Internet Essay, Research Paper

I am taking this time to address the importance of why monitoring the use of the Internet is important. To begin with, without question, the Internet is one of the greatest technological advances. That?s why nearly all businesses have them co-insiding with the ever growing sale of personal computers, laptops, (50) and even e-pagers, it just made the world a smaller place. To have a business in small-town USA and have access to the information highway can give you unlimited potential.

Here comes a little history on the Internet. I felt it was important to know where it came from (100) and why. In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The object was to develop communication protocols, which would allow networked computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked computers. This Internetting project (150) and the system of networks, which emerged from the research, was known as the ?Internet?. A great deal of support for the Internet community has come from the U.S. Federal Government, since the Internet was originally part of a federally funded research program and, subsequently, has become a major (200) part of the U.S. research infrastructure. During the late 80?s, however, the population of the Internet users and constituents expanded internationally and began to include commercial facilities. Indeed, the bulk of the system today is made up of private networking facilities in educational and research institutions, businesses and in government (250) organizations across the globe. Now you know how this wonderful tool was created. The Internet was created by the US Government by using simple wires to connect groups of computers. These computers usually had similar functions and getting rid of the need to copy everything to some portable data storage (300) device like floppy?s was the number #1 priority. Of course back in the day there was the obsolete 5 ?? disks which held only about 685 KB of information.

Monitoring the Internet is really a challenging task. Take for instance school computers such as the ones they have in the library. The (350) only true way is to have someone else physically there to monitor it. The TeleCommunications Act of 1996, which included The Communications Decency Act (CDA), was the first bill to try and protect Americans kids online. However, it caused a public outcry for breaking the First and Fifth Amendments. In (400) the Supreme Court case, Reno vs. ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), was found to be in violation of the First Amendment because it falls to clearly define the term ?indecent?. It found that ?The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit (450) of censorship?. The Supreme Court refused to address any Fifth Amendment issues. Students in public school have the right to free speech and expression, so long as the exercise of those rights would not materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school however, courts have recognized that (500) a school may impose reasonable regulations with the respect to time, place, and manner in which students and student organizations may conduct their speech related activities. In addition, the First Amendment does not protect student speech that is vulgar, lewd, obscene, or plainly offensive. School officials may under certain circumstances, (550) constitutionally limit a students expression. For example back in the day I remember saluting the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. It was a short time later that simple one minute a day act was held unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sure you can waste money and purchase (600) filtering devices and hope they sort out the good sites from the bad sites. But honestly that?s impossible here?s why. The Internet provides resources for students and teachers without bias points of view. It is one of the few places one of the few places where we can gain access (650) to history written by both the ?winners? and ?losers? and can see how the history of one nation differs according to who is doing the writing. Say your doing a report on ?Clothing Styles In The Year 2000?, go to any major search engine such as Yahoo and type in (700) the word ?Style? or even ?Clothes? as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow you get hundreds of hits. Up to 10% will be bad links or sites shut down. Probably another 10% will be some sort of adult web site, 20% to 30% will be repeats which leaves (750) around half of them choose from. The filtering software you buy could block some of the sites if you typed them in the address block. But you found them in ?Yahoo? a site that wasn?t blocked? See what I mean it can?t be done with that avenue of approach. Even (800) if you right click on ?Internet Explorer? go to properties and hit the second tab ?security? and manually set the settings that way. Someone behind you always knows more about computers and changes it back. So what is safe? If your running Windows like everybody else in your ?start? menu (850) there should be a link called ?Windows Update? or something close to that. On that site Microsoft scans your whole computer and tells you what software is available for updating. I would have to say that?s safe, during that time there is no chance of copying your hard drive, but (900) who knows maybe they copy the name of all your files on your computer? That doesn?t take long at all, but I doubt it happens thousands go there daily and what would Microsoft do with all that information anyway?

So how important is monitoring Internet use? I would have to (950) say very. Who knows how many work hours are lost due to unnecessary surfing and games being played on the computer. One reason is speed. Most schools and businesses are on a network and somewhere tucked away in some room is a large server. Why surf and download files at (1000+) home on your 56K modem when you can do it at work on a T1 or T3 modem which is anywhere around 10 to a 100 times faster. It is up to the individual user to monitor himself along with some sort of work and school policies to enforce them.