Internet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW).

Terminology

The International Network, or more commonly known as the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous. The Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc. In contrast, the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is one of the services accessible via the Internet, along with various others including e-mail, file sharing, online gaming and others described below.

History

Main article: History of the Internet

Creation

Main article: ARPANET

The USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as ARPA, in February 1958 to regain a technological lead.[1][2] ARPA created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to further the research of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which had networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. J. C. R. Licklider was selected to head the IPTO, and saw universal networking as a potential unifying human revolution.

Licklider moved from the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University to MIT in 1950, after becoming interested in information technology. At MIT, he served on a committee that established Lincoln Laboratory and worked on the SAGE project. In 1957 he became a Vice President at BBN, where he bought the first production PDP-1 computer and conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing.

At the IPTO, Licklider recruited Lawrence Roberts to head a project to implement a network, and Roberts based the technology on the work of Paul Baran[citation needed] who had written an exhaustive study for the U.S. Air Force that recommended packet switching (as opposed to circuit switching) to make a network highly robust and survivable. After much work, the first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA and SRI International in Menlo Park, California, on October 29, 1969. The ARPANET was one of the "eve" networks of today's Internet. Following on from the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet switched network service. In the UK, this was referred to as the International Packet Stream Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. The X.25 packet switching standard was developed in the CCITT (now called ITU-T) around 1976. X.25 was independent of the TCP/IP protocols that arose from the experimental work of DARPA on the ARPANET, Packet Radio Net and Packet Satellite Net during the same time period. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first description of the TCP protocols during 1973 and published a paper on the subject in May 1974. Use of the term "Internet" to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated in December 1974 with the publication of RFC 674, the first full specification of TCP that was written by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine then at Stanford University. During the next nine years, work proceeded to refine the protocols and to implement them on a wide range of operating systems.

The first TCP/IP-wide area network was made operational by January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols to TCP/IP. In 1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone using computers called "fuzzballs" by their inventor, David L. Mills. The following year, NSF sponsored the development of a higher speed 1.5 megabit/second backbone that become the NSFNet. A key decision to use the DARPA TCP/IP protocols was made by Dennis Jennings, then in charge of the Supercomputer program at NSF.

The opening of the network to commercial interests began in 1988. The US Federal Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET to the commercial MCI Mail system in that year and the link was made in the summer of 1989. Other commercial electronic email services were soon connected, including OnTyme, Telemail and Compuserve. In that same year, three commercial Internet Service Providers were created: UUNET, PSINET and CERFNET. Important, separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged with the Internet include Usenet and BITNET. Various other commercial and educational networks, such as Telenet, Tymnet, Compuserve and JANET were interconnected with the growing Internet. Telenet (later called Sprintnet) was a large privately-funded national computer network with free dial-up access in cities throughout the U.S. that had been in operation since the 1970s. This network was eventually interconnected with the others in the 1980s as the TCP/IP protocol became increasingly popular. The ability of TCP/IP to work over virtually any pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth although the rapid growth of the Internet was due primarily to the availability of commercial routers from companies such as Cisco Systems, Proteon and Juniper, the availability of commercial Ethernet equipment for local area networking and the widespread implementation of TCP/IP on the UNIX operating system.

Growth

Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost a decade, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. On August 6, 1991, CERN, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.

An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW based upon HyperCard. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word "Internet" had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its misuse as a reference to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such as FidoNet, have remained separate). During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100% per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997.[3] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.[citation needed]

University Students Appreciation and Contributions

New findings in the field of communications during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were quickly adopted by universities across the United States.

Examples of early university Internet communities are Cleveland FreeNet, Blacksburg Electronic Village and NSTN in Nova Scotia ( [1] ). Students took up the opportunity of free communications and saw this new phenomenon as a tool of liberation. Personal computers and the Internet would free them from corporations and governments (Nelson, Jennings, Stallman).

Graduate students played a huge part in the creation of ARPANET. In the 1960’s, the network working group, which did most of the design for ARPANET’s protocols was composed mainly of graduate students.

Today's Internet



Aside from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (e.g., peering agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is essentially defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

As of September 30, 2007, 1.244 billion people use the Internet according to Internet World Stats. Writing in the Harvard International Review, philosopher N.J.Slabbert, a writer on policy issues for the Washington DC-based Urban Land Institute, has asserted that the Internet is fast becoming a basic feature of global civilization, so that what has traditionally been called "civil society" is now becoming identical with information technology society as defined by Internet use. Some suggest that as low as 2% of the World's population regularly accesses the internet.[4] "http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/quiz/quiz_key.pdf"

Internet protocols

For more details on this topic, see Internet Protocols.

In this context, there are three layers of protocols:

* At the lower level (OSI layer 3) is IP (Internet Protocol), which defines the datagrams or packets that carry blocks of data from one node to another. The vast majority of today's Internet uses version four of the IP protocol (i.e. IPv4), and although IPv6 is standardized, it exists only as "islands" of connectivity, and there are many ISPs without any IPv6 connectivity. [2]. ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) also exists at this level. ICMP is connectionless; it is used for control, signaling, and error reporting purposes.

* TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) exist at the next layer up (OSI layer 4); these are the protocols by which data is transmitted. TCP makes a virtual 'connection', which gives some level of guarantee of reliability. UDP is a best-effort, connectionless transport, in which data packets that are lost in transit will not be re-sent.

* The application protocols sit on top of TCP and UDP and occupy layers 5, 6, and 7 of the OSI model. These define the specific messages and data formats sent and understood by the applications running at each end of the communication. Examples of these protocols are HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.

Internet structure

There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks.

Similar to the way the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as:

* GEANT
* GLORIAD
* The Internet2 Network (formally known as the Abilene Network)
* JANET (the UK's national research and education network)

These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of academic computer network organizations

In network diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into and out of which network communications can pass.

ICANN



For more details on this topic, see ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is at most one holder for each possible name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have the primary role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet's systems of domain names, IP addresses, protocol ports and parameter numbers.

On November 16, 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

Language

For more details on this topic, see English on the Internet.
Further information: Unicode

The prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may be a result of the Internet's origins, as well as English's role as the lingua franca. It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers, largely originating in the United States, to handle characters other than those in the English variant of the Latin alphabet.

After English (31% of Web visitors) the most-requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese 16%, Spanish 9%, Japanese 7%, German 5% and French 5% (from Internet World Stats, updated June 30, 2007).

By continent, 37% of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 27% in Europe, 19% in North America, and 9% in Latin America and the Carribean ([3] updated September 30, 2007).

The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of foreign language characters, also known as kryakozyabry) still remain.

Internet and the workplace

The Internet is allowing greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections and Web applications.

The Internet viewed on mobile devices

The Internet can now be accessed virtually anywhere by numerous means. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a cellular network supporting that device's technology.

Common uses of the Internet

E-mail

For more details on this topic, see E-mail.

The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Even today it can be important to distinguish between Internet and internal e-mail systems. Internet e-mail may travel and be stored unencrypted on many other networks and machines out of both the sender's and the recipient's control. During this time it is quite possible for the content to be read and even tampered with by third parties, if anyone considers it important enough. Purely internal or intranet mail systems, where the information never leaves the corporate or organization's network, are much more secure, although in any organization there will be IT and other personnel whose job may involve monitoring, and occasionally accessing, the email of other employees not addressed to them.

The World Wide Web



For more details on this topic, see World Wide Web.
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (or just the Web) interchangeably, but, as discussed above, the two terms are not synonymous.

The World Wide Web is a huge set of interlinked documents, images and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. These hyperlinks and URLs allow the web-servers and other machines that store originals, and cached copies, of these resources to deliver them as required using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). HTTP is only one of the communication protocols used on the Internet.

Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to share and exchange business logic and data.

Software products that can access the resources of the Web are correctly termed user agents. In normal use, web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox access web pages and allow users to navigate from one to another via hyperlinks. Web documents may contain almost any combination of computer data including photographs, graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content including games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines, like Yahoo!, and Google, millions of people worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data.

It is also easier, using the Web, than ever before for individuals and organisations to publish ideas and information to an extremely large audience. Anyone can find ways to publish a web page or build a website for very little initial cost. Publishing and maintaining large, professional websites full of attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however.

Many individuals and some companies and groups use "web logs" or blogs, which are largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work.

Collections of personal web pages published by large service providers remain popular, and have become increasingly sophisticated. Whereas operations such as Angelfire and GeoCities have existed since the early days of the Web, newer offerings from, for example, Facebook and MySpace currently have large followings. These operations often brand themselves as social network services rather than simply as web page hosts.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of products and services directly via the Web continues to grow.

In the early days, web pages were usually created as sets of complete and isolated HTML text files stored on a web server. More recently, web sites are more often created using content management system (CMS) or wiki software with, initially, very little content. Users of these systems, who may be paid staff, members of a club or other organisation or members of the public, fill the underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose, while casual visitors view and read this content in its final HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors.

Remote access

Further information: Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements.

This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice.

An office worker away from his desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into their normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data, including e-mail and other applications, while away from the office.

This concept is also referred to by some network security people as the Virtual Private Nightmare, because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into its employees' homes; this has been the source of some notable security breaches, but also provides security for the workers.

Collaboration

See also: Collaborative software

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work dramatically easier. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and test, but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups to easily form in the first place, even among niche interests. An example of this is the free software movement in software development which produced GNU and Linux from scratch and has taken over development of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org (formerly known as Netscape Communicator and StarOffice). Films such as Zeitgeist, Loose Change and Endgame have had extensive coverage on the internet, while being virtually ignored in the mainstream media.

Internet 'chat', whether in the form of IRC 'chat rooms' or channels, or via instant messaging systems allow colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way when working at their computers during the day. Messages can be sent and viewed even more quickly and conveniently than via e-mail. Extension to these systems may allow files to be exchanged, 'whiteboard' drawings to be shared as well as voice and video contact between team members.

Version control systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents without either accidentally overwriting each other's work or having members wait until they get 'sent' documents to be able to add their thoughts and changes.

File sharing

For more details on this topic, see File sharing.

A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a Web site or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks.

In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed—hopefully fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests.

These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Internet collaboration technology enables business and project teams to share documents, calendars and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing.

Streaming media

Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialized technical Web-casts. Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is first downloaded in full and then may be played back on a computer or shifted to a digital audio player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material on a worldwide basis.

Webcams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full frame rate video, the picture is usually either small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, the traffic at a local roundabout or their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams are also popular. Many uses can be found for personal webcams in and around the home, with and without two-way sound.

YouTube, sometimes described as an internet phenomenon because of the vast amount of users and how rapidly the sites popularity has grown. Youtube was founded in February 15, 2005. It is now the leading website for free streaming video. It uses a flash based web player which streams video files in the format FLV. Users are able to watch videos without signing up however if users do sign up they are able to upload an unlimited amount of videos and they are given their own personal profile. It is currently estimated that there are 64,000,000 videos on Youtube and it is also currently estimated that 825,000 new videos are uploaded every day.

Voice telephony (VoIP)

For more details on this topic, see VoIP.

VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the year 2000. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the actual voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a normal telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL.

Thus VoIP is maturing into a viable alternative to traditional telephones. Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple inexpensive VoIP modems are now available that eliminate the need for a PC.

Voice quality can still vary from call to call but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls.

Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialling and reliability. Currently a few VoIP providers provide an emergency service but it is not universally available. Traditional phones are line powered and operate during a power failure, VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the electronics.

Most VoIP providers offer unlimited national calling but the direction in VoIP is clearly toward global coverage with unlimited minutes for a low monthly fee.

VoIP has also become increasingly popular within the gaming world, as a form of communication between players. Popular gaming VoIP clients include Ventrilo and Teamspeak, and there are others available also. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 also offer VoIP chat features.

Internet by region
[show]
v • d • e
Internet in Africa
Sovereign states Algeria · Angola · Benin · Botswana · Burkina Faso · Burundi · Cameroon · Cape Verde · Central African Republic · Chad · Comoros · Democratic Republic of the Congo · Republic of the Congo · Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) · Djibouti · Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Eritrea · Ethiopia · Gabon · The Gambia · Ghana · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau · Kenya · Lesotho · Liberia · Libya · Madagascar · Malawi · Mali · Mauritania · Mauritius · Morocco · Mozambique · Namibia · Niger · Nigeria · Rwanda · São Tomé and Príncipe · Senegal · Seychelles · Sierra Leone · Somalia · South Africa · Sudan · Swaziland · Tanzania · Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · Zimbabwe
Dependencies,
autonomies and
other territories Canary Islands (Spain) · Ceuta (Spain) · Madeira (Portugal) · Mayotte (France) · Melilla (Spain) · Puntland · Réunion (France) · St. Helena (UK) · Socotra (Yemen) · Somaliland · Southern Sudan · Western Sahara · Zanzibar (Tanzania)
[show]
v • d • e
Internet in North America
Sovereign states Antigua and Barbuda · Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · Canada · Costa Rica · Cuba · Dominica · Dominican Republic · El Salvador · Grenada · Guatemala · Haiti · Honduras · Jamaica · Mexico · Nicaragua · Panama* · Saint Kitts and Nevis · Saint Lucia · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Trinidad and Tobago* · United States
Dependencies and
other territories Anguilla · Aruba* · Bermuda · British Virgin Islands · Cayman Islands · Greenland · Guadeloupe · Martinique · Montserrat · Navassa Island · Netherlands Antilles* · Puerto Rico · Saint Barthélemy · Saint Martin · Saint Pierre and Miquelon · Turks and Caicos Islands · U. S. Virgin Islands
* Territories also in or commonly reckoned elsewhere in the Americas (South America).
[show]
v • d • e
Internet in South America
Sovereign states Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Ecuador · Guyana · Panama* · Paraguay · Peru · Suriname · Trinidad and Tobago* · Uruguay · Venezuela
Dependencies Aruba* (Netherlands) · Falkland Islands (UK) · French Guiana (France) · Netherlands Antilles* (Netherlands) · South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (UK)
* Territories also in or commonly reckoned elsewhere in the Americas (North America).
[show]
v • d • e
Internet in Asia
Sovereign states
and other territories Afghanistan · Armenia · Azerbaijan1 · Bahrain · Bangladesh · Bhutan · Brunei · Burma · Cambodia · China (People's Republic of China [Hong Kong · Macau]) · Cyprus · East Timor1 · Egypt1 · Georgia1 · India · Indonesia1 · Iran · Iraq · Israel · Japan · Jordan · Kazakhstan1 · Korea (North Korea · South Korea) · Kuwait · Kyrgyzstan · Laos · Lebanon · Malaysia · Maldives · Mongolia · Nepal · Oman · Pakistan · Palestinian territories · Philippines · Qatar · Russia1 · Saudi Arabia · Singapore · Sri Lanka · Republic of China (Taiwan) · Syria · Tajikistan · Thailand · Turkey1 · Turkmenistan · United Arab Emirates · Uzbekistan · Vietnam · Yemen1
1countries spanning more than one continent
[show]
v • d • e
Internet in Europe
Sovereign states Albania · Andorra · Armenia1 · Austria · Azerbaijan2 · Belarus · Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Cyprus1 · Czech Republic · Denmark · Estonia · Finland · France · Georgia2 · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Iceland · Ireland · Italy · Kazakhstan2 · Latvia · Liechtenstein · Lithuania · Luxembourg · Republic of Macedonia · Malta · Moldova · Monaco · Montenegro · Netherlands · Norway · Poland · Portugal · Romania · Russia3 · San Marino · Serbia · Slovakia · Slovenia · Spain · Sweden · Switzerland · Turkey3 · Ukraine · United Kingdom

1 Entirely in Southwest Asia; included here because of cultural, political and historical association with Europe. 2 Partially or entirely in Asia, depending on the definition of the border between Europe and Asia. 3 Mostly in Asia.
[show]
v • d • e
Internet in Oceania
Australasia Australia · Norfolk Island · Christmas Island · Cocos (Keeling) Islands · New Zealand
Melanesia East Timor1 · Fiji · Indonesia1 · New Caledonia · Papua New Guinea · Solomon Islands · Vanuatu
Micronesia Guam · Kiribati · Marshall Islands · Northern Mariana Islands · Federated States of Micronesia · Nauru · Palau
Polynesia American Samoa · Cook Islands · French Polynesia · Niue · Pitcairn · Samoa · Tokelau · Tonga · Tuvalu · Wallis and Futuna
1 countries spanning more than one continent

Censorship

For more details on this topic, see Internet censorship.

Some governments, such as those of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, the People's Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia, restrict what people in their countries can access on the Internet, especially political and religious content. This is accomplished through software that filters domains and content so that they may not be easily accessed or obtained without elaborate circumvention.

In Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily (possibly to avoid such an arrangement being turned into law) agreed to restrict access to sites listed by police. While this list of forbidden URLs is only supposed to contain addresses of known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret.[citation needed]

Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws making the possession or distribution of certain material, such as child pornography, illegal, but do not use filtering software.

There are many free and commercially available software programs with which a user can choose to block offensive Web sites on individual computers or networks, such as to limit a child's access to pornography or violence. See Content-control software.

Internet access

For more details on this topic, see Internet access.

Wikibooks
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of
Online linux connect

Common methods of home access include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and 3G technology cell phones.

Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though these are usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for various usage like ticket booking, bank deposit, online payment etc. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi-cafes, where a would-be user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. The whole campus or park, or even the entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial WiFi services covering large city areas are in place in London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The Internet can then be accessed from such places as a park bench.[5]

Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular phone networks, and fixed wireless services.

High-end mobile phones such as smartphones generally come with Internet access through the phone network. Web browsers such as Opera are available on these advanced handsets, which can also run a wide variety of other Internet software. More mobile phones have Internet access than PCs, though this is not as widely used. An Internet access provider and protocol matrix differentiates the methods used to get online.

Leisure

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas.

The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity.

One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet.

While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games.

Many use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. As discussed above, there are paid and unpaid sources for all of these, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Discretion is needed as some of these sources take more care over the original artists' rights and over copyright laws than others.

Many use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book holidays and to find out more about their random ideas and casual interests.

People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking Web sites like Myspace and Facebook many others like them also put and keep people in contact for their enjoyment.

The Internet has seen a growing number of Internet operating systems, where users can access their files, folders, and settings via the Internet. An example of an opensource webOS is Eyeos.

Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing the Web at work, according to a study by Peninsula Business Services [4].

Complex architecture

Many computer scientists see the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system".[6] The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity. Further adding to the complexity of the Internet is the ability of more than one computer to use the Internet through only one node, thus creating the possibility for a very deep and hierarchal based sub-network that can theoretically be extended infinitely (disregarding the programmatic limitations of the IPv4 protocol). However, since principles of this architecture date back to the 1960s, it might not be a solution best suited to modern needs, and thus the possibility of developing alternative structures is currently being looked into.[7]

According to a June 2007 article in Discover Magazine, the combined weight of all the electrons moved within the internet in a day is 0.2 millionths of an ounce.[8] Others have estimated this at nearer 2 ounces (50 grams).[9]

Marketing

The Internet has also become a large market for companies; some of the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient nature of low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet, also known as e-commerce. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast number of people simultaneously. The Internet has also subsequently revolutionized shopping—for example; a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases. The Internet has also greatly facilitated personalized marketing which allows a company to market a product to a specific person or a specific group of people more so than any other advertising medium.

Examples of personalized marketing include online communities such as MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Facebook and others which thousands of Internet users join to advertise themselves and make friends online. Many of these users are young teens and adolescents ranging from 13 to 25 years old. In turn, when they advertise themselves they advertise interests and hobbies, which online marketing companies can use as information as to what those users will purchase online, and advertise their own companies' products to those users.

Further information: Disintermediation#Impact of Internet-related disintermediation upon various industries and Travel agency#The Internet threat

The name Internet

For more details on this topic, see Internet capitalization conventions.

Look up Internet, internet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Internet is traditionally written with a capital first letter, as it is a proper noun. The Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the World Wide Web Consortium, and several other Internet-related organizations use this convention in their publications.

Many newspapers, newswires, periodicals, and technical journals capitalize the term (Internet). Examples include The New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and Communications of the ACM.

Others assert that the first letter should be in lower case (internet), and that the specific article “the” is sufficient to distinguish “the internet” from other internets. A significant number of publications use this form, including The Economist, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, many publications using internet appear to be located outside of North America—although one U.S. news source, Wired News, has adopted the lower-case spelling.

Historically, Internet and internet have had different meanings, with internet meaning “an interconnected set of distinct networks,” and Internet referring to the world-wide, publicly-available IP internet. Under this distinction, "the Internet" is the familiar network via which websites exist, however "an internet" can exist between any two remote locations.[10] Any group of distinct networks connected together is an internet; each of these networks may or may not be part of the Internet. The distinction was evident in many RFCs, books, and articles from the 1980s and early 1990s (some of which, such as RFC 1918, refer to "internets" in the plural), but has recently fallen into disuse.[citation needed] Instead, the term intranet is generally used for private networks, whether they are connected to the Internet or not. See also: extranet.

Some people use the lower-case term as a medium (like radio or newspaper, e.g. I've found it on the internet), and first letter capitalized as the global network.

See also
Find more about Internet on Wikipedia's sister projects:
Dictionary definitions
Textbooks
Quotations
Source texts
Images and media
News stories
Learning resources

Main articles: List of basic Internet topics and List of Internet topics

Major aspects and issues

* Internet democracy
* History of the Internet
* Net neutrality
* Privacy on the Internet

Functions

* E-mail
* File-sharing
* Instant messaging
* Internet fax
* World Wide Web
* Voice over IP
* Mobile VoIP

Underlying infrastructure

* Internet Protocol (IP)
* Internet Service Provider (ISP)

Regulatory bodies

* Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
* Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

Notes

1. ^ ARPA/DARPA. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Retrieved on 2007-05-21.
2. ^ DARPA Over the Years. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Retrieved on 2007-05-21.
3. ^ Coffman, K. G; Odlyzko, A. M. (1998-10-02). "The size and growth rate of the Internet". AT&T Labs. Retrieved on 2007-05-21.
4. ^ Slabbert,N.J. The Technologies of Peace, Harvard International Review, June 2006.
5. ^ "Toronto Hydro to Install Wireless Network in Downtown Toronto". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 19-Mar-2006.
6. ^ Walter Willinger, Ramesh Govindan, Sugih Jamin, Vern Paxson, and Scott Shenker (2002). Scaling phenomena in the Internet. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, suppl. 1, 2573–2580.
7. ^ "Internet Makeover? Some argue it's time". The Seattle Times, April 16, 2007.
8. ^ "How Much Does The Internet Weigh?". Discover Magazine, June 2007.
9. ^ How Much Does The Internet Weigh? - The Unbearable Lightness Of Fact Checking
10. ^ What is the Internet?

References

* Media Freedom Internet Cookbook by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Vienna, 2004
* Living Internet—Internet history and related information, including information from many creators of the Internet
* First Monday peer-reviewed journal on the Internet
* How Much Does The Internet Weigh? by Stephen Cass, Discover 2007
* Rehmeyer, Julie J. 2007. Mapping a medusa: The Internet spreads its tentacles. Science News 171(June 23):387-388. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070623/fob2.asp .
* Sohn, Emily. 2006. Internet generation. Science News for Kids (Oct. 25). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20061025/Feature1.asp .
* Castells, M. 1996. Rise of the Network Society. 3 vols. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
* Castells, M. (2001), “Lessons from the History of Internet”, in “The Internet Galaxy”, Ch. 1, pp 9-35. Oxford Univ. Press.

External links

* "10 Years that changed the world" — Wired looks back at the evolution of the Internet over last 10 years
* Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
* A comprehensive history with people, concepts and quotations
* CBC Digital Archives—Inventing the Internet Age
* How the Internet Came to Be
* Internet Explained
* Global Internet Traffic Report
* The Internet Society History Page
* RFC 801, planning the TCP/IP switchover
* Archive CBC Video Circa 1990 about the Internet
* "The beginners guide to the internet."
* "Warriors of the net - A movie about the internet."
* "History of Nova Scotia-First on the Net"

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet"

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THE INTERNET DEBACLE - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW

Originally written for Performing Songwriter Magazine, May 2002

"The Internet, and downloading, are here to stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history." (Janis Ian during a live European radio interview, 9-1-98) *Please see author's note at end

When I research an article, I normally send 30 or so emails to friends and acquaintances asking for opinions and anecdotes. I usually receive 10-20 in reply. But not so on this subject! I sent 36 emails requesting opinions and facts on free music downloading from the Net. I stated that I planned to adopt the viewpoint of devil's advocate: free Internet downloads are good for the music industry and its artists.

I've received, to date, over 300 replies, every single one from someone legitimately "in the music business." What's more interesting than the emails are the phone calls. I don't know anyone at NARAS (home of the Grammy Awards), and I know Hilary Rosen (head of rhe Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA) only vaguely. Yet within 24 hours of sending my original email, I'd received two messages from Rosen and four from NARAS requesting that I call to "discuss the article."

Huh. Didn't know I was that widely read.

Ms. Rosen, to be fair, stressed that she was only interested in presenting RIAA's side of the issue, and was kind enough to send me a fair amount of statistics and documentation, including a number of focus group studies RIAA had run on the matter. However, the problem with focus groups is the same problem anthropologists have when studying peoples in the field - the moment the anthropologist's presence is known, everything changes. Hundreds of scientific studies have shown that any experimental group wants to please the examiner. For focus groups, this is particularly true. Coffee and donuts are the least of the pay-offs.

The NARAS people were a bit more pushy. They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money". Costing me money? I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet…and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing

.Am I suspicious of all this hysteria? You bet. Do I think the issue has been badly handled? Absolutely. Am I concerned about losing friends, opportunities, my 10th Grammy nomination by publishing this article? Yeah. I am. But sometimes things are just wrong, and when they're that wrong, they have to be addressed.

The premise of all this ballyhoo is that the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading. Nonsense.

Let's take it from my personal experience. My site (www.janisian.com ) gets an average of 75,000 hits a year. Not bad for someone whose last hit record was in 1975. When Napster was running full-tilt, we received about 100 hits a month from people who'd downloaded Society's Child or At Seventeen for free, then decided they wanted more information. Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they'd found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not huge sales, right? No record company is interested in 180 extra sales a year. But… that translates into $2700, which is a lot of money in my book. And that doesn't include the ones who bought the CDs in stores, or who came to my shows.

Or take author Mercedes Lackey, who occupies entire shelves in stores and libraries. As she said herself: "For the past ten years, my three "Arrows" books, which were published by DAW about 15 years ago, have been generating a nice, steady royalty check per pay-period each. A reasonable amount, for fifteen-year-old books. However... I just got the first half of my DAW royalties...And suddenly, out of nowhere, each Arrows book has paid me three times the normal amount!...And because those books have never been out of print, and have always been promoted along with the rest of the backlist, the only significant change during that pay-period was something that happened over at Baen, one of my other publishers. That was when I had my co-author Eric Flint put the first of my Baen books on the Baen Free Library site. Because I have significantly more books with DAW than with Baen, the increases showed up at DAW first.There's an increase in all of the books on that statement, actually, and what it looks like is what I'd expect to happen if a steady line of people who'd never read my stuff encountered it on the Free Library - a certain percentage of them liked it, and started to work through my backlist, beginning with the earliest books published.

"The really interesting thing is, of course, that these aren't Baen books, they're DAW---another publisher---so it's 'name loyalty' rather than 'brand loyalty.' I'll tell you what, I'm sold. Free works."

I've found that to be true myself; every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales of all the CDs go up. A lot. And I don't know about you, but as an artist with an in-print record catalogue that dates back to 1965, I'd be thrilled to see sales on my old catalogue rise.

Now, RIAA and NARAS, as well as most of the entrenched music industry, are arguing that free downloads hurt sales. (More than hurt - they're saying it's destroying the industry.) Alas, the music industry needs no outside help to destroy itself. We're doing a very adequate job of that on our own, thank you.

Here are a few statements from the RIAA's website:

1. "Analysts report that just one of the many peer-to-peer systems in operation is responsible for over 1.8 billion unauthorized downloads per month". (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002) "Sales of blank CD-R discs have…grown nearly 2 ½ times in the last two years…if just half the blank discs sold in 2001 were used to copy music, the number of burned CDs worldwide is about the same as the number of CDs sold at retail." (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002) "Music sales are already suffering from the impact…in the United States, sales decreased by more than 10% in 2001." (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)
2. "In a recent survey of music consumers, 23%…said they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free." (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)

Let's take these points one by one, but before that, let me remind you of something: the music industry had exactly the same response to the advent of reel-to-reel home tape recorders, cassettes, DATs, minidiscs, VHS, BETA, music videos ("Why buy the record when you can tape it?"), MTV, and a host of other technological advances designed to make the consumer's life easier and better. I know, because I was there.The only reason they didn't react that way publicly to the advent of CDs was because they believed CD's were uncopyable. I was told this personally by a former head of Sony marketing, when they asked me to license Between the Lines in CD format at a reduced royalty rate. ("Because it's a brand new technology.")

1. Who's to say that any of those people would have bought the CD's if the songs weren't available for free? I can't find a single study on this, one where a reputable surveyor such as Gallup actually asks people that question. I think no one's run one because everyone is afraid of the truth - most of the downloads are people who want to try an artist out, or who can't find the music in print.

And if a percentage of that 1.8 billion is because people are downloading a current hit by Britney or In Sync, who's to say it really hurt their sales? Soft statistics are easily manipulated. How many of those people went out and bought an album that had been over-played at radio for months, just because they downloaded a portion of it? Sales of blank CDs have grown? You bet. I bought a new Vaio computer in December (ironically enough, made by Sony), and now back up all my files onto CD. I go through 7-15 CD's a week that way, or about 500 a year. Most new PC's come with XP, which makes backing up to CD painless; how many people are doing what I'm doing?

2. Additionally, when I buy a new CD, I make a copy for my car, a copy for upstairs, and a copy for my partner. That's three blank discs per CD. So I alone account for around 750 blank CDs yearly. I'm sure the sales decrease had nothing to do with the economy's decrease, or a steady downward spiral in the music industry, or the garbage being pushed by record companies. Aren't you?
There were 32,000 new titles released in this country in 2001, and that's not including re-issues, DIY's , or smaller labels that don't report to SoundScan. Our "Unreleased" series, which we haven't bothered SoundScanning, sold 6,000+ copies last year. A conservative estimate would place the number of "newly available" CD's per year at 100,000. That's an awful lot of releases for an industry that's being destroyed.
And to make matters worse, we hear music everywhere, whether we want to or not; stores, amusement parks, highway rest stops. The original concept of Muzak (to be played in elevators so quietly that its soothing effect would be subliminal) has run amok. Why buy records when you can learn the entire Top 40 just by going shopping for groceries?

3. Which music consumers? College kids who can't afford to buy 10 new CDs a month, but want to hear their favorite groups? When I bought my nephews a new Backstreet Boys CD, I asked why they hadn't downloaded it instead. They patiently explained to their senile aunt that the download wouldn't give them the cool artwork, and more important, the video they could see only on the CD.

Realistically, why do most people download music? To hear new music, or records that have been deleted and are no longer available for purchase. Not to avoid paying $5 at the local used CD store, or taping it off the radio, but to hear music they can't find anywhere else. Face it - most people can't afford to spend $15.99 to experiment. That's why listening booths (which labels fought against, too) are such a success.

You can't hear new music on radio these days; I live in Nashville, "Music City USA", and we have exactly one station willing to play a non-top-40 format. On a clear day, I can even tune it in. The situation's not much better in Los Angeles or New York. College stations are sometimes bolder, but their wattage is so low that most of us can't get them.

One other major point: in the hysteria of the moment, everyone is forgetting the main way an artist becomes successful - exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, no one buys CDs, no one enables you to earn a living doing what you love. Again, from personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money. So I make the bulk of my living from live touring, playing for 80-1500 people a night, doing my own show. I spend hours each week doing press, writing articles, making sure my website tour information is up to date. Why? Because all of that gives me exposure to an audience that might not come otherwise. So when someone writes and tells me they came to my show because they'd downloaded a song and gotten curious, I am thrilled!

Who gets hurt by free downloads? Save a handful of super-successes like Celine Dion, none of us. We only get helped.

But not to hear Congress tell it. Senator Fritz Hollings, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee studying this, said "When Congress sits idly by in the face of these [file-sharing] activities, we essentially sanction the Internet as a haven for thievery", then went on to charge "over 10 million people" with stealing. [Steven Levy, Newsweek 3/11/02]. That's what we think of consumers - they're thieves, out to get something for nothing.

Baloney. Most consumers have no problem paying for entertainment. One has only to look at the success of Fictionwise.com and the few other websites offering books and music at reasonable prices to understand that. If the music industry had a shred of sense, they'd have addressed this problem seven years ago, when people like Michael Camp were trying to obtain legitimate licenses for music online. Instead, the industry-wide attitude was "It'll go away". That's the same attitude CBS Records had about rock 'n' roll when Mitch Miller was head of A&R. (And you wondered why they passed on The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.)

I don't blame the RIAA for Holling's attitude. They are, after all, the Recording Industry Association of America, formed so the labels would have a lobbying group in Washington. (In other words, they're permitted to make contributions to politicians and their parties.) But given that our industry's success is based on communication, the industry response to the Internet has been abysmal. Statements like the one above do nothing to help the cause.

Of course, communication has always been the artist's job, not the executives. That's why it's so scary when people like current NARAS president Michael Greene begin using shows like the Grammy Awards to drive their point home.

Grammy viewership hit a six-year low in 2002. Personally, I found the program so scintillating that it made me long for Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White, which at least was so bad that it was entertaining. Moves like the ridiculous Elton John-Eminem duet did little to make people want to watch again the next year. And we're not going to go into the Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning series on Greene and NARAS, where they pointed out that MusiCares has spent less than 10% of its revenue on disbursing emergency funds for people in the music industry (its primary purpose), or that Greene recorded his own album, pitched it to record executives while discussing Grammy business, then negotiated a $250,000 contract with Mercury Records for it (later withdrawn after the public flap). Or that NARAS quietly paid out at least $650,000 to settle a sexual harassment suit against him, a portion of which the non-profit Academy paid. Or that he's paid two million dollars a year, along with "perks" like his million-dollar country club membership and Mercedes. (Though it does make one wonder when he last entered a record store and bought something with his own hard-earned money.)

Let's just note that in his speech he told the viewing audience that NARAS and RIAA were, in large part, taking their stance to protect artists. He hired three teenagers to spend a couple of days doing nothing but downloading, and they managed to download "6,000 songs". Come on. For free "front-row seats" at the Grammys and an appearance on national TV, I'd download twice that amount! But…who's got time to download that many songs? Does Greene really think people out there are spending twelve hours a day downloading our music? If they are, they must be starving to death, because they're not making a living or going to school. How many of us can afford a T-1 line?

This sort of thing is indicative of the way statistics and information are being tossed around. It's dreadful to think that consumers are being asked to take responsibility for the industry's problems, which have been around far longer than the Internet. It's even worse to think that the consumer is being told they are charged with protecting us, the artists, when our own industry squanders the dollars we earn on waste and personal vendettas.

Greene went on to say that "Many of the nominees here tonight, especially the new, less-established artists, are in immediate danger of being marginalized out of our business." Right. Any "new" artist who manages to make the Grammys has millions of dollars in record company money behind them. The "real" new artists aren't people you're going to see on national TV, or hear on most radio. They're people you'll hear because someone gave you a disc, or they opened at a show you attended, or were lucky enough to be featured on NPR or another program still open to playing records that aren't already hits.

As to artists being "marginalized out of our business," the only people being marginalized out are the employees of our Enron-minded record companies, who are being fired in droves because the higher-ups are incompetent.

And it's difficult to convince an educated audience that artists and record labels are about to go down the drain because they, the consumer, are downloading music. Particularly when they're paying $50-$125 apiece for concert tickets, and $15.99 for a new CD they know costs less than a couple of dollars to manufacture and distribute.

I suspect Greene thinks of downloaders as the equivalent of an old-style television drug dealer, lurking next to playgrounds, wearing big coats and whipping them open for wide-eyed children who then purchase black market CD's at generous prices.

What's the new industry byword? Encryption. They're going to make sure no one can copy CDs, even for themselves, or download them for free. Brilliant, except that it flouts previous court decisions about blank cassettes, blank videotapes, etc. And it pisses people off.

How many of you know that many car makers are now manufacturing all their CD players to also play DVD's? or that part of the encryption record companies are using doesn't allow your store-bought CD to be played on a DVD player, because that's the same technology as your computer? And if you've had trouble playing your own self-recorded copy of O Brother Where Art Thou in the car, it's because of this lunacy.

The industry's answer is to put on the label: "This audio CD is protected against unauthorized copying. It is designed to play in standard audio CD players and computers running Windows O/S; however, playback problems may be experienced. If you experience such problems, return this disc for a refund."

Now I ask you. After three or four experiences like that, shlepping to the store to buy it, then shlepping back to return it (and you still don't have your music), who's going to bother buying CD's?

The industry has been complaining for years about the stranglehold the middle-man has on their dollars, yet they wish to do nothing to offend those middle-men. (BMG has a strict policy for artists buying their own CDs to sell at concerts - $11 per CD. They know very well that most of us lose money if we have to pay that much; the point is to keep the big record stores happy by ensuring sales go to them. What actually happens is no sales to us or the stores.) NARAS and RIAA are moaning about the little mom & pop stores being shoved out of business; no one worked harder to shove them out than our own industry, which greeted every new Tower or mega-music store with glee, and offered steep discounts to Target and WalMart et al for stocking CDs. The Internet has zero to do with store closings and lowered sales.

And for those of us with major label contracts who want some of our music available for free downloading… well, the record companies own our masters, our outtakes, even our demos, and they won't allow it. Furthermore, they own our voices for the duration of the contract, so we can't even post a live track for downloading!

If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant…a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs.
Instead, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense.

As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers? Baen Free Library is one success story. SFWA is another. The SFWA site is one of the best out there for hands-on advice to writers, featuring in depth articles about everything from agent and publisher scams, to a continuously updated series of reports on various intellectual property issues. More important, many of the science fiction writers it represents have been heavily involved in the Internet since its inception. Each year, when the science fiction community votes for the Hugo and Nebula Awards (their equivalent of the Grammys), most of the works nominated are put on the site in their entirety, allowing voters and non-voters the opportunity to peruse them. Free. If you are a member or associate (at a nominal fee), you have access to even more works. The site is also full of links to members' own web pages and on-line stories, even when they aren't nominated for anything. Reading this material, again for free, allows browsers to figure out which writers they want to find more of - and buy their books.

Wouldn't it be nice if all the records nominated for awards each year were available for free downloading, even if it were only the winners? People who hadn't bought the albums might actually listen to the singles, then go out and purchase the records.

I have no objection to Greene et al trying to protect the record labels, who are the ones fomenting this hysteria. RIAA is funded by them. NARAS is supported by them. However, I object violently to the pretense that they are in any way doing this for our benefit. If they really wanted to do something for the great majority of artists, who eke out a living against all odds, they could tackle some of the real issues facing us:

* The normal industry contract is for seven albums, with no end date, which would be considered at best indentured servitude (and at worst slavery) in any other business. In fact, it would be illegal.
* A label can shelve your project, then extend your contract by one more album because what you turned in was "commercially or artistically unacceptable". They alone determine that criteria.
* Singer-songwriters have to accept the "Controlled Composition Clause" (which dictates that they'll be paid only 75% of the rates set by Congress in publishing royalties) for any major or subsidiary label recording contract, or lose the contract. Simply put, the clause demanded by the labels provides that a) if you write your own songs, you will only be paid 3/4 of what Congress has told the record companies they must pay you, and b) if you co-write, you will use your "best efforts" to ensure that other songwriters accept the 75% rate as well. If they refuse, you must agree to make up the difference out of your share.
* Congressionally set writer/publisher royalties have risen from their 1960's high (2 cents per side) to a munificent 8 cents.Many of us began in the 50's and 60's; our records are still in release, and we're still being paid royalty rates of 2% (if anything) on them.If we're not songwriters, and not hugely successful commercially (as in platinum-plus), we don't make a dime off our recordings. Recording industry accounting procedures are right up there with films.
* Worse yet, when records go out-of-print, we don't get them back! We can't even take them to another company. Careers have been deliberately killed in this manner, with the record company refusing to release product or allow the artist to take it somewhere else.
* And because a record label "owns" your voice for the duration of the contract, you can't go somewhere else and re-record those same songs they turned down.
* And because of the re-record provision, even after your contract is over, you can't record those songs for someone else for years, and sometimes decades.
* Last but not least, America is the only country I am aware of that pays no live performance royalties to songwriters. In Europe, Japan, Australia, when you finish a show, you turn your set list in to the promoter, who files it with the appropriate organization, and then pays a small royalty per song to the writer. It costs the singer nothing, the rates are based on venue size, and it ensures that writers whose songs no longer get airplay, but are still performed widely, can continue receiving the benefit from those songs.

Additionally, we should be speaking up, and Congress should be listening. At this point they're only hearing from multi-platinum acts. What about someone like Ani Difranco, one of the most trusted voices in college entertainment today? What about those of us who live most of our lives outside the big corporate system, and who might have very different views on the subject?

There is zero evidence that material available for free online downloading is financially harming anyone. In fact, most of the hard evidence is to the contrary.

Greene and the RIAA are correct in one thing - these are times of great change in our industry. But at a time when there are arguably only four record labels left in America (Sony, AOL/Time/Warner, Universal, BMG - and where is the RICO act when we need it?) …when entire genres are glorifying the gangster mentality and losing their biggest voices to violence …when executives change positions as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor changed clothes, and "A&R" has become a euphemism for "Absent & Redundant" … well, we have other things to worry about.

It's absurd for us, as artists, to sanction - or countenance - the shutting down of something like this. It's sheer stupidity to rejoice at the Napster decision. Short-sighted, and ignorant.

Free exposure is practically a thing of the past for entertainers. Getting your record played at radio costs more money than most of us dream of ever earning. Free downloading gives a chance to every do-it-yourselfer out there. Every act that can't get signed to a major, for whatever reason, can reach literally millions of new listeners, enticing them to buy the CD and come to the concerts. Where else can a new act, or one that doesn't have a label deal, get that kind of exposure?

Please note that I am not advocating indiscriminate downloading without the artist's permission. I am not saying copyrights are meaningless. I am objecting to the RIAA spin that they are doing this to protect "the artists", and make us more money. I am annoyed that so many records I once owned are out of print, and the only place I could find them was Napster. Most of all, I'd like to see an end to the hysteria that causes a group like RIAA to spend over 45 million dollars in 2001 lobbying "on our behalf", when every record company out there is complaining that they have no money.

We'll turn into Microsoft if we're not careful, folks, insisting that any household wanting an extra copy for the car, the kids, or the portable CD player, has to go out and "license" multiple copies.

As artists, we have the ear of the masses. We have the trust of the masses. By speaking out in our concerts and in the press, we can do a great deal to damp this hysteria, and put the blame for the sad state of our industry right back where it belongs - in the laps of record companies, radio programmers, and our own apparent inability to organize ourselves in order to better our own lives - and those of our fans. If we don't take the reins, no one will.


Sources:
Baenbooks.com, BMG Records, Chicago Tribune, CNN.com, Congressional Record, Eonline.com, Grammy.com, LATimes.com, Newsweek, Radiocrow.com, RIAA.org, personal communications
* for more information on the Free Library, go to www.baen.com/library .

Read Janis' follow up to this article: FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet Debacle

This article has been revised to ensure factual accuracy.
Author's note: You are welcome to post this article on any cooperating website, or in any print magazine, provided that you include a link directed to
http://www.janisian.com
and writer's credit!

Additionally, we put our money where my mouth is. We offer songs in mp3 format for free downloading...and if we can ever afford the server space, we'll try to put a bunch of them up there at once! These are songs I own and control both the copyright and master to; you are welcome to share these files with your friends.

Want to know how your politicians are voting on these issues? Go to www.vote-smart.org/

Write to your representative and be heard on this subject!

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FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet Debacle

http://www.janisian.com/articles-perfsong/Fallout%20-%20rev%2011-23-05.pdf

I. I am out of my depth
Quite frankly, when I spent three months researching and writing The Internet
Debacle for Performing Songwriter Magazine, I wasn't planning to become part of a
"cause". I assumed that some of the magazine’s 35,000 subscribers might read it, and a
few might email me about it. I’d been writing articles for “Perfsong” since its inception,
and had never gotten more than a couple of emails in response to any of them. So I went
into it blind.
I had no idea that a scant month later, the article would be posted on over 1,000
sites, translated into nine languages, and have been featured on the BBC, in USA Today,
and a host of other press.
The article came out eight weeks ago, and once we saw the reaction, we posted it
on my own website soon after. In the past twenty days I've received over 2,200 emails
from unique senders (people who’ve never been to my site before). I've answered every
one myself, getting an education I never intended to get in the process. I've corresponded
with lawyers, high-schoolers, state representatives, executives, and hackers. And I've felt
out of my depth for a good portion of it.
I am in no way qualified to answer most of the questions I received, though I did
my best, or referred them to someone else for discussion. The issues here are much,
much bigger than I can encompass. I only wrote about downloading, record
companies,and music consumers; within a few days, I found myself trying to answer
questions like "Who owns the culture?" for myself. Length of copyright, fair use on the
web, how libraries are being affected - these are all things I hadn't given much thought to
before.
When I began researching the original article, I was undecided as to whether
downloading was wrong, but the more I researched, the more I reached the conclusions
stated in The Internet Debacle. I've had only a few weeks since the first article was
published, and I've been on the road the entire time, so I haven't had the opportunity to
research most of these questions. I want to thank Jim Burger and other attorneys and fans
who kindly sent me articles and court cases to read off-line, while I was sitting in the car
en route to the next city.
Do I still believe downloading is not harming the music industry? Yes,
absolutely. Do I think consumers, once the industry starts making product they want to
buy, will still buy, even though they can download? Yes. Water is free, but a lot of us
drink bottled water because it tastes better. You can get coffee at the office, but you're
likely to go to Starbucks or the local espresso place and bring it back to the office with
you, because that coffee tastes better. When record companies start making CD's that
offer consumers a reason to buy them, as illustrated by Kevin's email at the end of this
article, consumers will buy them. The songs may be free on line, but the CD's will taste
better.

II. My current conclusions
In an article for Newsweek, Steven Levy writes:
"So why are the record labels taking such a hard line? My guess is that it's all
about protecting their internet-challenged business model. Their profit comes from
blockbuster artists. If the industry moved to a more varied ecology, independent labels
and artists would thrive - to the detriment of the labels… The smoking gun comes from
testimony of an RIAA-backed economist who told the government fee panel that a
dramatic shakeout in Webcasting is 'inevitable and desirable because it will bring about
market consolidation'." [“Labels to Net Radio: Die Now", Steven Levy in Newsweek, July 15, 2002.]
There are, as I see it, three operative issues that explain the entertainment
industry's heavy-handed response to the concept of downloading music from the Internet:
1. Control.
The music industry is no different from any other huge corporation, be it Mobil
Oil or the Catholic church. When faced with a new technology or a new product that will
revolutionize their business, their response is predictable:
a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer who wishes to use it, and the legislators and
laws that are supposed to protect that consumer.
This is not unique to the entertainment industry. This mind-set is part of the
fabric of our daily lives. Movie companies sued consumers and hardware manufacturers
over VCR manufacturing and blank video sales, with Jack Valenti (Motion Picture
Association of America chairman) testifying to Congress that “the VCR is to the movie
industry what the Boston Strangler is to a woman alone at night” – and yet, video sales
now account for more industry profit than movies themselves!
When Semelweiss discovered that washing your hands before attending a woman
in childbirth eliminated "childbed fever", at a time when over 50% of women giving birth
in hospitals died of it, he was ridiculed by his peers, who refused to do it.
No entrenched model has ever embraced a new technology (or idea) without
suffering the attendant death throes.
2. Ennui.
The entertainment industry is still operating under laws and concepts developed
during the 1930's and 1940's, before cassettes, before boom boxes, before MP3 and filesharing
and the Internet. It's far easier to insist that all new technologies be judged under
old laws, than to craft new laws that embrace all existing technologies. It's much easier
to find a scapegoat, than to examine your own practices.
As they say, "You can't get fired for saying no."
3. The American Dream.
The promises all of us are made, tacitly or otherwise, throughout our lives as
Americans. The dream we inherit as each successive generation enters grade school -
that we will be freer than our grandparents, more successful than our parents, and build a
better world for our own children. The promises made by our textbooks, our presidents,
and our culture, throughout the course of our childhoods: Fair pay for a day's work. The
right to leave a job that doesn't satisfy, or is abusive. Freedom from indentured servitude.
The premise that every citizen is allowed a vote, and no one will ever be called "slave"
again. The promise that libraries and basic education in this country are free, and will
stay so.
These are not ideas I came up with on the spur of the moment; this is what we're
taught, by the culture we grow up in.
And of everything we are taught, one issue is always paramount - in America, it is
the people who rule. It is the people who determine the government. We elect our
legislators, so they will pass laws designed for us. We elect and pay the thousands of
judges, policemen, civil servants who implement the laws we elect our officials to pass.
It is the promise that our government supports the will of the people, and not the
will of big business, that makes this entire issue so damning - and at the same time, so
hope-inspiring.
When Disney are permitted to threaten suit against two clowns who dare to make
mice out of three balloons and call them "Mickey" as part of their show, the people are
not a part of it. When Senator Hollings accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars in
campaign contributions from entertainment conglomerates, then pretends money has
nothing to do with his stance on downloading as he calls his own constituents "thieves",
the people are not involved. When Representatives Berman and Coble introduce a bill
allowing film studios and record companies to "disable, block or otherwise impair" your
computer if they merely suspect you of file-trading, by inserting viruses and worms into
your hard drive, it is the people who are imperiled. And when the CEO of the RIAA
commends this behavior as an "innovative approach to combating the serious problem of
Internet piracy" [Hilary Rosen, in a statement quoted by Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com June 2002],
rather than admitting that it signifies a giant corporate step into a wasteland even our
government security agencies dare not enter unscathed, the people are not represented.
III. A hopeful thought
"If classroom copying is sharply curtailed, if we give someone a software patent
over basic functions, at some point the public domain will be so diminished that future
creators will be prevented from creating because they won't be able to afford the raw
materials they need. An intellectual property system has to insure that the fertile public
domain is not converted into a fallow landscape of walled private plots." [James Boyle in
the New York Times, March 31, 1996.]
I said that the research and information I've received over the past three weeks has
made me hopeful, and I meant it. Because I know that although RIAA and their
supporting companies can afford to spend 55 million dollars a year lobbying Congress
and in the courts, they cannot afford to alienate every music buyer and artist out there. At
that point, there will be a general strike, make no mistake. Just one week of people
refusing to play the radio, buy product, or support our industry in any way, would flex
muscles they have no idea are out there.
And I know that although businesses can spend unlimited dollars on campaign
funding, only the people can elect a government. I believe that to a politician, no amount
of lobbying money is worth the price of being voted out of office.
That, my friends, is why I have hope. Because I know that in America, votes
count. Because I know that if enough people understand this issue, and vote accordingly,
right will win. Legislation will be enacted that takes the will of the people into
consideration, and favors their right to learn over Disney's right to control. Internet radio,
currently in peril, will go offshore and out of the country if necessary, so audiences can
hear thousands of songs instead of a narrow playlist. The RIAA will become a small
footnote in the pages of Internet history, and the people will have triumphed - again.
IV. A modest proposal for an experiment that might lead to a solution:
"The record companies created Napster by leaving a void for Napster to
fill." [Jon Hart and Jim Burger, Wall Street Journal www.WSJ.com April 2, 2001]
1. All the record companies get together and build a single giant website,
with everything in their catalogues that's currently out of print available on it, and agree
to experiment for one year.
This could be the experiment that settles the entire downloading question once
and for all, with no danger to any of the parties involved. By using only out of print
catalogue, record companies, songwriters, publishers and singers won't be losing money;
the catalogue is just sitting in storage vaults right now. And fans can have the
opportunity to put their money where their mouths are; if most people really are willing
to pay a reasonable price for downloaded music, traffic on this site should be excellent.
If most people really are downloading from sites like Napster because there's so much
material unavailable in stores, traffic on this site should be unbelievably good.
2. The site offers only downloads in this part of the experiment.
Since all the items on my proposed site are unavailable on CD, there's no need to
invest time and money linking to sites (or building record company sites) where
consumers can buy them on a CD. This will also ensure that the experiment stays pure,
and deals with only downloading. It would also preclude artists like myself from offering
downloads of material available on CD's, skewing the results.
3. Here's where the difficult part comes in. All the record companies agree
that, for the sake of the experiment, and because these items are currently dead in the
water anyway, they're going to charge a more-than-reasonable price for each download.
By "reasonable" I'm not talking $1.50 per song; that's usurious when you can
purchase a brand-new 17-song CD for a high price of $16.99, and a low price of $12.99.
I mean something in the order of a quarter per song. I read a report recently showing
that in the heyday of Napster, if record companies had agreed to charge just a nickel a
download, they would have been splitting $500,000 a day, 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a
year.
Record companies would have to agree that there'd be no limits on how many
songs you could download, so long as you were willing to pay for each one; this is a
major reason their own sites haven't been more successful.
Keeping the rate that low would:
a) Encourage consumers to use the site, even those of us for whom
downloading with a modem is time-consuming and tedious.
b) Spread a lot of great old music around - and music, like all art,
stands on the bones of those who've gone before. One of the big problems
with so much catalogue out of print is that whole generations are growing
up never having heard the "originals", but only the clones. It's always
better to build on the real thing.
c) Do a great deal to repair the record companies' credibility in the
eyes of consumers - in fact, it could be made to look like a gift of gratitude
for all the support consumers have shown over the years! And while I
know this may not seem important to the corporate model right now, it
will become increasingly important as the world continues to shrink,
mistrust of large business grows, and more and more people go back to
"brand loyalty". If Sony are being reasonable, and BMG are not, sooner
or later the Sony brand will conquer the market, and BMG will have to fall
into line or fall out. That's capitalism at its best, isn't it?
5. Last but not least, the monies received would be portioned out fairly. I'm
no economist, but the model might read something like this:
a) The record companies would bear the brunt of the costs involved
in creating the site. There are plenty of ways for them to make money from this
experiment, whether it works or not, and the massive exposure of their out of print
catalogue, with a little attention to which albums receive the most downloads,
could create a whole new sub-industry in a short time. It's good for them to share,
and to pool their resources; if nothing else, it will stop their constant bickering for
a while.
b) A reasonable (there's that word again) amount would be deducted
off the top of each download to pay for costs. This deducted amount would not,
as is traditional, be borne completely by the artists or their heirs. It would be
shared by all parties concerned - companies, singers, writers. Limits would be put
on costs, so companies couldn't divert funds to pay their normal operating costs.
And the accounts would be published on the website monthly, open for inspection
by anyone. If you did this, they could even set up the initial experiment as a nonprofit,
and deduct the cost of putting up the site! Record companies would not be
allowed to charge for storage fees, artwork, free goods to Guam; consumers could
begin to trust them again.
c) From that point on, share and share alike. Let the record company,
the artist, the songwriters and the publishers split the take equally. Don't laugh!
The costs of that album have already been paid, no matter what they tell you, and
the only cost associated with this is putting the stuff on line, then maintaining the
site itself. And again, the stuff was just sitting in storage; they weren't expecting
any earnings from it. The songwriters, who traditionally get paid more than the
singers, would be fairly compensated and have nothing to complain about. And
the singers, for once, would be paid for the works they'd recorded.
d) In an ideal world, several different types of downloading formats
would be available - wav. files, MP3 files, Ogg Vorbis files. Maybe you'd charge
a tiny bit more for a higher sampling rate. And like the record companies, any
companies owning the software for these downloads would donate their software
for the sake of this experiment, with future terms to be negotiated later if it
succeeds.
What a great way for consumers to decide which one they like! What a
great way for software companies to prove that theirs is better!
There are all kinds of other protocols you could implement once you knew
whether this worked. For instance:
- Imagine an Internet where there's one giant music site, easily accessible to
anyone with a modem and computer. The site offers downloads at reasonable prices for
everything and anything ever recorded, and links you back either to direct sales, or to
other sites where you can purchase the music in CD, DVD, or other formats. Wouldn't
it be great to search under an artist's name and literally be able to hear everything they
ever did?
- Links could be made from the artist and their work to press articles,
streaming videos (I know, I know, but until we can all copy a stream to DVD as easily as
we can from the TV to a video, it's a non-issue), special artwork, interviews, movies,
concert footage, even guitar lessons.
Live cams could show artist's concerts, from anywhere in the world, giving fans
who can't go to Japan the opportunity to see how the concert is different there. Venues
that maintain live cams could have their own sub-websites, and charge a fraction of the
cost of going to a concert for these. They could even be coupled with tours of the
surrounding area, interviews with local fans and artists, and the like. Who knows - the
music industry might actually wind up educating an entire global generation. It won't
affect concert sales, because people who go to a concert know they're getting something
very different from sitting at home watching it on a screen. Otherwise, MTV and VH-1
would have put theaters out of business years ago.
- Last and most important, artists and consumers could feel like they were a
part of something bigger than themselves, and actually become partners with the music
industry. And that industry, instead of responding with Draconian measures and
safeguards, could feel like they were actually a part of the community - helping to further
the artistic and intellectual resources of this country, and of the world.
America has always exported its culture; that's our number one route into the
hearts of the rest of the world. Instead of shutting that down, let's run with the new
model, and be the first and the best at it. It's a brave new world out there, and
somebody's going to grab it.
And now, on to the fun stuff:
Emails received on this subject: 1,268 as of July 30, 2003 (does not include
message board posts)
Number of times the article has been translated into other languages: 9. (French,
German, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Yugoslavian.)
Times AOL shut my account down for spamming, because I was trying to answer
40-50 emails at a time quickly and efficiently: 2
Winner of the Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is award: Me. We began
putting up free downloads around a week after the article came out.
Change in merchandise sales after article posting (previous sales averaged over
one year): Up 25%
Change in merchandise sales after beginning offering free downloads: Up 300%
Offers of server space to store downloads: 31
Offers to help me convert to Linux: 16
Offers to help convert our download files from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis: 9
Offers to publish a book expose of the music industry I should write: 5
Offers to publish a book expose of my life I should write: 3
Offers to ghost-write a book expose of my life I shouldn't write: 2
Offers of marriage: 1
Number of emails disagreeing with my position: 9
Number of people who reconsidered their disagreement after further discussion: 5
Interesting things about the emails: All but 3 were coherent. Of those, one only
seemed to be incoherent, but was in fact written by someone who spoke no English, and
used Babblefish.com as a translator. (Sample: "I love your articles and play your music
for my babies" became "I love babies and want to touch your articles.")
Silliest email: A disagreeing songwriter who said he was going to download all
my songs, burn them to CD's, and give them away to all his friends. Thank you!
Biggest irony: I'm writing this on a Sony Vaio laptop that came with my first
ever CD burner, and easy instructions on how to copy a CD or download a file.
And from the emails:
"Several years ago the music industry reached an agreement with CD
manufacturers to receive a royalty on blank, recordable CD's to compensate for the
effects of copying music.. the recording industry is receiving a royalty for the "Audio"
CD so that it can be used for copying music, taking the money, and then turning around
and complaining that the CD is being used to make "unauthorized" copies. Now what is
up with that? make up your mind!" (bohannon)
"…America On Line became so prominent by sending out CDs of their product
via direct mail. Their growth rate quickly exceeded the capacity of their infrastructure,
but that problem does not affect the music industry: they have the infrastructure. Why in
the world do they not sign more small artists to a one-record deal, with "first-dibs" rights
guaranteed to the record companies, for a comparatively small fee to the artist for the first
record? They could send out CDs just the way AOL does, except with maybe 20 cuts per
CD, of different artists, mailed quarterly? Eighty good artists per year, in your mailbox.
If only one catches fire, the record company exercises their "first dibs" option, the artists
can't bolt to a different label, and they get signed for a more standard record deal.
Anyone who doesn't catch on gets dropped after one CD… at least they got a shot.
Would the cost of this positive publicity really be any more than the cost of fighting file
sharing?" (henry1)
"…they should take a tip from the movie industry and modern DVDs, which so
overload the consumer with clear and compelling value that even those who wouldn't bat
an eye about downloading a CD and not paying for it…have no motivation to spend
dozens of hours downloading and piecing together all the value and quality available in a
$25 DVD. I've bought DVDs for $20 where the movie was the tip of the iceberg--music
tracks, documentaries, interactive presentations, audio tracks, stills, screen tests, and on
and on….They can fight with compelling value--whether it's built in videos, computer
games, free tickets, unique passwords to go download bonus tracks, demo tracks and
dance mixes…karaoke tracks for each song, alternate vocal takes…Who could, or would,
want to spend the time reproducing all that via downloading? As long as the consumer
experience of a music CD can be duplicated with an hour or two of downloading and a
quick burn to CD, they aren't going to convince anybody who might actually buy the CDs
(but aren't, because they can download them) to do so…Rather than do things to alienate
the current base of consumers that regularly buy their product, they should focus on
adding value to their product." (kevin)
A final note:
Our representatives are not in Congress or the Senate because they want to make a
better living. They're there because they want power, and influence. Without the office,
they have neither.
If they believe their actions will cause large amounts of the population to vote
against them, no amount of money will be sufficient to buy their cooperation. If you let
your representatives know, en masse, that you will not vote for them if they support
ridiculous measures such as the bill allowing media companies to spread viruses on the
computer of anyone "suspected" of file-sharing, and if enough of you tell them so, they
will NOT work hand in glove with the RIAA.
We cannot possibly match the monies the record companies can devote to
litigation, but we CAN threaten to vote those representatives who are in bed with them
out of office. And ultimately, it's the votes they care about.
Shortly after “The Internet Debacle” and “Fallout” were published, iTunes was
announced. The success of iTunes has more than justified the stance taken in both of
these articles.
In an article she wrote, Hilary Rosen speculated that Janis Ian wrote “The
Internet Debacle” in order to gain publicity for her new album. However, no new Janis
Ian album was in the works, let alone about to be released. The next Janis Ian album
was not released until August 2003, a full year after the article first appeared.
You are welcome to post this article on any cooperating website, or in any print
magazine, although we request that you include a link directed to
http://www.janisian.com and give Janis Ian writer's credit!
Want to know how your politicians are voting on these issues? Go to
http://www.vote-smart.org/

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