Kristoffer's thoughts on the Internet.
(2001-01-03 - Update 2002-02-25)

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Don't you agree?
I have been doing the Internet thing for over 9years now, and being webmaster of several sites I enjoy the freedom and flexibility the Internet offers. But let's face it - Internet is only as fun, useful and dangerous as we make it. There is no abstract force or thing out there which is called the Internet. All it is is a bunch of computers hooked up through cables exchanging ones and zeros. The ones that really make the Internet happen, the ones who really are responsible for everything here is ... well, everybody!

Several things during the past weeks have made me wonder what people really think Internet is.
Sure it can be used for bad things - neo-nazi recruitment, bombmaking, terrorist activities, pedophiles/sex offenders, prostitution, stalking, privacy violations (for example fansites that post a bit too much about some people) to name the ones that have been occuring during the last month.
But how many of them can you really blame on the Internet? As far as I know - not a single one of them!
For most of it to happen you have to have the fundamental needs for capitalism - "supply" and "demand".
The Internet is only a medium, nothing more and nothing less. What people decide to post on the Internet and what other people decide to read is completely irrelevant to where or how it happens.

For example - I got a question recently about us (as in "Natalie Portman"-fans) posting a bit too much info on her, didn't we encourage invasion of privacy or stalkers by doing that? NO! We only post what information Ms. Portman or her agency has made public and even though we might know everything from her home address to her bra-size we wouldn't post it so therefor I don't think we are either invading her privacy or encouraging stalkers. But there are always exceptions - there will be sites that don't know the meaning of the words "good judgement" and posts more info (like her real name).

Another example - In early December a high ranking swedish businessman went to the states to engage in sexual activities with what he thought was a 14 year old (YOUNG!) girl that he had communicated with through the Internet. Fortunately the 14 year old girl was in fact a female police officer that arrested his sorry ass, and right away "Internet" was to be blamed. Because without Internet he would never have met this "girl".

Third example - some experimental teenagers find a recipe for a bomb on the Internet and thinks "Cool!" and tries to build it. It explodes, killing one and maiming the other one.

Can the Internet be blamed for anyone of these examples? Absolutely not.
It is the people, you and me, who post things here that are responsible for the content of it, and it is the people, you and me, who read the stuff and decides what to do it! Just because I know where Ms. Portman lives doesn't mean I have to go and stalk her, just because I meet some fun 14 year old chick on ICQ doesn't mean I need to have sex with her and just because I find a recipe for cookies doesn't mean I have to bake them.

Back in the 30's, the Nazi's realised the power of television and movies as means for propaganda and they started making awful, factually incorrect propaganda movies. And it worked. But can you blame the TV set, or the movie, for the content or the following tragedy? No!

Naturally we (as in Webmasters) do have a responsiblity of using good judgment when posting things on the Internet. We have to take some responsibility for what we do put out here.
Why some people's morales are so screwed up that they think it is a good idea to post personal info, pedophile adds or a bomb recipe is not an Internet problem, it's a social problem that I think goes back to all that "how a person was raised" and what environment a person ends up in.

I read an interesting article comparing legislating the Internet to legislating guncontrol (which is a major issue in the states, and being pacifist I'm all for strict gun control!).
By the same reasoning I've used here, the guns are not to be blamed for what people do with them. For example, the guy that went into his office in Boston and killed 7 of his coworkers is to be held responsible for what happened, not the store that sold him the gun. But the big, in fact HUGE, difference between the Internet and guns is that guns were created for one purpose only - to kill people.
The Internet was created to help the sharing of information between schools.
So legislating guncontrol is not the same thing at all. (Did you know that during last year we had a total of 4 gun related deaths in sweden, while in the states there was 12.000!)
(I say again - Internet was created for schools. The Internet is however based on ArpaNet which was a military network designed to be operational even if critical systems was knocked out)

I'd rather live with an Internet that is totally free, with the above mentioned drawbacks, than an Internet regulated by... there is another interesting notion, who would and could control the Internet?
Right now, the only ones held responsible for what's posted on the WWW and newsgroups is the company responsible for the actual server. This is not practically possible. There is no way any server administrator can go through all hundreds or thousands of pages on their servers. And considering some of them are updated constantly, it would be an ongoing process. And that's just WWW and newsgroups, are they also suppose to check through your mail to make sure you're not a pedophile or something? And what about ICQ?!

Another problem with legislating the Internet is that there is no country in the world that can do it. Every law passed in one country is useless since it would only result in the webpage to be transferred abroad.
For example, this page is located in the states, but all the copyrighted material is linked and located in Great Britain. And I'm living in sweden. So if anyone did find anything that might be illegal here, who's laws would decide what?
The only organization in the world with the possibility of legislating the Internet is the U.N. Problem is, they are so slow and bureaucratic it wouldn't be practically possible either since the technology is everchanging.

/ Kristoffer Strom