The Internet is Very Big
The Internet is Very Big
  • archivist
  • 승인 2007.05.14 11:54
  • 댓글 0
이 기사를 공유합니다

There are elements of the Korean government that have considered passing laws, or creating regulations, or doing something to control user-created content accessible on the Internet. This is done for the seemingly altruistic reasons of protecting the country's children from undesirable influences. However, there is one inescapable fact about the Internet that is difficult for many people to comprehend that might make this extremely difficult. The consequences of this one fact are very farreaching and affect cultures, governments, and people all over the world.

The Internet is big. It is very big. It is, in fact, on par with any other created organization on the face of the planet. The latest 2007 user estimates for the Internet number around 1.14 billion people. It directly touches almost as many people as the largest government in the world, China, which governs 1.3 billion citizens. Its decentralized structure includes as many, or possibly more, participants than Islam, which includes approximately 1.1 billion adherents. The most popular language in the world is Mandarin, with approximately 1 billion speakers, but more people are online.

There are, of course, a number of farreaching consequences of such a large decentralized network, but the most important one is that such a large thing is entirely impossible to control. Despite the best efforts of governments great and small, the Internet is still a largely unregulated body.

One recent example involves a symphony of Web 2.0 technologies used by a million different Internet users to spread information about hexadecimal number sequence. The hexadecimal number 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5- 63-56-88-C0 was posted on an innocuous blog which explained how to use it to decrypt and watch HD-DVD movies when using Linux. It seemed to be used to bypass the inherent copy protection on all HD-DVD disks.

The blog post was submitted to digg.com, another Web 2.0 phenomenon which shares interesting links across the Internet with other users, where it quickly gained popularity enough to show up on the front page. However, the story was soon deleted from digg.com, when stories are not usually deleted, without any explanation.

The next morning the number was all over digg.com as users submitted stories about the number again and again.

The administrators of the popular web site were unable to delete the articles fast enough. In a mob frenzy, thousands or perhaps millions of people were posting the sequence all over the Internet in a virtual protest.

In time it came to light that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had contacted digg.com and claimed a copyright on the number, and asked them to remove it. However, they were unable to delete stories about the number before someone made a t-shirt with the number on it.

When trying to block the spread of one number sequence is so difficult for a large and very well connected corporate association to control, it is difficult to think that individual governments would have more success in controlling Internet content. The Korean government, while admirable in its desire to protect Korean children from dangerous Internet information, will probably also meet with limited, and ultimately futile, success. It should stop trying to be like its northern neighbors China and North Korea and stop the hopeless act of trying to control the Internet.


댓글삭제
삭제한 댓글은 다시 복구할 수 없습니다.
그래도 삭제하시겠습니까?
댓글 0
댓글쓰기
계정을 선택하시면 로그인·계정인증을 통해
댓글을 남기실 수 있습니다.

  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT US
  • SIGN UP MEMBERSHIP
  • RSS
  • 2-D 678, National Assembly-daero, 36-gil, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, Korea (Postal code: 07257)
  • URL: www.koreaittimes.com | Editorial Div: 82-2-578- 0434 / 82-10-2442-9446 | North America Dept: 070-7008-0005 | Email: info@koreaittimes.com
  • Publisher and Editor in Chief: Monica Younsoo Chung | Chief Editorial Writer: Hyoung Joong Kim | Editor: Yeon Jin Jung
  • Juvenile Protection Manager: Choul Woong Yeon
  • Masthead: Korea IT Times. Copyright(C) Korea IT Times, All rights reserved.
ND소프트