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Internet access also goes hand in hand with access to USENET, a global network that provides for the exchange of information on thousands of different topics. This exchange is arranged in individual newsgroups that users can subscribe to and then receive by email. It's the USENET newsgroups that have attracted the attention of the popular press and led to stories of postings by hate groups, pedophiles, and assorted crackpots. With the stories came the censorship advocates, and outcries in the House of Commons for "controlling" the Internet. But the reality of the Internet is that nobody can control it or police it except the users themselves. ARPANET/Internet was designed without a hierarchical structure. Close down one node on the Internet and the traffic simply reroutes itself another way. It was designed like this so that U.S. Defense Department installations could maintain communications even if some of them were destroyed by nuclear attack. Although no longer an important part of U.S. military strategy, the Internet survives as a joyfully anarchic, communications network.
BULLETIN BOARD SERVICES (BBS)
While the academics of the 80s were keeping in touch with their research colleagues via the Internet and USENET, there was a parallel movement going on in the private sector. The arrival in the late 70s and early 80s of the personal computer brought with it the birth of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). At first run by amateur hobbyists, the BBS movement spread quickly. Within a few years there were networks of independently owned BBSs that linked up electronically on a daily basis allowing for the transmission of email from system to system. ECHONET, RIME, FIDONET, these are networks of interconnected BBSs that also offer email and conferences on a wide variety of topics.
In many ways the BBSs and their related networks mirror the Internet/USENET, and as public interest in the Internet has grown most BBSs have hooked up to the Internet through a gateway. Thus BBS services can now offer users an Internet email account and access to USENET newsgroups.
Similar in concept to a BBS are the large, multinational computer services such as CompuServe, America OnLine (AOL), and Prodigy. Offering databases of computer software, conferences, games, chat forums, email, and Internet connectivity, they have turned the hobbyist BBS into a multi-million dollar business.
At the other end of the scale are smaller, more specialized boards. Some cater to a specific computer platform. Toronto's Magic (416-591-6490) began life as a Macintosh BBS, but has since expanded to service both Windows and MS-DOS machines. Others offer games only, or "adult" conferences, or serve the needs of special interest groups. BBSs are also used to establish a commercial presence. Toronto's the World's Biggest Book Store runs a very popular BBS (416-240-8056) on which you can chat, play games, and order books. TVOntario has run a BBS (416-484-2610) for a number of years, providing viewers with program information, a chance to send feedback, special interest conferences, email, etc.
One of the specialized boards in Toronto is EM online (416-926-1386) which caters to the professional film and television community. A number of industry organizations have conferences on EM online including the Canadian Society of Cinematographers (CSC), the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA), the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (ACCT) and the Canadian Independent Film Caucus (CIFC). Various sub- committees of the Caucus use EM online for email and exchanging documents and information. Membership to EM online is available free to CIFC members. With your account you receive an Internet email account and access to a variety of USENET newsgroups that are related to film, television, computers and multimedia. Also using EM online are a number of government agencies such as the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund (CIFVF) and the Ontario Film Development Corporation (OFDC). There are industry newsletters such as The Nightingale Report, Studio Briefing, NewsBytes, and the magazine Point of View. Various commercial suscribers post catalogues, price lists, etc., and Focus Toronto posts its production personnel listings. Coming this year to EM online is a full Internet connection that will allow users access to gopher, ftp and the World Wide Web. EM online is rapidly becoming the virtual community of the film and television business. Information about EM online can be obtained by voice at (416) 603-4000, or by email at davem@encyclomedia.com.
(On an historical digression, the CIFC's conference on EM online is the second time the Caucus has had a BBS. In 1986, back in the age of IIe's, Osbourne's, Kaypro's, 128k Mac's, and the original IBM Personal Computer, the Caucus ran a BBS called CIFC-EMS (Electronic Message System). Most of its users were running 300 baud modems on monochrome, text-based machines. The experiment lasted 9 months and closed down through lack of usage. Times may have changed, but the last news item posted read as follows:
Ottawa, October 4, 1986
FURTHER $50-MILLION CUT REPORTED FOR CBC
The Government has told the CBC to cut $50-million from its budget next year, The Canadian Press has learned....
On the other hand some things never change.)
DOING BUSINESS
Some producers quickly adapted to the opportunities offered by modems, BBSs, and electronic mail. Exchanging scripts, schedules, and budgets by email has become a standard procedure for many. But as users move into the world of the Internet doing business can become an issue in itself. The Internet culture that has grown up is a non-commercial culture, and it is well for the newbie (new user) to remember this fact. Since many of the networks that make up the Internet were originally designed to serve academic institutions or government R&D facilities, these networks developed restrictions known as Acceptable Use Policies (AUP). AUPs generally prohibited commercial ventures, consulting or sales. Although the Internet has become commercialized, there are definite, acceptable methods of doing business and other ways that will result in immediate and overwhelming flaming (the net equivalent of hate mail).
The most important rule to remember about the Internet is that while advertising doesn't work, marketing does. Netiquette should be carefully observed at all times. For instance....
A single newsgroup could have 10,000 readers. The worst possible thing that you can do is send advertising to a newsgroup. This is called spamming. Those 10,000 people will find your unsolicited email in their mailbox. They'll open; they'll read it; they'll delete it -- if you're lucky. More likely some of them will respond in an angry fashion -- flaming. If only five percent of that newsgroup are angry enough to respond, your mailbox will be clogged with 500 messages. Heaven help you if you cross-posted to a couple of newsgroups. In a now-famous case in the U.S., Canter & Siegel, a firm of immigration lawyers, cross-posted an advertisement to 6,000 newsgroups, and the angry, flaming response caused their service provider to shut down temporarily and eventually to cancel the lawyers' account. So even if it seems tempting to send your resume to alt.film.production, don't. Remember, every email message you send out costs the receiver in time and in fees to their service provider.
How do you use the Internet? Add a signature to your email, four or five lines maximum, that says who you are, what you do, and how to get hold of you. Many service providers offer WWW home pages to their users. Sometimes this is free with an account, sometimes there is a nominal fee. Or your service provider can apply for a domain name for you or your company. Then your email address could be yourname@yourcompany.com. It's all image, but if you're planning to move onto the digital highway, your domain name is very important.
Learn how to use the Internet. If you want to work in the multimedia, entertainment, information industries, the reality is that more and more people are wired, are using email for daily correspondence, are keeping up with the latest trends and news through newsgroups, and are delivering product information and services via the Internet, especially now that the World Wide Web has caught on as the corporate place to be seen on the Net.
WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW)
Eighteen, twelve, even six months ago, the trendy question was, "Do you have an email address?" The question for 1995 seems to be, "Do you have a home page?" If you haven't already mastered gopher, ftp, and telnet, forget it. It's too late. The Net has moved on. The World Wide Web (WWW) is now the place to be.
The WWW exists as a series of file servers around the world that are linked in digital space. You access each Web Site through a home page, a kind of introductory menu. Some of the words and phrases that appear on each display page are highlighted or there are icons to click on. These highlighted words and icons indicate links to other files or other Web Sites. Click on any highlighted element and you might be presented with a colour graphic, a sound file, a video file, or you might be transfered to another Web Site around the world. (This last result mimics the net-surfing popularized by the Internet gopher program.) Web pages are written in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) which can be edited in a standard ASCII text editor. It is the hypertext links built into each page that make the Web such an exciting, communications medium.
The WWW was once the sole domain of work station, power users. To get the full effect of the Web, users needed a graphical interface called a browser. The most common was Mosaic, software that worked well on Unix systems, but was tricky at best to get working under Windows or on a Macintosh. Now there is a new browser out called Netscape which is available in Windows and Mac versions and brings the WWW within manageable equipment specifications.
(For those with hardware limitations, it is possible to access the WWW through a Lynx viewer, which is a text-based Web viewer. You can find Lynx on a number of servers, accessed by gopher [www.njit.edu or debra.dgbt.doc.ca/open government project]).
The recent surge of newspaper accounts of the WWW have stressed sites such as art galleries with pages of paintings and sculptures (http://www.emf.net/louvre), NASA with moonscapes (http://mosaic.larc.nasa.gov/nasaonline/nasaonline.html), the White House with a message from Bill Clinton (http://www.whitehouse.gov), and our own Bob Rae's Ontario Government site (http://www.gov.on.ca). In many ways the WWW is one gigantic multimedia encyclopaedia, except -- and it's a big exception -- nothing on the Web is in any order. There's no A to Z cataloging found there. While there are search engines available like Lycos (http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu) and CUSI (http://abyss.idirect.com/cusi.html), most of the information found on the WWW is simply out there, for you to find, if you know where to look.
While gopher sites were and are maintained mostly by academic/research institutes, the WWW has attracted far more commercial ventures. Cybermalls exist on the WWW, where you can buy anything, pay for it with a credit card and wait for it to be delivered. A New Brunswick service provider has established Cyberstore (http://www.csi.nb.ca) which deals mainly with computer- related goods and services. You can get airline information from Canadian Airlines (http://www.cdnair.ca). West Coast Interchange, based in Victoria, runs the World Real Estate Listing (http://interchange.idc.uvic.ca/index.html).
Media companies have taken to the WWW in force. The major record companies like Sony (http://www.sony.com) maintain sites that offer sound demos, video clips and fanzines on the latest rock groups. Paramount maintains a site devoted to Star Trek: Voyageur (http://www.paramount.com/VoyagerIntro.html). Among other things, Trekies can download favourite sayings from the show's holographic doctor. And of course Wired, the magazine that has popularized the online culture, has its own site Hot Wired (www.HotWired.com).
Canadian media companies are also using the WWW to publicize their products. Producer Linda Schuyler's (Degrassi Street) new series Liberty Street has its own Web site (http://www.libertyst.affinity.com/Mailboxes.html) run by the production company Epitome Pictures Inc. Viewers can login and get cast information, look through a scrapbook of images, send feedback to the producers, or join a chat forum with other viewers. Sometimes cast members such as Pat Mastroianni are scheduled for the chat forum and fans can "talk" directly to the stars.
The Discovery Channel emphasized its presence on the Internet from day one of broad- casting. Its daily, science magazine show is titled @discovery.ca, a reference to the domain portion of its email address. Of course Discovery maintains a site (http://www.discovery.ca) that includes daily listings, news of upcoming shows, and feedback forums.
MuchMusic maintains a site (http://www.bravo.ca/muchmusic), as does its sister channel Bravo! (http://www.bravo.ca/bravo). Alliance Releasing is also working on a site to publicize their television and film releases (http://idirect.com/ndx/alliancendx.html). Point of View magazine now publishes a web version (http://www.magic.ca/pov/POVhome.html).
Also of interest to Canadian filmmakers is CultureNet (http://www.ffa.ucalgary.ca/cnet) which serves as a clearing house for cultural groups in all the disciplines: theatre, writing and publishing, broadcasting, music and sound recording, visual arts, crafts, film, dance and architecture. Currently CultureNet provides information on such groups as The Canadian Conference of the Arts, Visual Arts Nova Scotia, and The Canadian Independent Film and Video Alliance.
One of the most interesting WWW sites is located in Los Angeles. Kaleidospace (http://kspace.com) "promotes, distributes and places work by independent artists, musicians, performers, writers, animators, filmmakers, and software developers." Kaleidospace digitizes artists' work from CDs, VHS tapes, audio cassettes, photos, slides, and DATs, and then archives them on file servers. Users surf to Kaleidospace and access the artists' demos either online or downloading them into their own computers. Video clips are stored as QuickTime files. If users like something, they can order the work either from the artist or from Kaleidospace.
SchoolNet (http://schoolnet2.carleton.ca) is an educational Web site run by Industry Canada with funding from provincial, territorial, and federal sources. Support is also supplied by information technology industries and services across the country. The site exists at Carleton University, and its goal is to eventually link up all 16,000 schools in Canada. Students and teachers who use SchoolNet have access to a variety of educational resources including the CanaDisk Canadian History Gallery of over 2,200 Canadian images, Canadian space information, and an array of study guides.
Montréal's media arts centre PRIM (Productions Réalisations Indépendantes de Montréal) is currently spearheading the Mercure project. Mercure involves 75 cultural organizations representing media arts, visual arts, dance, theatre, music and film. These organizations feel abandoned by the television networks and cable distributors who do not offer a window for contemporary works of art. Their plan is to mount a dedicated server on the WWW for the artistic community of Québec. As PRIM's Directrice générale Célia Moréno wrote in the Mercure proposal, "... un pays sans art est un pays sans ame." A country without art is a country without soul.
Mercure will be a multi-purpose, virtual community. It will allow the member organizations and individual artists to communicate and keep up-to-date on issues that concern the Québec artistic community. Especially important will be the ability of people in smaller centres around Québec to keep in touch with the larger urban communities. Artists, separated in space and time, will be able to use Mercure to collaborate and create new works online. As well, Mercure will provide a place for artists in various media to display their work and offer it for sale, thus bypassing the traditional gatekeepers. The artists involved in Mercure, while realizing that electronic publishing may cause them to lose certain intellectual property rights, are convinced that larger recognition and valuable contacts will result from the electronic distribution of their work.
Mercure is a $335,000 hardware/software proposal which would have an annual operating budget of $250,000. Though initially it will be offered through the WWW, the designers of Mercure envision ultimately making it available as a video server on the fibre optic-based InfoBahn.
At the Montréal headquarters of the National Film Board, Robert Forget is supervising the development of a Web site catalogue of all 9,000 titles in the NFB's collection. At the moment it is an experimental, internal site but eventually, subject to budget cutbacks, it will be completed and made available to the public via the Internet.
Each entry will include the usual technical information: length, date of production, synopsis, credits, category, series, etc. Some of this material will be crossed-linked to other films by the same director, or other films on the same topic. In addition to text-based data, each initial page of information will display a colour still from the film, and upon scrolling through the file, the user can see a nine-frame "storyboard" of the film. Like Mercure, the NFB is planning for the world of fibre optics and video servers. As the storyboard stills are being selected for digitization, the time code for 30-second and three-minute clips are being recorded. When it is practical to digitize the 525 hours of material that these clips represent, the NFB will add them to the database.
As well as being a valuable, Canadian, cultural resource the site will have a commercial use as well. Using online forms the NFB's clients will be able to select and order videocassettes.
The Virtual Film Festival (www.virtualfilm.com) is a joint venture involving four independent, Canadian, film companies, Cineflix (Glen Salzman), Necessary Illusions (Peter Wintonick and Francis Miquet), Triptych Films (Anna Stratton), and Grimthorpe Films (Peter Mettler). The Virtual Film Festival is being funded in part by CITI (Centre for Innovation in Information Technologies), an arm of Industry Canada. The prototype for the site is being programmed at McGill University and should be up and running by June, 1995. According to Glen Salzman of Cineflix, the website will be a virtual space that emulates the lobby of a theatre. Users will be able to pick up a weekly festival magazine listing new independent films and find out "what's hot, what's cool, the latest gossip, and articles." In the festival catalogue each film will have a page with photos, synopsis, bios, video clips, and reviews, as well as information on how to order a VHS copy of the film. Filmmakers will pay a small annual fee to be listed in the catalogue. The Virtual Film Festival will be demoed at the Montréal and Toronto film festivals later this year.
THE FUTURE
Whether the Internet and the WWW are absorbed by the InfoBahn, or develop in parallel will depend in large part on what the InfoBahn looks like and how it can be used. Bandwidth on the Internet is already at a premium. At peak times the digital traffic slows almost to a halt. However, interesting experiments are being conducted every day on the Internet, as the limitations of bandwidth are pushed.
MBone, or Multicast Backbone, is an experimental, "virtual" network that runs within the Internet. It requires expensive Unix-based workstations such as those from DEC, Silicon Graphics or Sun, and it requires dedicated Internet connectivity -- usually a full T1 (1.54-Mbps) connection. What it delivers is full-motion video and audio in real time. Used mostly for video-conferencing, MBone received a lot of publicity in late 1994 when the Rolling Stones multicast 20 minutes of their live Dallas Cotton Bowl concert. It was done as a promo for their susbsequent pay-per-view TV special.
A guerrilla version of MBone is available in the program CU-SeeMe. CU- SeeMe runs on Macs and Windows-based PCs. It delivers a small black and white video image over the Internet, and is being used by schools for video- conferencing between classrooms. NASA also uses it to deliver their NASA Select TV via the Internet.
Will full-scale, broadband video come to the Internet? It will, if some people have their way. In the meantime, sites and projects like Kaleidospace, the Virtual Film Festival, and Mercure, are expanding the distribution network for independent film and video. When sufficient bandwidth is available either on the Internet or the InfoBahn, they will have established their presence and be ready for the next step: full broadband network delivery.