Internet Or More Specifically The World Web

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

technological achievement of the last fifty years. The Web has allowed people from all over the

world to communicate and share information in a scale that has never been seen before. Not since the

invention of the phone has there been such a monumental shift in how people relate and communicate

with one another. Thanks to the the Web there there are currently a whole bunch of new and better ways

to to do banking, to do research, to find people, and to work. New ways to enjoy all kinds of media,

from music to movies, to books and to everything in between have also emerged thanks to the Internet.

Even the way people is educating themselves are starting to change thanks to the Web.

The internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects

networking devices via a variety of languages known as protocols. Each of these device are what are

known as 'hosts' in networking jargon. People may have a computer network at their work, at their

school or even at their house. These networks are often connected to each other in different

configurations, which is how groupings such as local area networks (LANs) which are network of

computers in a limited area, and regional networks which are networks spanning a given region of a

country tend to work. The World Wide Web, on the other hand, is the system that is used to access the

Internet. �The Web is a set of hyperlinked documents and texts [on] the [world's different networks,

also called] the Internet� (Han 18). The Web allows people all over the world to share information and

opinions.

People typically access the Web through browsers, like Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. By using

browser like these, navigation of these hyperlink text and documents is possible, this practice is known

as 'surfing'. Another way to think about it is that �the Web is one way of experiencing the Internet�

(Han 19). The World Wide Web bring the internet to life.

The creation of the Web has created a a new way to disseminate culture and also to bring

development to people's personal political interests. The Internet for example was crucial for the social

mobilization of the revolutionary wave collectively known as The Arab Spring. The Arab Spring was

the democratic uprisings that arose independently and spread across the Arab world in 2011. This

movement originated in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly took hold in Egypt, Libya, Syria,

Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan . There isn't any specific reason why he Arab spring

happened. The Arab spring was a reaction that was bound to happen because of perceived injustices.

Wide income gaps, exaggerated demonstrations of policing and surveillance, unemployment and lack

of democratic institutions, seem to be a few of the factors that ignited the Arab spring though (Pundak

113).

To this day the impact and results of the Arab spring are still being debated. One thing that can't

be denied though is the role that today's social media, particularly the the Internet, played in these

events. Thanks to the Internet, which allowed the free access to information and communication, and

the distribution of different types of media, like images and videos, the Arab spring was able to get the

international attention it rightly deserved.

The internet has its share of evils too. Because of the way the internet works, because it allows

the free flow of information, new black markets dealing with all kind of products and services, ill

gotten and otherwise have surfaced.

Six percent of the U.S. Gross national product are supported by intellectual property laws yet

twenty four percent of all internet traffic in the world is infringing on these laws (Congressional Digest

258). It is very hard to quantify just how big of a problem is the piracy problem in a economy-wide

scale. Still, according to the Government Accountability Office, it is a very serious problem

(Congressional Digest 258). The buying and selling of drugs and guns on what is known as the

Dark Web is another problem. The Dark Web is a part of the Deep Web. The Dark Web is a hidden,

private networks hosting sites that normal search engines like Google can't find. Within this web,

hitmen, or people identifying as such, �advertise their services, hackers can be hired to attack an

enemy's computer and pornographic images� (Ornsby 9), most of often child pornography, can be

downloaded. �Online markets for explosives, fake passports, entire new identities, counterfeit cash and

fake diplomas� (Ornsby 9) can be found In these places. Even money laundering services created by

abusing the virtual online currency known as Bitcoins are known to exist. Freedom of speech is

absolute and unconstrained in these sites. This Dark Web, again, can only be found through encrypted

private networks, unknown by many and accessed by few (Ornsby 9).

The Web today, is facing the possibility of regulation on a scale like never before. Legislation

like PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of

Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and The Cyber Intelligence Sharing

and Protection Act (CISPA) have been proposed to stop the well known problems of piracy and

security that have always plagued the internet ( Congressional Digest 258; Ornsby 9). These proposals

as well intentioned as they surely are, are a little misguided and heavy handed in their attempts to stop

these illegal activities. SOPA and PIPA were created to combat piracy specifically. SOPA combat

piracy by allowing the requesting of court orders to stop advertising networks from doing business

with offending websites, and search engines from linking to the websites, and court orders

requiring ISPs to stop people from accessing the websites (House Judiciary Committee, Stop

Online Piracy Act 14). PIPA on the other hand a is a proposed law with the goal of giving the US

government and copyright holders extra means to disallow access to illegal websites dedicated to the

sale of pirated media, especially those that exist outside the U.S. An example of this is that a search

engine, such as Google, would be ordered to remove or disable access to an Internet site associated

with copyright infringement and to remove a hypertext link to such Internet site. (House Judiciary

Committee, PROTECT IP Act of 2011 11). SOPA and PIPA would impact free speech in a very strong

manner. Both of these acts for example do not target just foreign rogue sites, they extends to domestic

websites that merely facilitate or enable infringement (House Judiciary Committee, Stop Online Piracy

Act 25; House Judiciary Committee, PROTECT IP Act of 2011 3 ). This would mean that legitimate

sites such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, that should be mentioned, already do a very good job at

policing themselves (Adler 236-237), would be affected in such a manner that competition, innovation

and even the creativity among its user would be stifled in such a way as to make them infective and

worthless. SOPA and PIPA also swing the balance of power even more to the side of the ISPs (Internet

service providers). The U.S. already has laws (The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement

Act or CALEA), that allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to monitor some or all of the

information transmitted by the ISPs. These ISPs already take very strong measures against illegal

activities concerning copyright infringement. They are actually quite good at this presently (Morozov

106-107, 219, 225). To say that SOPA and PIPA are detrimental to the health and growth of the

Internet, wouldn't be an exaggeration. CISPA is arguably even more detrimental to the Internet than

SOPA and PIPA. CISPA is in the most simple of terms a proposed law that allows the US government

to monitor and censor information that is considered a cyber threat. CISPA also lets the �intelligence

community to share information with private-sector entities�. CISPA, amends the title IX of the

National Security Act of 1947 by adding a �cyber threat intelligence and information sharing'� section.

The people that can see this information are those that have the proper security clearance and that are

part of a certified entity, or any government department or agency dedicated to the protection of the

national security of the US like the the Department of Homeland Security (House Rules Committee,

Cyber Intelligence Security Act 1-3, 5-6). This student has issues with CISPA he believes that

it contains very few limits on how and when the government may monitor a private individual�s

Internet browsing information and that it's also overreaching and redundant (House Rules Committee,

Cyber Intelligence Security Act 9-11). There already exists the PATRIOT act, and the CALEA to

combat the issues that CISPA tries to address (Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act,

FCC). It also overrides privacy, wiretap, and surveillance laws that are already on the books

(House Rules Committee, Cyber Intelligence Security Act 7). That is way too bloated and expensive

not to mention that it's a clear violation of our privacy, civil liberties and consumer protections.

Another point that is not talked about these laws is what action the criminals that break these

laws would take. Most hackers, pirates, perverts and dealers, that break these laws don't do their

activities in the surface Web. They do these activities in the Dark Web. By clamping down on sites in

the surface Web, the authorities force the people that deal on the surfaced web to do their dealings on

the Dark Web (Adler 232). The inaccessibility and the concealed aspect of the Dark Web would create

another slew of issues for the Government to tackle. These issues are mostly rise from the fact that

the Dark Web is not well known understood because it is by all means a part of what is know as the

Deep Web,which is way to big for normal search engine crawling software to retrieve. According to

Michael K. Bergman's of Brightplanet.com, The largest harvester of Deep Web data commercially

available, The Deep Web is 400 to 550 times bigger than what is known as the surface Web. The Deep

Web contains 7,500 terabytes of information. The Deep Web contains 550 billion individual documents

compared to the one billion of the surface web. Sixty of the biggest Deep Web sites collectively

contain 750 terabytes of information, sufficient by themselves to exceed the size of the surface Web

forty times, The Deep Web is also largest category of new information on the whole Internet. Facebook

and similar. Money should be invested instead in technology capable of entering the Deep Web which

harbors the Dark Web. As it has already been mentioned, the Deep Web is where the truly dangerous

Internet criminals make their stand. Having said this, the government, if it decides to tackle the Deep

Web, it should be wary of how and how much, to regulate it, because the Deep Web is the

greatest, most complete library of information in the history of man. It should be preserved as intact as

possible.