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\author{Stefan Kamphausen\thanks{\texttt{mail@skamphausen.de}}\\
  \small\href{http://www.skamphausen.de/misc/writings/}
  {\nolinkurl{http://www.skamphausen.de/misc/writings/}}}
\title{My Internet is Broken}

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\begin{document}
\maketitle
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{Important Note}
\label{sec:inote}
%
Before reading this document please make sure you have read and
understood the legal disclaimer at the end of this document (in
section~\ref{sec:disclaimer}).

You are not allowed to read any further without reading the next sentence
aloud to at least two witnesses, both of whom must know the content of
the legal disclaimer in this document (see
section~\ref{sec:disclaimer}) and at least one of whom must be able to
understand computer related jokes.

\textbf{I have read the disclaimer of this document and understood
  that this text is not to offend anyone, that it is to be taken
  humorously, and the author wants to remain in peace without legal
  hassle.}

Having come this far, please read on and enjoy what you may find.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{License}
\label{sec:license}
The following license statement is invalid since the publication of
the Free Speech License by the same author.  It just remains here in
the hope of being a good read and because this is where the idea for
the Free Speech License all began.  

This document is published under the Free Speech License.  If you did
not receive a copy of it, download it from:\\
\href{http://www.skamphausen.de/misc/writings/freespeel.pdf}
{\nolinkurl{http://www.skamphausen.de/misc/writings/freespeel.pdf}}

This is Free Speech.  This document contains some thoughts of the
author and since the author doesn't think that thoughts can be
\emph{owned} or \emph{patented} or \emph{copyrighted} in any way you
are free to make copies of this like you want to.  You may use parts
of this documents at free will as long as you don't create the
impression that the author wants to offend someone or change the views
expressed in this document.  The best thing to do would be to think
for yourself.  Actually there is probably no good reason to use this
permission other than mirroring the document, because it's just the
author's opinion on some irrelevant things (when thinking in
evolutionary or galactic dimensions).

The author hopes that this document might be a good read or even some
fun to someone in the world and wishes to remain in peace.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:introduction}
%
It is an old and common joke among experienced computer users to say:
``my Internet is broken.''  Usually they refer to a temporal
unavailability of a working Internet connection probably due to
technical circumstances.  The origins of this proverb lie in
not-so-experienced computer users, like for example the mother or
father of a coder, that used that or a similar phrase from time to
time.  Obviously ``their Internet'' --whatever that may be-- was not
broken, but their connection was.  Anyway.

What most IT-workers and users don't seem to realize today is that
their Internet is \emph{really} broken.  And worse: really large parts
of the whole Internet are!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{History}
\label{sec:history}
The Internet as we know it consists of several parts.  The most
important is probably the WWW, the World Wide Web with it's myriad of
pages, closely followed by the email system.  The idea of connecting
several computers at different locations goes back to the US military
in the sixties when they were eager to ensure their data storage.
Shortly afterwards the science community started using the network for
it's own purposes.

Then suddenly in 1990 Tim Berners Lee at CERN in Geneva invented the
world wide web by creating the HTTP, the HyperText Transport Protocol
and the HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language.  The idea, the
fundamental principles, of the young WWW were a simple structured
representation of (mainly scientific) information mixed with the
highly inventive addition of hyper-links.  Hey, what a great idea.  Of
course it was not totally new (think of SGML\ldots) but history tells
that this made a change.  The pioneers of the WWW imagined a
distributed pool of documents and all of them knitted together with
links, thus forming a very, very large meta-document.

In this document the WWW shall be discussed.  You probably can tell
from your mailbox that something went wrong with the email thing
anyway. \texttt{;-)}.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{Advertising}
\label{sec:advertising}
Some day there came the misuse of the HTML graphic capabilities in
form of advertising.  A small web-site could raise some money by
showing ads on the top of it's pages thus maybe paying the monthly
online costs or the costs of the web-hosting.  Not did the webmasters
see they were being attacked.  Attacked by the usual means of global
capitalism: \emph{give 'em money, buy them out.}

Not that capitalism is a bad thing \emph{per se}, it's just too big a
hungry beast to feed for much longer.  Capitalism managed to quiet
movements such as Hippie, Punk and Hip-Hop simply by buying it's
evangelists.  No matter what the Sex Pistols might have said.  But I
digress.

Advertising banners made web pages weighing more, made them slower to
load.  All of a sudden you needed a ridiculous amount of that rare
resource \emph{bandwidth} to gather a comparatively small mass of
information from the WWW.  Of course banner blocking was a great
discussion at that time, but that's not this story.

Now let us think: what is the idea of advertising?  Obviously selling
something.  But that means that The Companies already diffused into
the virtual realm.  Once again this is not a bad thing \emph{per se}.
I really hate companies that have no --or even worse: a bad-- web-site
giving me all the information I want, it's just that companies bring a
bunch of shit-flies that tend to create a lot of hassle.

First there are their advertising compartments and with them they
brought pixel-exact design.  They had done this for years in print so
why should they adapt that creepy new standard that those freaky
scientists came up with?  Pixel-exact design and the much too long time
it took to come up with a technology, an accepted standard, to produce
it (just asking: why did it take such a long time?) killed structured
information right away.  It was more important to exactly determine
where on the visitors screen a navigation button should show up than
to arrange the content cleanly.  What about an automatic and
intelligent information agent?  Huh?  What about a visitor with a
different browser?  They are too few!  What about people with low
bandwidth?  Uninteresting customers!  What about the blind or otherwise
disabled?  Fuck them!

But it got even worse than that!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{The Legal Era}
\label{sec:legal}
So, the companies have infected this part of the Internet and
companies are usually fighting a few wars.  They are fighting against
countries and their governments for better (that is profit increasing)
laws.  This involves a lot of lobbyism.  They fight against
organizations such as Greenpeace or trade unions because of their
stupid profit decreasing ideas and ideals.  This involves long time
generation of fear among the workers (fear for their jobs that is)
such as visible in these days so much.  And --most important-- they
fight each other.  What am I supposed to think when I read that
company AA sues company AB for patent infringement while at same time
they are doing some other business perfectly well together?  Weird.
The means of that war are: courts and lawyers.

I really don't want to offend all the law-workers in one piece, I know
some very kind and intelligent humans among them.  On the other hand I
have come across some really weird thinkers from that group, people
compared to which that mad scientist you find in so many movies and
books really appears like a very sensible guy.

And then the machinery sets to work.  Since a web-page can be accessed
worldwide it's content might be judged by whatever law seems fitting.
Some extremely arrogant countries really believe that a person living
somewhere on this globe should be put under \emph{their} laws when
performing some Internet stunt.  Because a stunt it has become.  In
Germany there was recently a case filed that addressed an Italian
restaurant in some city which had a very common name.  Honestly, in
every city in Germany with more than 50\,000 inhabitants you'll
probably find an Italian restaurant named ``Bella Italia'' and one
called ``Bello Fiore''.  And that is perfectly fine because they all
act \emph{locally}.  But no!  You only have to get a trademark on one
of those names and find those restaurants that have a web-site (which
probably tells nothing more than when the location is open, where it
is and maybe some prices), since a web-site is globally available.  Hm,
who knows maybe ``bello fiore'' means ``suck my dick'' in one of those
languages that I don't know?

We all have read one or the other Internet court decision that
appear really stupid to those who understand what the Internet and the
WWW are all about.  I for one have lost a good deal of money in such a
process when I played in a band which had a name similar to that of a
large candy producer.  That band had played an amazing total of 5
gigs, mostly for free drinks, and was sued for an even more amazing
sum of 1 Million DM (German Marks).  Huh?

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{Consequences}
\label{sec:consequences}
%
So, today when you are so bold to create a web-site, no matter what it
is all about, it's best to consult a lawyer to be really sure.  In
Germany you probably need to have a so called \emph{Impressum} which
states that you are responsible for that work and probably contains
your postal address (and the spammer says thanks\ldots).  And remember
to be very, very careful when choosing the domain name.  Not only
you might accidentally use a registered trademark or the name of a
company or a domain-name that might be close to such a thing or a
domain-name that might just sound close to such a thing, no you might
even use your own name and loose in the court because the right of a
company which has the same name is somehow righter than yours.  And
when you just show your private photo collection you'd better ask all
the persons that might be in the background of a photograph for
permission, and are you really sure that no one already took a
shot from the same view as you did and is selling the image over the
Internet?  It is also a good idea not to speak too loud.  Don't let
your web-site become too well known because if they just search enough
they'll find something to sue you for.  And be careful of what you
say, you might offend someone.  Ah yes, don't forget to add a 
disclaimer for the content of linked pages, that are obviously written
and maintained by someone else but might be connected to your page
because of that link thing (which certain people seemingly didn't
understand at all).  And \ldots

You know what?  Don't link to other pages, don't provide any
content, any information.  Best not to have a web-page at all!

Man, I think my Internet is broken!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{Disclaimer}
\label{sec:disclaimer}
Don't even start to read this document if:
\begin{itemize}
\item you live in a country where Free Speech or having your own
  opinion is against the law or might be considered harmful for some
  company or the other,
\item you are easily offended when someone says not so nice things
  about a group of people you might belong to in any way, although
  that someone tells you that he does not intend to insult anyone in
  particular,
\item if you don't know all the following words or don't have the
  ability to detect their presence: ``sarcasm'', ``parody'',
  ``irony'',
\item you are ill-minded towards the author anyway.
\end{itemize}

The author of this document wishes to state that he does not intend to
insult any person living or dead, being a citizen of any country named
in this document or belonging to any group that might occur in this
document.  He is well aware that in a group of people who have one
thing in common (like, the state they live in or their profession)
there are always ones that are well-minded and intelligent, whereas
there might be some black sheep. 

The author considers himself (and that view is commonly shared by many
who know him personally) a friendly and open-minded person.  So if you
find any reason that you might get ill-minded towards him by reading
this document, feel free to contact him using the given email-address.

\textbf{By reading this document you accept to not start any legal
  action towards the author of this document without first asking him
  politely and without raising any costs to remove any part of this
  document that you might consider harmful.  You accept to provide a
  logical explanation which part should be removed, and why it should
  be removed.}

If any part of this document might be misunderstood it's probably due
to the author not being a native speaker.

If any part of this document might be against the law and/or
ineffective the rest of the document does not loose it's effect
(Salvatoric Clause).

If you read this document against the terms described in this section
you do it on your own responsibility.  You have been warned.

If you take all this too serious you probably lack a bit of humor. 


\end{document}
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