In a time of crisis, internet was vital

IT editor CHRIS BARTON suggests that, unwittingly, September 11 gave the web its finest hour.

As the suicide attacks of September 11 were redefining perceptions of disaster and terror - not to mention the sense of disbelief - they were also establishing the internet as an indispensable news medium.

Initially the web stumbled, unable to cope with the thirst for information. But after sites such as CNN took drastic measures to deal with the demand, the net gave not just breaking news and analysis, but also a parade of its distinctive style of coverage.

Television provided global communication to the masses, but the net provided the masses with a global means to communicate in a time of crisis. Sites like safe.millennium.berkeley.edu and Disaster Message Service with their lists of survivors, victims, and missing persons, brought home the personal dimension of the tragedy while giving people a way to get in touch.

E-mail and messaging services ran hot communicating on-the-spot accounts to family and friends. Some, like that of Adam Mayblum, found their way onto websites.

The catastrophe also brought to prominence a new journalistic life form - the web logger. Like Jason Kottke and Tushar Singh, who updated their sites throughout the day and for weeks afterwards with news links, opinion, even snippets gleaned from NYPD scanners. Journalist as digital writer, publisher, printer and distributor.

The web was perfect too for recording personal reaction and attempts at explanation. Newsgroup postings had it all - redneck baying to "nuke 'em all", liberal calls for peace, love and understanding, plus a surprising amount of sanity.

But as local Media Watch commentator Russell Brown found, on the web it pays to think before you blurt. Brown's Hard News rant on 95bFM "Making Sense of It" suddenly found a global web audience and some irate readers.

A sample of what they took exception to: "Television pictures of a few hundred celebrating Palestinians have already enraged Americans. But if I had spent 20 or 30 years rotting in a refugee camp in Lebanon, I think I, too, would celebrate a strike against the country that had, year after year, used its veto to thwart the will of the United Nations over Palestine."

Dear, oh dear. The web struck back, causing Brown - "I can't and won't resile from my point" - to backtrack and publish some replies: "What is it with Kiwi 'journalists'? Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of innocent Americans, and citizens of numerous other countries, perished last Tuesday. Nowhere in the Hard News piece (perhaps more aptly named Flaccid News) is there any genuine expression of condolences. Instead, it blasts off on a wildly inaccurate shopping list of America's alleged past acts of evil with the implicit premise that somehow America got what it deserved ... "

The horrific videos of jet aircraft colliding into New York's twin towers, the burning buildings, victims plummeting to their deaths, and the collapsing rubble were also available on the net for anyone to download.

Why? Because they could. And perhaps to hold a digital record of a history one hopes never to see again.

The images were so surreal that just about anything showing the twin towers or shots of planes blowing up got banned - movies, record covers and even Microsoft's Flight Simulator computer game.

But the web was not done yet. It also threw up - as only the web can - some truly mindless garbage. Fake conspiracy theories, from Nostradamus to the ravings of Sollog, were rife. Satan appeared in the smoke of the burning towers and Wingdings became the "Doomsday font".

Type flight number "Q33NY" using this Windows font and you get an airplane, two document icons (representing the twin towers), a skull and crossbones and the Star of David. Spooooky. Except neither of the planes had that flight number.

Hoax e-mails bred like rabbits - especially the one about someone returning a lost wallet to an Arab, who rewards the person with a warning not to be near the centre of London on a certain day.

Then there was the picture of the tourist guy standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Center with a jet airliner heading straight towards him.

He gained cult status cropping up all over the net - digitally manipulated into all sorts of other moments in history. There was even a picture of him at a memorial gathering holding a banner saying, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us!". The cult phrase of 2001 came from the illiterate intro to the video game Zero Wing.

It was the September 11 internet humour that proved once and for all that the net is a place where you can get away with just about anything, that it's ideal for spreading propaganda, and that a lot of people have far too much time on their hands.

There's the animated parody of Harry Belafonte's Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) featuring Colin Powell on vocals and President Bush on conga. Sample lyrics: "Come, Mr Taliban, turn over bin Laden ... payback come and we drop de bomb ... "

Flash animations coupled with song parodies were everywhere. Most involved Osama bin Laden.

September 11 also gave the United States Government a good excuse to ram through sweeping anti-terrorism legislation that had civil liberties groups on red alert. The laws included provisions for internet surveillance and the seizing of electronic records.

Our Government has jumped on this bandwagon and may soon be watching us every which way it can and prying into the minute detail of our private lives.

But Communications Minister Paul Swain failed yet again to get the languishing Crimes Amendment Bill passed last year. The bill will outlaw hacking unless it's being carried out by the police, Security Intelligence Service or the Government Communications Security Bureau and its Waihopai satellite spying site.

You have to ask why Waihopai - as part of the Echelon network designed to provide America with counter intelligence - failed to warn of the terrorist attacks.

In fact, you have to wonder why we need this legislation at all. In the first defended hacking case in New Zealand, Andrew Garrett was found guilty in August of fraud and forgery charges involving stolen passwords using existing law. And in April phone "phreaker" Borislav Misic lost his appeal against conviction for defrauding Telecom of about $80,000 of phone calls. When it comes to computer crime, it seems our law isn't such an ass after all.

The long arm of the law reached into cyberspace again in September when Palmerston North District Court judge Gregory Ross ruled that calling someone a buffoon on the net is out of order. In the landmark case, former Domainz chief executive Patrick O'Brien won his claim against Alan Brown for defamatory remarks made on an internet newsgroup and got $42,000.

And when it comes to the vexed question of copyright on the internet, United States law is not lacking in rigour. Lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) shut down music file-sharing service Napster in June and are now going after others.

Our Government looks set to follow in America's draconian footsteps. It has already modified the law on parallel importing of software so that importers have to prove they are not pirates. Worse is a ban on parallel imports of DVDs and videos until nine months after their release - ostensibly to protect the copyright holders.

Meanwhile, there was more tech wreck fallout following the dotcom crash of 2000. Locally, the Craig Heatley-backed eventures stopped its "e" adventure, telecommunications software company Telemedia dialled out, silk purse e-tailer FlyingPig turned back into a sow's ear, web design shop Webmedia had a permanent hangover after its Amsterdam junket, procurement software maker Genie lost its magic, software consultancy Supplychain ran out of supply, internet provider Asia Online went offline, e-marketplace Onezone became a no go-zone, internet provider Voyager took a one-way trip; and internet statistic firm Netratings rated the land of dingoes a better place to do business, as did e-marketplace software maker Ariba.

Listed e-stocks such as Advantage, Commsoft and IT Capital looked a shadow of their former selves. But not nearly as bad as hospitality company turned dotcom wannabe Wilson Neill which became less than a penny dreadful.

The big software event of last year - Microsoft's new operating system Windows XP - was something of a fizzer. Its October ad campaign, with the slogan "prepare to fly", was abandoned because of September 11. Instead, we got "yes you can". Images of people floating and flying through the air remained, but footage reportedly used early on of a jetliner passing extremely close to an office building was smartly cut.

The software did have a slick new interface, was very stable and new users loved it.

But it required a lot of computer grunt to run, had the inevitable compatibility problems and was criticised fiercely for its tendency to lock users in with its Passport identity system and cross-promote other Microsoft web services.

Just days after the launch, Microsoft won major concessions in a five-year courtroom battle with the US Government over anti-competitive business practices and its bundling of the Internet Explorer web browser with the main Windows software. But the saga is not over yet. Some states are not happy with the proposed settlement and have again asked the courts to impose stiffer penalties.

The Microsoft monopoly took a $300 million stake in our Telecom monopoly in May to create the XtraMSN web portal. Telecom, like Microsoft, showed it could run rings around Government regulators. The telecommunications bill finally passed in December, promising a new era of competition and consumer benefits. But intense lobbying by Telecom means that's about as likely as pigs flying - especially when it comes to achieving affordable fast internet access.

As well as creating sloppy wholesaling regulations, Mr Swain gave Telecom a bonus Christmas present by ensuring the question of whether to unbundle Telecom's monopoly on phone lines to homes is off the agenda for another year.

Telecom's response was to help itself to another present - worth $26 million - by increasing line rentals.

It says the increase would not be necessary if it could ration New Zealanders' use of the internet.

What Telecom really wants is to turn the clock back and gouge more monopoly profits from its stranglehold on the residential consumer.

It wants the Government to overturn the Kiwi Share agreement of 1990 so it can start charging by the minute for local calls - especially those naughty New Zealanders who dare to use their phone line to connect to the internet.

Which makes a mockery of the Government aim to build New Zealand into a knowledge economy and develop broadband "fat pipe" internet access for all.

What a pipe dream.

2001 – The year in review