What is internet?

Question

What is internet?

Answer 1

Internet is 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. Department of Defense. 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 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 there was little federal 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 can 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 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.

Criminal activity on the Internet generally falls into the category of computer crime. It includes so-called hacking, or sneaking 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 work.

Public and legislative attention has 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 passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA) as part of the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C.A. § 223(a)(h)). The CDA forbade the dissemination of obscene or indecent material to children through computer networks or other telecommunications media. The act included penalties for knowing violations of up to five years imprisonment and fines of up to $250,000. First Amendment advocates and on-line services immediately brought suit to challenge the act as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. A special three-judge federal panel in Pennsylvania agreed with these groups, concluding that the law was overly broad because, in attempting to protect children, it would also limit the speech of adults (American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 929 F.Supp. 824 [1996]). On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court affirmed, finding the challenged provisions overbroad (1997 WL 348012).

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 they publish. However, the Internet is not a body of material carefully reviewed by a publisher, but an unrestricted flood of information. If a libelous or defamatory statement is posted on the Internet, which is essentially owned by no one, the law is uncertain about whether anyone other than the author can be held liable.

Some courts have held that on-line 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 on-line provider is thus viewed like a traditional publisher.

Other courts have rejected the publisher analogy and have instead compared Internet service providers to bookstores. Like bookstores, providers are distributors of information and cannot reasonably be expected to review everything 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 on-line service providers.

The continued growth of the Internet (twenty-four million subscribers in 1995) has placed enormous burdens on telephone networks. Telephone systems were not designed to handle thousands of Internet connections that may last several hours at a time. Telephone companies, concerned about their capacity to handle the volume of both voice and electronic communication, have proposed changing rate structures and raising rates for Internet users that reflect the higher demands placed on the telephone systems.

Answer 2

R u 4 Real or just Plain .............

Answer 3

It comes from a blend of words intern and net. Therefore, its a net of interns...

Answer 4

You do realize that you have miscateorgized this question and that several people, such as myself, are going to be more than happy to report you and hope, one day soon, that you may be banned.

Answer 5

you're on it right now

Answer 6

your on it.