largely remain unanswered.

Cross-references

E-mail.

Criminal activity on the Internet generally falls into the category of Computer Crime. It includes so-called hacking, or breaking into computer systems, stealing account passwords and credit-card numbers, and illegally copying Intellectual Property. Because personal computers can easily copy information—including everything from software to photographs and books—and the information can be sent anywhere in the world quickly, it has become much more difficult for Copyright owners to protect their property.Public and legislative attention, especially in the mid to late 1990s, focused on Internet content, specifically sexually explicit material. The distribution of Pornography became a major concern in the 1990s, as private individuals and businesses found an unregulated means of giving away or selling pornographic images. As hard-core and Child Pornography proliferated, Congress sought to impose restrictions on obscene and indecent content on the Internet.

In 1996, Congress responded to concerns that indecent and obscene materials were freely distributed on the Internet by passing the Communications Decency Act (CDA) as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56. This law forbade the knowing dissemination of obscene and indecent material to persons under the age of 18 through computer networks or other telecommunications media. The act included penalties for violations of up to five years imprisonment and fines of up to $250,000.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and online Internet services immediately challenged the CDA as an unconstitutional restriction on Freedom of Speech. A special three-judge federal panel in Pennsylvania agreed with these groups, concluding that the law was overbroad because it could limit the speech of adults in its attempt to protect children. American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824 (E.D. Pa. 1996).

The government appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Court affirmed the three-judge panel on a 7-2 vote, finding that the act violated the First Amendment. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 117 S. Ct. 2329, 136 L. Ed. 2d 236 (1997). Though the Court recognized the "legitimacy and importance of the congressional goal of protecting children from the harmful materials" on the Internet, it ruled that the CDA abridged freedom of speech and that it therefore was unconstitutional.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, acknowledged that the sexually explicit materials on the Internet range from the "modestly titillating to the hardest core." He concluded, however, that although this material is widely available, "users seldom encounter such content accidentally." In his view, a child would have to have "some sophistication and some ability to read to retrieve material and thereby to use the Internet unattended." He also pointed out that systems for personal computers have been developed to help parents limit access to objectionable material on the Internet and that many commercial web sites have age-verification systems in place.

Turning to the CDA, Stevens found that previous decisions of the Court that limited free speech out of concern for the protection of children were inapplicable. The CDA differed from the laws and orders upheld in the previous cases in significant ways. The CDA did not allow parents to consent to their children's use of restricted materials, and it was not limited to commercial transactions. In addition, the CDA failed to provide a definition of "indecent," and its broad prohibitions were not limited to particular times of the day. Finally, the act's restrictions could not be analyzed as forms of time, place, and manner regulations because the act was a content-based blanket restriction on speech. Accordingly, it could not survive the First Amendment challenge.

In 1998, Congress responded to the decision by enacting the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), Pub. L. No. 105-277, 112 Stat. 2681. This act was narrower in its application than the CDA, applying only to commercial transactions and limited to content deemed to be "harmful to minors." The new statute was subject to immediate litigation. A federal district court placed a preliminary injunction on the application of the statute, and this decision was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 217 F.3d 162 (3d Cir. 2000). Although the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the decision, it was due to procedural grounds rather than the merits of the challenge. Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564, 122 S. Ct. 1700, 152 L. Ed. 2d 771 (2002). On remand, the Third Circuit again affirmed the Injunction, holding that that statute likely violated the First Amendment. American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft, 322 F.3d 240 (3d Cir. 2003).

The questions raised in Reno and subsequent decisions have also been raised in the debate over the use of Internet filters. Many schools and libraries, both public and private, have installed filters that prevent users from viewing vulgar, obscene, pornographic, or other types of materials deemed unsuitable by the institution installing the software.

The ACLU, library associations, and other organizations that promote greater access to information have objected to the use of these filters, especially in public libraries. The first reported case involving libraries and Internet filters occurred in Mainstream Loudon v. Board of Trustees of the London County Library, 24 F. Supp. 2d 552 (E.D. Va. 1998). A Virginia federal court judge in that case ruled that the use of screening software by a library was unconstitutional, as it restricted adults to materials that the software found suitable for children. Courts have generally been split about his issue, and several have found that the use of these filters in public schools is allowed under the First Amendment.

Pornography is not the only concern of lawmakers and courts regarding potential crime on the Internet. The Internet has produced forms of Terrorism that threaten the security of business, government, and private computers. Computer "hackers" have defeated computer network "firewalls" and have vandalized or stolen electronic data. Another form of terrorism is the propagation and distribution over the Internet of computer viruses that can corrupt computer software, hardware, and data files. Many companies now produce virus-checking software that seeks to screen and disable viruses when they arrive in the form of an e-mail or e-mail file attachment. However, computer hackers are constantly inventing new viruses, thus giving the viruses a window of time to wreak havoc before the virus checkers are updated. Moreover, the fear of viruses has led to hoaxes and panics.

One of the most infamous viruses, dubbed the Melissa virus, was created in 1999 by David Smith of New Jersey. It was sent through a Usenet newsgroup as an attachment to a message the purported to provide passwords for sexrelated web sites. When the attachment was opened, it infected the user's computer. The program found the user's address book and sent a mass message with attachments containing the virus. Within a few days, it had infected computers across the globe and forced the shutdown of more than 300 computer networks from the heavy loads of e-mail that Melissa generated.

The Melissa virus represented one of the first instances where law enforcement personnel were able to take advantage of new technologies to track the creator of the virus. On April 1, 1999, about a week after the virus first appeared on the Usenet newsgroups, police arrested Smith. He pled guilty to one count of computer Fraud and abuse. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison and was fined $5,000.

Another area of legal concern is the issue of libel. In tort law, libel and slander occur when the communication of false information about a person injures the person's good name or reputation. Where the traditional media are concerned, it is well settled that libel suits provide both a means of redress for injury and a punitive corrective against sloppiness and malice. Regarding communication on the Internet, however, there is little case law, especially on the key issue of liability.

In suits against newspapers, courts traditionally held publishers liable, along with their reporters, because publishers were presumed to have reviewed the libelous material prior to publication. Because of this legal standard, publishers and editors are generally careful to review anything that they publish. However, the Internet is not a body of material that is carefully reviewed by a publisher, but an unrestricted flood of information. If a libelous or defamatory statement is posted on the Internet, which is owned by no one, the law is uncertain as to whether anyone other than the author can be held liable.

Some courts have held that online service providers, companies that connect their subscribers to the Internet, should be held liable if they allow their users to post libelous statements on their sites. An online provider is thus viewed like a traditional publisher.

Other courts have rejected the publisher analogy and instead have compared Internet service providers to bookstores. Like bookstores, providers are distributors of information and cannot reasonably be expected to review everything that they sell. U.S. libel law gives greater protection to bookstores because of this theory (Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 80 S. Ct. 215, 4 L. Ed. 2d 205 [1959]), and some courts have applied it to online service providers.

trademark infringement on the Internet has also led to controversy and legal disputes. One of the biggest concerns for registered trademark and Service Mark holders is protection of the mark on the Internet. As Internet participants establish sites on the Web, they must create domain names, which are names that designate the location of the web site. Besides providing a name to associate with the person or business that created the site, a domain name makes it easy for Internet users to find a particular home page or web site.

As individuals and businesses devised domain names in this medium, especially during the mid to late 1990s, they found that the names they created were similar to, or replicas of, registered trademarks and service marks. Several courts have considered complaints that use of a domain name violated the rights of a trademark or service mark holder, and early decisions did not favor these parties' rights.

In 1999, Congress enacted the Anti-cyber-squatting Consumer Protection Act, Pub. L. No. 106-113, 113 Stat. 1501. The act strengthened the rights of trademark holders by giving these owners a Cause of Action against so-called "cybersquatters" or "cyberpirates," individuals who register a third-party's trademark as a domain name for the purpose of selling it back to the owner for a profit.

Prior to the enactment of this law, an individual could register a domain name using the trademark or service mark of a company, and the company would have to use a different domain name or pay the creator a sum of money for the right to use the name. Thus, for example, an individual could register the name www.ibm.com, which most web users would have associated with International Business Machines (IBM), the universally recognized business. Because another individual used this domain name, IBM could not create a Web site using www.ibm.com without paying the cyber-squatter a fee for its use. The 1999 legislation eradicated this problem.

During the 1990s, a number of companies were formed that operated completely on the Internet. Due to the overwhelming success of these companies, the media dubbed this phenomenon the "dot-com bubble." The success of these companies was relatively short-lived, as the "bubble" burst in early 2000. Many of these Internet companies went out of business, while those that remained had to reconsider new business strategies.

Notwithstanding these setbacks, the Internet itself has continued to develop and evolve. During the 1990s, the vast majority of Internet users relied upon telephone systems to log on to the Internet. This trend has changed drastically in recent years, as many users have subscribed to services that provide broadband access through such means as cable lines, satellite feeds, and other types of high-speed networks. These new methods for connecting to the Internet allow users to retrieve information at a much faster rate of speed. They will likely continue to change the types of content that are available through this means of telecommunications.

Cross-references

First Amendment; Freedom of Speech; Internet Fraud; Telecommunications; Trademarks.

Internet

in·ter·net

internet

In•ter•net

In·ter·net

Internet

Internet

Internet

internet

internet

channel surfing

Internets

on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog

scour (something or some place) for (someone or something)

channel surfing

channel surfing

Internet

internet

Internet

Internet

Internet

Technological features

TCP/IP

Domain Name System

World Wide Web

Commerce on the Internet

Internet

internet

Internet

The Original Internet

Internet

Internet

Should the Internet Be Policed?

Further readings

Cross-references

Further readings

Cross-references

Internet

Internet

Internet

INTERNET

internet

Synonyms for internet

phrase the Internet

Synonyms

Synonyms for internet

noun a computer network consisting of a worldwide network of computer networks that use the TCP/IP network protocols to facilitate data transmission and exchange

Synonyms

Related Words