Childrens Internet Protection Act (CIPA) ruling by the US District Court for the Eastern District | Page 9

public. Plaintiff Jeffrey
Pollock was the Republican candidate in the 2000 U.S. Congressional
election for the Third District of Oregon. He operates a Web site that is
now promoting his candidacy for Congress in 2002. 3. The Internet 1.
Background As we noted at the outset, the Internet is a vast, interactive
medium consisting of a decentralized network of computers around the
world. The Internet presents low entry barriers to anyone who wishes to
provide or distribute information. Unlike television, cable, radio,
newspapers, magazines or books, the Internet provides an opportunity
for those with access to it to communicate with a worldwide audience
at little cost. At least 400 million people use the Internet worldwide,
and approximately 143 million Americans were using the Internet as of
September 2001. Nat'l Telecomm. & Info. Admin., A Nation Online:
How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet (February
2002), available at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/.

The World Wide Web is a part of the Internet that consists of a network
of computers, called "Web servers," that host "pages" of content
accessible via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or "HTTP." Anyone
with a computer connected to the Internet can search for and retrieve
information stored on Web servers located around the world. Computer
users typically access the Web by running a program called a "browser"
on their computers. The browser displays, as individual pages on the
computer screen, the various types of content found on the Web and
lets the user follow the connections built into Web pages – called
"hypertext links," "hyperlinks," or "links" – to additional content. Two
popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape
Navigator. A "Web page" is one or more files a browser graphically
assembles to make a viewable whole when a user requests content over
the Internet. A Web page may contain a variety of different elements,
including text, images, buttons, form fields that the user can fill in, and
links to other Web pages. A "Web site" is a term that can be used in
several different ways. It may refer to all of the pages and resources
available on a particular Web server. It may also refer to all the pages
and resources associated with a particular organization, company or
person, even if these are located on different servers, or in a
subdirectory on a single server shared with other, unrelated sites.
Typically, a Web site has as an intended point of entry, a "home page,"
which includes links to other pages on the same Web site or to pages on
other sites. Online discussion groups and chat rooms relating to a
variety of subjects are available through many Web sites.
Users may find content on the Web using engines that search for
requested keywords. In response to a keyword request, a search engine
will display a list of Web sites that may contain relevant content and
provide links to those sites. Search engines and directories often return
a limited number of sites in their search results (e.g., the Google search
engine will return only 2,000 sites in response to a search, even if it has
found, for example, 530,000 sites in its index that meet the search
criteria). A user may also access content on the Web by typing a URL
(Uniform Resource Locator) into the address line of the browser. A
URL is an address that points to some resource located on a Web server
that is accessible over the Internet. This resource may be a Web site, a
Web page, an image, a sound or video file, or other resource. A URL

can be either a numeric Internet Protocol or "IP" address, or an
alphanumeric "domain name" address. Every Web server connected to
the Internet is assigned an IP address. A typical IP address looks like
"13.1.64.14." Typing the URL "http://13.1.64.14/" into a browser will
bring the user to the Web server that corresponds to that address. For
convenience, most Web servers have alphanumeric domain name
addresses in addition to IP addresses. For example, typing in
"http://www.paed.uscourts.gov" will bring the user to the same Web
server as typing in "http://204.170.64.143." Every time a user attempts
to access material located on a Web server by entering a domain name
address into a Web browser, a request is made to a Domain Name
Server, which is a directory of domain names and IP addresses, to
"resolve," or translate, the domain name address into an IP address.
That IP address is then used to locate the Web server from which
content is being requested. A Web site may be accessed by using either
its domain name address or its IP address.
A domain name address typically consists of several parts. For example,
the alphanumeric URL
http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions can be broken down
into three parts. The first part is the transfer protocol