According to ABC News, protests over the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, have led to numerous popular websites, including user-generated online encyclopedia giant Wikipedia, being "blacked out" on Wednesday. Visitors to these sites are encouraged to contact their legislators and urge them to vote against SOPA.
The Stop Online Piracy Act is supposed to increase government authority to shut down websites that feature content that violates copyright laws, such as pirated music, movies, and other forms of digital media. Supporters of SOPA include publishers of such digital media, including movie studios, record labels, and some online publishers. Critics of SOPA claim that the proposed legislation is heavy-handed and amounts to censorship, essentially going against what the Internet was supposed to be in the first place: an open forum.
Here is a look at the rapidly-evolving role of the Internet in American, and global, society:
- According to computerhistory.org, the groundwork for the Internet was laid in 1962 when computer scientists first had the idea for a network of interconnected computers that could access programs and data from any site.
- In 1963, the universal standard for computer communication, in the form of ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters, is created, allowing computers to exchange data.
- In 1965, the first computer small enough to sit on a desktop sells for $18,000, beginning the desktop computer revolution.
- On October 29, 1969, the first host-to-host computer network connection is made between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute.
- In 1972 a precursor of the Internet, known as ARPANET, is publicly demonstrated at the International Conference on Computer Communication in Washington, DC.
- In 1976 the first modern supercomputer, the CRAY-1, is demonstrated. Researchers immediately want to be able to access it over networks.
- By 1979 clients can dial into a server and forward various postings in Newsgroups, similar to today's user-generated content.
- In 1981 the IBM PC is launched, revolutionizing personal computing.
- Domain names are created in 1984, including the now-common .com, .gov, .mil, .edu, .org, and .net.
- By 1986 censorship of the Internet has begun when newsgroup named like "alt.sex" and "alt.drugs" are not allowed.
- In 1988 commercial e-mail on the Internet begins.
- The World Wide Web is proposed in 1989, allowing the various Internet networks to work across different operating systems. ARPANET shuts down the following year.
- In 1992 the number of Internet-connected computers passes 1,000,000.
- According to internetworldstats.com, Internet use almost quintupled between 2000 and 2011, with more than half the population in North America (78 percent), Oceania/Australia (60 percent), and Europe (58 percent) online as of March 31, 2011. As of that date, almost 2.1 billion people worldwide had Internet access.
- In 20 years, therefore, between 1992 and 2012, Internet usage has grown from several million (at most) to over 2,100 million.
2 comments