Running head: History of the Internet

History of the Internet

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J.C.R Licklider was the first to suggest the concept of a global computers network in the early 1960’s. The main goal was to facilitate the exchange of crucial information in science and by the defense department. Leonard Kleinrock came up with the concept of packet switching that became the building block of Internet connections. Lawrence Roberts succeeded in forming a dial up connection over phone lines of two computers. This implied that wide area networking was possible. In 1969, ARPA created a network of several institutions and companies.

Ray Tomlinson of BBN adapted e mail for ARPANET. The publishing of the ftp protocol as a request for comments took place in 1973 giving more access. The defense department adopted TCP/IP protocol in 1980 and by 1983 it was universal. BITNET formed links between IBM frameworks providing mail services within learning institutions. Listserv and NSFNet were used in connecting BITNET to the main internet framework (J. R. Okin, 2005).

By the late eighties internet were simplified and many more people had access. Indexing tools such as Archie, hytelnet and hywebcat were developed. The Mosaic and the Wide Area Information Servers were developed. The gopher was a major breakthrough and very popular. Its efficiency was enhanced by developing a search menu called veronica within the gopher. In 1989 a protocol called World Wide Web which would operate on hyper text developed. The development of the graphic and internet explorers led to the personalized form of internet that leads in boosting communication and commerce today.

There has been a revolution in pursuit of the ultimate programming language from the earliest versions of FORTRAN, COBOL, AGOL, SNOBOL, BASIC, Design System Language, Prolog, Pascal, PostScript, Smalltalk and Dylan to their improved versions. C++ in 1983 and Java was a major leap. Currently newer versions of PHP, RUBY Java and Python, Tel/Tk and ADA dominate the market (Thomas J. Bergin, 1996).

Internet has brought about the ability to download music from other people via chat rooms or even through specially set sites. In 1999 a group of major music companies sued Napster on charges of infringing on copyright law by allowing people to download music files without paying. It had a very large clientele of up to 60 million. The court demanded it to be shut down. After an appeal, it reopened as a legitimate site where people would pay to share music. As expected it lost most of its registered users. The ‘1992 Audio Home Recording Act’ allows an individual to produce a copy of music that is protected by copyright but only for personal use. After Napster was shut down as a free music sharing site, other sites like Audio galaxy, Kazaa, LimeWire, Morpheus, Gnutella and scour are still operating although none of them has achieved the popularity that napster had.

Abuse of copyright laws is illegal. These laws have been put in place so as to protect the rights of artists and the companies which invest in the production, marketing and selling of the records. If such companies like napster are allowed to operate within this boundless terrain, the music industry is likely to shut down as a whole.

Napster could have come up with better strategies to ensure that both the artists and their users remain satisfied. There are several websites that have been set up to promote the work of budding musicians like throttle box that still protect the artists rights by compiling the music into formats that require specific software to play. By adapting such a policy it would dissuade people from downloading music from the site. Alternatively it could reformulate its strategies to allow its users to listen to the music as often as possible but not to download it. Napster could also have spearheaded the licensing issue before the lawsuit with the music producers. This would have ensured that the artists got their royalties and napsters’ doors remained open to their clients

References

Thomas J. Bergin, Richard G. Gibson, (1996), History of Programming Languages II, Boston, Addison-Wesley.

J. R. Okin, (2005), The Internet Revolution: The Not-for-dummies Guide to the History, Technology, And Use of the Internet, New Jersey, Ironbound Press.