Preaks vs. administrators


The Internet is a wondrous place. Practically anything you could ever want is available on the Net. It's like a big city, it has the highly prestigiousareas, and the sex-ridden slums. It has the upstanding citizens, and it hasthe criminals. On the Net, crime is more abundant than in a large city,though, mainly because of the difficulties in tracking and prosecutingoffenders. Even from its beginnings, the Internet has always been abattlefield between phreaks and administrators.The Internet hasn't always been a public forum. In fact, the Internet has beenaround for years. The Internet is just a new fad ("The More I Learn" A1). TheInternet originally began as DARPANET, a government-created network, which wasdesigned for defense communications. The Net structure is such that it couldsurvive a nuclear war ("Internet History"). The creation of the Net can not beblamed for the existence of hackers though, hackers are older than the Netitself, but the Net is the largest 'hacker haven' today (Spencer, "HackingMcDonalds" 6).The growth of the Net since its creation has been nothing less than astounding.In the 25-plus years since its creation, the Net now has over thirty millionusers using four million sites worldwide. Estimates rate the growth of the Netanywhere from ten to fifteen percent per month (Spencer, "Hacking McDonalds"6).The Internet was first released to major universities in the United States of America. Since then, the universities have offered connections to small business, service providers, and even to the individual user. Sometimes these connections cost a fortune, and sometimes they can be obtained for free ("Internet History"). Although some of the original universities have droppedoff the Net for various reasons, every major university in the United States,and now, most others in the world, have a connection to the Internet (Quittner61).Although it isn't easy for an individual to get a direct connection to the Net,many private institutions are getting connections. This is mainly due to thefact that in order to support the very high speed of the Net, a fast computeris needed and a fast connection. A fast computer can cost in the tens ofthousands of dollars, at least, and a fast connection can cost twenty thousand dollars or more, followed by a few thousand dollars a year. Individuals can still get on the Net through these private institutions. The privateinstitution spoon-feeds the Net to the slower computers over their slowerconnection lines (Spencer, "Stranglehold" 8).The Internet began very high-class, due to the fact that only superintelligentcollege students and professors could access it. The discussions tended tostay intellectual, with very little, if any, disturbance ("Internet History").However, relatively recent changes in the availability of the Net have changedthat atmosphere. Now, almost anyone can access the Internet. Internet accessis offered by every major online service (Himowitz A1). The fact that themajor online services charge for their use keeps many people away from them.Those people simply turn to public dial-ups, which are free connections offeredby universities that are available to the general public (Spencer, "Know YourTerritory" 27).Because accessing the Net is easier, and a lot more people are doing it,naturally the amount of information on the Net is increasing at the same rate,if not faster. In what is often referred to by Net users as the ResourceExplosion, the amount of information circulating the Internet has increasedmore than proportionately with the number of users (Spencer, "HackingMcDonalds" 6).Of all the other factors contributing to the large percent of online crimes,perhaps the most influential is the design structure of the Internet. Expertsagree that the underlying structure with no central hub, where each computer isequally powerful, gives unchecked power to the undeserving (Spencer, "Stranglehold" 8).The design also makes controlling the frequency of break-ins almost impossibleas well. Both politicians and so-called 'experts' believe the Internet as awhole will be regulated in the next five years. Hackers disagree, using thearguments that the Internet was designed to be uncontrollable, that the basicstructure doesn't support regulation (Spencer, "Stranglehold" 8). I mustagree. In a network run by its users, which is designed to be impervious toattack, not even the government has ...