Mobile Phones/Internet Essay, Research Paper
Mobile/Cell Phones
Mobile phones have changed the way the world communicates. With the invention of the cellular phone service in 1983, personal telephones no longer depended on wires. In the 90’s it was now possible to connect to the Internet from virtually anywhere in the world from your cellular phone using satellite services. Some countries depend on cellular phones as their main source of communication, such as China. For the people in China, it is too expensive to own a house phone; therefore nearly everyone carries a cellular phone.
In the U.S., only about 28 percent of the U.S. population uses mobile phones. In the U.S. cellular phones are becoming not only a way of communication, but also a fashion statement for teenagers. A little more than 60 percent of Iceland, Norway, and Sweden’s populations own cellular phones. 40 to 50 percent of Europe and Japan’s population also own cellular phones. These countries are among the many that depend on cellular phones for a cheap way to communicate.
The Internet
The Internet began as just a small computer network that linked other networks at several universities and research laboratories in the United States. It has now come to be much more. The Internet is used world wide to find anything you want, from simple cooking instructions to how to build complex bombs.
Post offices have lost a lot of money since the Internet became available worldwide. People now communicate through e-mail (electronic mail) and no longer need the post office except for packages and occasionally snail mail just for fun. E-mail is much faster than ordinary mail and is more efficient than phones. Almost everyone uses e-mail, from big businesses to small companies, and also home use.
Napster
Napster, the famous file-swapping service, stirred up a lot of controversy in the 90 s. Napster was used to swap mp3 s (digital music files that can be played on your computer) from one computer to the next. The controversy surrounding Napster was the issue of whether or not it was legal to swap these copyrighted songs via the Internet.
One standpoint was that Napster was just like an on-call radio station, where one would request a song by typing it into the search field and then download it just like one would record it onto a tape from the radio. The other opinion was that the difference between this radio station and the actual radio stations played over the airwaves through stereos and boom boxes is that the actual radio stations pay copyrighting fees to the artists so that they can use these songs freely; Napster does not do this. Napster pays no fees to the artists.
Napster fought numerous legal fights in court over this issue and came very close to winning. Although Napster may have had many supporting details and evidence in their favor, the Recording Industry came out on top once again, forcing Napster to shut down almost completely.