In The News

One of the Worst Assaults Ever

October 24, 2002
One of the worst attacks on the internet ever recorded shut down seven of the 13 root servers that undergird internet service. The attack lasted for an hour on the servers that control domain names. However, most internet users were unaware of the attack as the slack from the seven effected servers was taken up by the remaining four. Two other servers were impaired. The US Federal Bureau of...

Guerilla Warfare, Waged With Code

Jennifer Lee October 10, 2002
Computer programmers around the world have joined together to ensure global internet freedom. Concentrating most recently on China, which has the third largest online population, “hacktivists” program ways to get around government firewalls and to allow viewing of traditionally government-censored information. The activists also have begun work in Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia by...

Music Industry in Global Fight on Web Copies

Amy Harmon October 7, 2002
For a while, Napster was the darling of music-swapping college students and the bane of American entertainment industry officials. Litigation in US courts effectively bankrupted the company a year ago, but now a new multi-national file exchange service may be taking Napster's place - in popularity, and in US courtrooms. Already counting millions of users around the globe, KaZaA:geography...

…And Click Here for China

Erik Eckholm August 4, 2002
Though the Chinese government is notorious for keeping tabs on the information its citizens can access, it is having a harder time now that the Internet’s popularity has surged in recent years. Surfing the web is cheap and fast at any of 200,000 cyber cafes around the country. Though many anticipated that the Internet would be primarily a forum for dissidents and a force for political change,...

Cybercafe Crackdown May Trip up Leering Boys

Ian Fisher August 1, 2002
In the name of fighting terrorism, the Government of Pakistan has imposed new regulations that would keep track of cybercafe users. The new rules require cybercafes to register with the government and to ask every customer for proof of identity so as to track terrorists and deny them access to public computers. However, like the rest of the world, porn sites, email accounts and chat sites are...

Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp

Jennifer Lee July 25, 2002
The stories about two people ‘meeting’ over the internet (and later falling in love) are countless and even old. Scandals and tragedies over personal information being disclosed without one’s approval, however, are beginning to alarm people. Search engines like Google and Altavista, portals through which over 3 billion pages can be accessed, yield thousands of results upon typing in a person’s...

Falungong’s Signals of Defiance of China

Jason Leow July 10, 2002
Using relatively cheap technology, followers of Falungong were able to interrupt the World Cup Finals and the anniversary of the Hong Kong handover broadcast on Chinese state television. Their purpose was to counteract state propaganda that has branded Falungong as an evil cult. While most of the interruptions were in rural China, which often receives TV programs celebrating China’s modernization...