Web Round-Up W/E 24/10/97

As the web weaves itself ever farther into our private and working lives it may begin to struggle to sustain the weight of its own traffic. The latest Internet User Profile Survey published by NOP Research Group shows that one in twenty-five UK households now has Internet access; the number has risen from 400,000 in June 1996 to 960,000 a year later. Of those surveyed a very small percentage said they intended to stop using the Net in the future. The burgeoning vessel for information that the Internet has become isn’t, worryingly, what it was designed for. The Internet was intended as a means of exchanging electronic mail and documents between individuals and not, as it is now, as a medium for mass information and entertainment. Traffic on the backbone of the Internet is doubling every hundred days according to service provider UUNet Technologies.

One possible solution to this problem has been put forward by Nortel and Norweb Communications which has proposed a twenty-four hour (no logging on and off) Internet access system delivered through electricity powerlines. This system is able to deliver data at 1 megabit/second (about thirty times faster than a telephone modem). There appears to now be a flurry of Internet carrying methods including ISDN digital lines, satellite, cable and powerlines.

…So assuming everyone gets access to Webland what are likely to find on it? Well, porn certainly. A vast proportion of the Web is currently used to access pornographic material and such sites are often unintentionally retrieved through the use of innocuous search terms. The EU wants to act on this but is not sure what to do about it. In an attempt to remove ‘dangerous’ material from the Net, particularly in order to protect children, the European Parliament has broached the perennially thorny problem of freedom of speech. A recent study has declared that it is technically possible to restrict offensive Internet material but the most effective method would demand “completely unacceptable” personal surveillance, limits to freedom of speech and to free trade. The solution at present seems to be the often ineffective use of ratings (as with films) or age checking services.

…And to wrap it up a few Netbites:

• Computer giant Microsoft is being fined $1m a day by the US Justice Department which believes that Microsoft is forcing personal computer manufacturers to licence Microsoft Internet Explorer by illegally ‘bundling’ the product in with Windows ’95.
• For university undergraduates cigars are in and alcopops are out according to 4-D (http://www.4-d.co.uk), an Internet magazine for students created by the publishers of The Times. I knew this all along.