INTERNET
A worldwide TELECOMMUNICATIONS network of
business, government, and personal computers.
The INTERNET is a network of computers
linking the United States with the rest of the
world. Originally developed as a way for U.S.
research scientists to communicate with each
other, by the mid 1990s the Internet had become
a popular form of telecommunication for per-
sonal computer users. The dramatic growth in
the number of persons using the network her-
alded the most important change in telecommu-
nications since the introduction of television in
the late 1940s. However, the sudden popularity
of a new, unregulated communications technol-
ogy raised many issues for U.S. law.
The Internet, popularly called the Net, was
created in 1969 for the U.S. DEFENSE DEPART-
MENT. Funding from the Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA) allowed researchers to
experiment with methods for computers to
communicate with each other. Their creation,
the Advanced Research Projects Agency Net-
work (ARPANET), originally linked only four
separate computer sites at U.S. universities and
research institutes, where it was used primarily
by scientists.
In the early 1970s, other countries began to
join ARPANET, and within a decade it was
widely accessible to researchers, administrators,
and students throughout the world. The
National Science Foundation (NSF) assumed
responsibility for linking these users of
ARPANET, which was dismantled in 1990. The
NSF Network (NSFNET) now serves as the
technical backbone for all Internet communica-
tions in the United States.
The Internet grew at a fast pace in the 1990s
as the general population discovered the power
of the new medium. A significant portion of
the Net’s content is written text, in the form of
both electronic mail (E-MAIL) and articles
posted in an electronic discussion forum
known as the Usenet news groups. In the mid-
1990s the appearance of the World Wide Web
made the Internet even more popular. The
World Wide Web is a multimedia interface that
allows for the transmission of text, pictures,
audio, and video together, known as web pages,
which commonly resemble pages in a maga-
zine. Together, these various elements have
made the Internet a medium for communica-
tion and for the retrieval of information on vir-
tually any topic.
The sudden growth of the Internet caught
the legal system unprepared. Before 1996, Con-
gress had passed little legislation on this form of
telecommunication. In 1986, Congress passed
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
(ECPA) (18 U.S.C.A. § 2701 et seq. [1996]),
which made it illegal to read private e-mail. The
ECPA extended most of the protection already
granted to conventional mail to electronic mail.
Just as the post office may not read private let-
ters, neither may the providers of private bul-
letin boards, on-line services, or Internet access.
However, law enforcement agencies can sub-
poena e-mail in a criminal investigation. The
ECPA also permits employers to read their
