(Composed 14 Sept 1987, sent 20 Sept 1987)

The Amateur

Computerist

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Summer 2008 ‘Across the Great Wall’ Volume 16 No. 2

Celebration

The First E-mail Message from China to CSNET

A celebration of the 20

anniversary of the

first e-mail message that was sent from China to

the world via the international Computer Science

Network (CSNET) was held at the Hasso Plattner

Institute in Potsdam Germany on September 18-19,

Table of Contents

Celebration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Panel Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2

Werner Zorn Interview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 12

Cordial Thanks to our Friends. . . . . . . . . . Page 13

Steps Toward China on the Internet. . . . . . Page 14

Netizens and the New News. . . . . . . . . . . . Page 16

Conference Presentation Videos Online. . Page 22

Context for the Spread of CSNET . . . . . . . Page 23

Netizen Journalism: An Interview. . . . . . . Page 28

Webpage: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn16-2.pdf

2007. Participating were international Internet pio-

neers, representatives of the Internet in China and

historians and journalists.

From 1983 to 1987, two teams of scientists

and engineers worked to overcome the technical,

financial, and geographic obstacles to set up an e-

mail connection between China and the interna-

tional CSNET. One team was centered around

Werner Zorn at Karlsruhe University in the Federal

Republic of Germany. The other team was under

the general guidance of Wang Yuenfung at the In-

stitute for Computer Applications (ICA) in the Peo-

ple’s Republic of China. The project succeeded

based on the scientific and technical skill and

friendship, resourcefulness and dedication of the

members of both teams.

The first successful e-mail message was sent

on Sept. 20, 1987 from Beijing to computer scien-

tists in Germany, the U.S. and Ireland. The China-

CSNET connection was granted official recogni-

tion and approval on Nov. 8, 1987, when a letter

signed by the Director of the U.S. National Science

Foundation Division of Networking and Commu-

nications Research and Infrastructure Stephen

Wolff was forwarded to the head of the Chinese

delegation, Yang Chuquan at an International

Networkshop in the U.S. From then on more and

more of the scientific community in China had the

possibility of e-mail contact with their colleagues

and friends throughout the world. In 1994 via a

connection between China and the U.S., China es-

tablished full general Internet connectivity beyond

just e-mail.

But there is more to the story of the first e-

mail message.

Over the years, especially since the middle

1990s, Internet access and Internet use has spread

throughout China. Celebrations have occasionally

been held to mark milestones of Internet history in

China. But curiously, the role of Werner Zorn and

Page 1

Wang Yuenfung was absent or minimized in the

telling of the early roots of the Chinese connection

to the Internet.

In 2004, two Amateur Computerist editors lo-

cated and interviewed Werner Zorn in Berlin. He

shared his memories of the events of 1983 to 1987

and backed his memories up with documents from

that period. One editor took up to write an article

about this history. His research took him mostly to

web sites in China. The story told there gave most

credit for the China-CSNET connection to a Chi-

nese engineer, Qian Tianbai whom Zorn had

hardly mentioned. Mostly missing from the history

on the websites in China was the international

component which Zorn had stressed.

Qian Tianbai’s name is not among the 13 sig-

natures on the first e-mail message and there was

evidence that he was not in China at the time. Zorn

was able to provide a copy of the letter signed by

Stephen Wolff. Through further digging and via e-

mail correspondence with two of the Chinese sig-

natories of the first e-mail message, it was possible

to corroborate Zorn’s telling of the events.

An article was written and published in the

Amateur Computerist telling the corroborated story

of the first e-mail from China to CSNET giving

justified credit to Wang and Zorn and their teams

and to Lawrence Landweber of the CSNET and

Stephen Wolff. A bit later Zorn was invited to tell

the story at a panel planned for Nov 2005 in con-

junction with the United Nations World Summit on

Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis.

Present in Tunis when Zorn presented his tell-

ing of the international effort and collaboration

especially between himself and Wang Yuenfung

was Madame Hu Qiheng, Vice President, China

Association for Science and Technology, and

Chair of Internet Society of China. She rose and

spoke of her friendship with Qian Tianbai but said

she would investigate why the story told in China

differed from the one Zorn told. Eighteen months

later, entries on the official CNNIC website

Internet Time-line of China 1987~1996 were

changed to give proper credit to the work of Zorn

and Wang, their teams and the international effort

that made possible the first e-mail connectivity be-

tween China and the world via CSNET.

http://www.cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2003/12/12/2000.htm

So on Sept 18 and 19, 2007, the celebration

was held with Hu Qiheng, Werner Zorn, Lawrence

Landweber, Stephen Wolff and others participat-

ing. It was the 20

anniversary of the first e-mail

message and a time when the same history was

recognized in Germany and China. As Hu Qiheng

said in her presentation,

The international collaboration in science and

technology is the driving force for computer

networking across the country borders and fa-

cilitating the early Internet development in

China. Among them the collaborations of

CANET [China Academic Network] of China

with Karlsruhe University and the CSNET,

BITNET of the U.S. had contributed directly to

the introduction of Internet into China.

The achievement of the CSNET e-mail connec-

tivity with China was based on the collaboration of

Professors Zorn and Wang and their teams. The

achievement of an accurate telling of that history

in China was the result of collaboration of Profes-

sor Zorn and Mdm. Hu. Both these achievements

were celebrated in Potsdam in September 2007.

This issue of the Amateur Computerist gathers

some documents from that celebration.

The story of this first e-mail message has been told in the

Amateur Computerist*. A video presentation by Werner Zorn

of this history can be viewed at

http://www.tele-

task.de/page50_lecture3202.html.

*[ See ht tp:/ /ai s. o rg/ ~jr h/a c n/ AC n13 -1.pdf and

http://ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn15-2.pdf] .

[Editor’s note: The following is an edited transcript

of the panel of Internet pioneers at the Potsdam

celebration.]

Panel Discussion: The

Road to the First E-mail*

Date: September 19, 2007

Location: Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam Germany

Moderator: Dennis Jennings, first director of the U.S.

National Science Foundation Net (NSFNET)

Panel:

Jay Hauben, Internet historian, Amateur Computerist News-

letter Editor

Prof. Hu Qiheng, Chairwoman Internet Society of China

(ISC), Honorary Member of China Association for Science

and Technology, member of Chinese Academy of Engineering

Page 2

and the Chair of Steering Committee for CNNIC

Daniel Karrenberg, Chairman Board of Trustees of the

Internet Society (ISOC)

Prof. Lawrence H. Landweber, Co-Founder of the Computer

Science Net (CSNET)

Dr. Stephen S. Wolff, second director of the National Science

Foundation Net (NSFNET)

Prof. Werner Zorn, Hasso Plattner Institute

Zorn: Hello. I welcome you and welcome the

panel. I want to introduce a little the persons on the

panel.

I start with Dennis Jennings. He is sitting in the

middle. Because of his smart Irish/English accent,

I chose him to chair the panel. He was so friendly

he could not resist and say he would not do the job.

But he is also a very important person in network-

ing. Dennis was the director of EARN, the IBM

driven or based European Academic Research Net-

work in the 1980s. So Europe was for a while his

job. Underneath him were the directors in the dif-

ferent countries. Then his most prominent job was

the project leader of the NSFNET project in 1986-

1987, the supercomputer network in the United

States. He came from Dublin and spent a year

there.

Jennings: Fifteen months

Zorn: Fifteen months. You see, he is one of the

cornerstones in networking.

Larry Landweber is for me the father of scien-

tific networking. He ran the International

Academic Networkshops. He was one of the

founders, perhaps the originator of the CSNET

idea in the early 1980s, propagating the idea of

connecting all the different networks first through

e-mail and then migrating to other services. Larry

organized these academic networkshops every year

in different places. So he gave me the chance to

also travel around the world. It was very nice and

also very productive. Larry was later president of

the Internet Society for two years in the early ‘90s

after Vint Cerf. Larry became our good friend. So

and helped us, backed me, behind the stage.

Stephen Wolff was director of the networking

network project within the National Science Foun-

dation for ten years, a long time during the impor-

tant years in the ‘80s and also in the ‘90s. Steve

gave that important signature

to us. He represented

the policy from the NSF side toward networking.

We will ask him later why his signature was so

important. What would we have done without it? It

was one of my questions. And he is now with

Cisco for five years.

Daniel Karrenberg is originally coming from

Dortmund

. Dortmund was a second source besides

Karlsruhe

. We were two friendly connected insti-

tutes. Dortmund was origin coming from the Unix

network side and Karlsruhe by CSNET. Daniel

emigrated quite early to the Netherlands. We may

ask why you emigrated and went to the Center for

Mathematics and Informatics (CWI) in the Nether-

lands, the Institute which later ran the RIPE regis-

try which became one of the most important regis-

tries in the world. RIPE covers 30 percent of all IP

addresses, very important, which cover a big part

of the northern hemisphere.

Stephen and Daniel have been honored with

the John Postal Award, Stephen in 2002 and

Daniel in 2001. Is that correct?

Karrenberg: 2001, I believe. I am not sure.

Zorn: I think you were honored because of every-

thing, both running services and also for your con-

tribution in the IETF with the RFCs to prolong the

life time of IPv4 address space through Classless

Inter-Domain Routing (CIDA). That was one very

big contribution. The Internet is alive more than

ten years later because CIDA solved a problem

threatening the Internet. You can perhaps say a few

words to that.

And Stephen Wolff of course for his important

role with a big governmental project.

Madame Qiheng Hu has introduced herself

through her speeches while the others were only

sitting and listening. She is the president of what I

guess very soon will be the largest Internet Society

of the world.

Hu: The Internet Society of China which began in

2001

Zorn: China has more than 160 million Internet

participants.

I think Mdm. Hu entered networking in 1994.

Was that the year when you entered into network

management?

Page 3

Hu: Not really management, merely I was among

the people who did urge the Internet to enter

China.

Then in 1994, with your help, Prof. Zorn, we

moved the .cn domain name server from Karlsruhe

University to China where it started to work on

May, 1. In 1997 the CNNIC was approved by the

Chinese governmental authority. The number of

Chinese people online started to grow fast. In May

2001 we established the Internet Society of China,

and, to our great honor, we successfully hosted the

2002 ISOC Conference in Shanghai. Today, the

number of Internet users in China approaches 200

million.

Zorn: Last, before I sit here modestly, I want to

introduce Jay.

Jay Hauben helped me to bring our story into

recognition and he plays a role of a historian here

on the panel. He is at the Columbia University and

edits the Amateur Computerist newsletter or maga-

zine. And Ronda Hauben will give a speech on

Netizens this afternoon. She coauthored a book

about netizens.

Jay is the most, most accurate writer and

researcher I ever met. For, whatever I said, he an-

swered, “Prove it.” So I had to set up all the con-

tacts through my old Chinese friends and get mate-

rial out of my archives. And he pushed and pushed

and pushed me. And finally he believed what I

said. But I had to prove everything. And now on

the panel his role will be to raise a finger and say

all what you do should be written down otherwise

it will be forgotten. That is also maybe one of the

topics of our discussion, to keep that in mind, and

on paper not only on CDs.

Ok. So far my introduction so you will know

why these people are all my companions in differ-

ent stages of what I did. I am really happy that you

all came here. Without any one of you, we would

not have completed that route. So I really feel

happy now to have everybody here that you saw in

my slides. Everyone is here exact perhaps Dave

Farber but he was a little bit further from me. Now

I want to express my thanks again that you have

come so we can have a small but very high level

Internet summit. Would you agree?

One more question. Most of us met last at the

Internet Society yearly conference in Washington

in 2002. I think that was the last INET conference.

Why wasn’t the tradition continued?

Landweber: I think that their time had passed.

Zorn: That’s an interesting point.

Ok. Now I stop with the introductions and sit

here. And Dennis it is your turn now.

Jennings: Werner, thank you very much indeed.

And thank you for managing all those introduc-

tions which saved me a tremendous amount of

work as the moderator of this panel.

First of all, my apologies. I speak neither Ger-

man nor Chinese. So I will speak in English and

I’ll do my best to be understood.

It occurs to me, as I look around and as I talk

to people young and indeed old that now use the

Internet, that most people just simply assume the

Internet is there. It works. All the things that we

use, that they use day to day has always been there

as far as they are concerned. And they have no

conception of the background or the history or the

struggles that went into creating this thing called

the Internet. That’s the first question I would like

to put to each member of the panel. What now

seems so simple and so obvious, Larry, was it al-

ways like this or were there, was it different? What

are the war stories behind the story?

Landweber: If we go back to the 1980s, early

1980s, there was a research project that DARPA

had supported that developed TCP/IP. But there

was no Internet. In the early 1980s, the U.S.

Defense Department and the National Science

Foundation were interested in exploring building

the Internet. On the other hand, there was an inter-

national standards effort called OSI for Open Sys-

tems Interconnection and officially every govern-

ment in the world except perhaps Finland sup-

ported the OSI effort. Hundreds of millions, per-

haps billions of dollars were spent on the develop-

ment of a protocol suite that would become inter-

national standards. And most countries of the

world, the national science foundations would not

put money into internet development including in

Germany and also the United States except for the

Defense Department, NSF and maybe the Depart-

ment of Energy. There was very little support for

the Internet. Companies like IBM and Digital

Page 4

Equipment were actively not supportive of the

Internet. So in fact there was a major struggle to

get the Internet supported, Internet development

and the building of testbeds initially.

Should I keep going for a few minutes?

Jennings: Yes, please.

Landweber: So here we are in the 1980s and the

Internet is really a stepchild and not very far along.

Well, myself, Dave Farber, a couple of others pro-

posed CSNET

and CSNET was funded by the Na-

tional Science Foundation. Soon after, I went to

Bob Kahn who was the DARPA person (of Cerf

and Kahn, who first conceived of the TCP/IP pro-

tocol). Bob gave us permission to set up interna-

tional gateways so that e-mail and other connec-

tions from other parts of the world would allow

data to flow into the U.S. networks including the

ARPANET and other Internet connected networks.

One of the very first connections we made was to

Germany. I never throw anything out so I have

early e-mail from 1983 that I think is the first e-

mail I got from you, Werner, asking about a con-

nection to Germany from CSNET. And we ap-

proved the gateway and worked on it. Now there

were problems. Werner has talked about the tech-

nical problems. I mean everything was flakey. The

software we had for supporting Internet protocols

was not robust. The network connections were not

robust. As you heard, he had to tie together a satel-

lite link, and X.25 links and then go across to the

United States and use this PMDF which was mail

relay software. So it was not trivial technically.

But I guess as hard, maybe harder were the

political problems. So, in the United States, Ste-

phen Wolff gave us permission to have the gate-

way to China in 1987. What was not mentioned

was the next day he told us permission was

revoked. It was the White House that had inter-

vened and told Steve that permission was not to be

given. And Steve had this wonderful philosophy

which helped make the NSFNET so successful.

Which was, you don’t ask permission in advance.

You ask forgiveness afterwards. And so he, I think,

maybe winked at us and we also decided well it’s

just the White House and we’re academics. The

White House, we can ignore them. So we actually

ignored the order to turn off the connection to

China and that was something that I think was very

important.

But then there also were political problems that

we experienced with Germany which maybe

Werner is not completely familiar with. I was get-

ting messages from DFN, the German National

Network. DFN was 100 percent behind the OSI

effort. Very, very large amounts of money were

being spent by DFN with German industry and

universities to develop the OSI protocols. Some-

time around 1986 or 7, I started getting messages

from DFN people asking us to disconnect the gate-

way to Karlsruhe and connect directly to DFN. My

view is that you support the people who have done

the work and who are the good people. And in fact

the workshops that I organized each year were set

up to bring the visionaries from each country

together, the people who really were beginning to

investigate the Internet. In Germany that was

Werner Zorn. And so CSNET refused to do the

disconnection. I never throw anything out so I

went and read all the e-mails which were asking

me to do that. So there were political problems

also. We learned a number of lessons from this

activity.

Jennings: Daniel, can you pick that up because

certainly I remember the protocol wars. One of the

astonishing things was not just the amount of

money that Larry has referred to, but the vicious-

ness, the interpersonal fighting that went on. The

people were trying actively to disrupt non OSI ac-

tively. Daniel, do you want to talk a little bit about

that?

Karrenberg: OK, I’ll talk a little about that but I

won’t go into the fighting part. But first just to ex-

plain a little bit the question about “Was it

obvious?” No, it was not obvious. I was in a place.

I was a student, an undergraduate student in

Dortmund. The only thing we wanted was e-mail.

We didn’t have any sort of political agenda or

whatever, no vision. We just wanted e-mail. We

did not have any money. We still wanted e-mail.

And we found some allies in the Computer Science

department there. They had some visiting profes-

sors who actually said we will only come to

Dortmund if there is e-mail. This was in 1982, I

believe ‘81, ‘82 timeframe. And we were also run-

ning Unix at the time which wasn’t quite so popu-

Page 5

lar and we were only allowed to do that at night.

During the daytime the computers were used for

serious purposes. In the evenings we could do

Unix. And at that time we heard about this Unix

network, this UUCP network that was going on.

We had all the software, so we didn’t have that

problem. But how do you connect? How do you

connect internationally? The only way we could do

that was through the telephone, very much like

Werner’s first attempt to do the China thing.

We had a little bit of an easier task because we

only had to connect to the next country, the Neth-

erlands. And we did that. We found some modems

and connected to them and got our e-mail and our

net use.

At some point the phone bills were so signifi-

cant at the departmental level and questions were

asked. And we explained and that was fine. Then

other places in Germany running Unix also wanted

to connect and they connected to us. This was

purely ‘store and forward’. Your e-mail mail

would take a day to get somewhere because it had

to be written on one computer, stored there. They

had to make a telephone connection, stored on the

next computer, store and forward. We could have

e-mail conversations with like-minded people in

the U.S. for instance that would be a message a

day. But that was tremendous. I mean compared to

postal mail and so forth. That was fine.

At some point this grew and I remember very

vividly how we were trying to find ways of actu-

ally keeping it going financially. It was very, very

difficult in those times. And if you are sitting in an

institute like this, it’s hard to imagine but twenty

years ago, more than 20 years ago universities

were basically state institutions, run by state rules,

run by national rules and run by civil servants. It

was incredibly hard to take money into those

places, especially if it wasn’t like for big projects,

it was just to pay the phone bill. And so we had to

overcome that kind of thing. And the next thing

was we had to break the law because at some point

we wanted faster speed and automatic dialing so

that when the international phone rates became

cheaper, I think it was 10:00pm or 11:00pm at the

time, we would not have to go into the computer

room and actually dial Amsterdam. So we wanted

an autodialer and we wanted quicker modems. And

it was actually on the statute books a crime or an

offence, I’m not sure. The title of the law, the Ger-

man title of the law is Fernmeldeanlagengesetz I

don’t know whether it still exists. But it was a

criminal offense to connect anything that was not

approved by the state run PTT to the telephone

network. And we were doing like ok do we really

want this? There is approved equipment but it is

way beyond our budget. So we went to our direc-

tor, Dr. Rudolf Pater, who is one of the other un-

sung heroes of this and said we have this problem.

He said, “ya, we don’t have the budget.” We said

we have this other solution. We know it works. We

know it won’t break the phone system. They use it

in the Netherlands. Can we use that? And he said,

“I don’t want to know about it.” So we said we

want to buy it and it’s not that cheap. It was like

about what today would be 2 or 3 personal

computers worth of money. And we said we have

already talked to some of the visiting professors

and some of the other academics and we will just

all chip in and we will buy it. He said, “Na, let me

see.” And then sort of magically a week later we

were asked, what is the specification of this stuff?

Where can we buy it? And it was actually bought

with public money. And I never know what it was

supposed to be that we ordered there. That kind of

stuff. And that kind of stuff is really the resistance

that you have to overcome. And then the criminal

offence too. And all these kinds of things. And of

course, we also had this experience when this grew

and had like 50, 60, 70, 80 places connected in

Germany, we faced resistance like, “You are not

doing the right thing. You are just making things

work. We want to do the politically correct thing.”

And we were a bit more resilient to the kind of ap-

proach that Larry just related because we were ac-

tually funded by a big number of participants and

we weren’t in that sense part of the academic es-

tablishment. But it was quite clear that there was

tremendous pressure put on the university to actu-

ally either stop this altogether or play it down. Dr.

Pater was one of the people who actually resisted

that.

Can I do one more minute?

Jennings: Yes, please.

Karrenberg: One day, we have this meeting every

week to see how things are going with the net-

works thing and he goes I got a letter from the

dean of the department. He commends us on our

Page 6

good work facilitating the visiting professors and

all that kind of stuff. And he is really happy with

what we are doing. This is fine.

At the same time I was in another function. I

was a student representative in university govern-

ment. Two weeks later in my pile of papers this

same letter appears. And at the end there is a para-

graph that says, “and by the way you are not sup-

posed to become the German central hub of this.”

So I see this and go hmmm and take the letter and

go to Dr. Pater’s office and say, “Hey, did you

miss the last paragraph?” And he goes like, “One,

two, three, … Daniel, I chose to ignore that.”

Jennings: Steve, tell us about what you chose to

ignore.

Wolff: It was not as much a matter of ignoring

things as trying to make it obvious to the right peo-

ple. You see, by the time I got to the NSF after

Dennis had broken the soil, the notion of the

Internet was obvious to computer scientists

because they had CSNET. They knew it worked.

They knew what it would do. It was obvious to

university IT departments because they had

BITNET. They knew what it could do. And it was

obvious to computational physicists because they

had MFENET and NSFNET and they knew what it

could do. But in total, that’s a very small popula-

tion. And in fact people who ran much of the

NSFNET, the regional networks were based in

state run universities and many of them had bet

their careers and their jobs on making the network

work. So part of my job was to make it obvious to

the people who gave them money. So I spent a

great deal of time talking to associations of state

governors, to a group of comptrollers of states tell-

ing them that the money was not being badly sent.

So most of my job was actually marketing, trying

to convince people that this was a good thing and

the money was not being wasted.

It seems as though each consistency had its

own vision of what the network was going to do.

I’m not sure what computer scientists thought

about it. It was very clear what IT professionals

wanted from it. And, it was perfectly obvious what

computational physicists wanted out of the net-

work. And they haven’t changed in twenty years.

They wanted more, faster. But what is clear to me

now is that the essential thing is that everyone has

a vision. The hardest part of my job was trying to

communicate that vision to sufficiently many com-

munities so it would catch hold somewhere.

Jennings: Werner, let’s come back to you. Tell us

a little bit of the battle in Germany.

Zorn: Larry told something about the political

pressure in the ‘80s. When we started with the ser-

vices, we expected that everybody would be happy

in the German networking community. But espe-

cially in the German Research Network, the DFN,

just the opposite was the case. I asked myself,

what, what is going on here? We succeeded in our

project but then those who gave the money or has

the job to do that refused to accept that. That was

the signal that something is wrong in the system. I

was convinced that if their position is wrong ours

must be better or right. So it was really a thing

between right and wrong. And of course we were

fighting for our way. Steve’s philosophy, Larry

told us, was, don’t ask for permission before but

ask for forgiveness after. It was the same thing ex-

cept I did not ask for forgiveness. It was a criminal

act to sign the contract with Larry. Perhaps I did

not read it completely, but on that little sheet of

paper was written that you are allowed to use our

software and install it and run the services for the

whole Germany. So that was the thing that we

were the only one, the only installation, as Daniel

had been in Dortmund for the Unix community.

And that was the thing that upset the DFN who

thought they were the institution, the only one be-

ing legalized to do that job. That was a total misun-

derstanding of what open system means, by the

way. Open system does not only mean to use open

protocols but also to let the things grow bottom up

and not any more top down. That’s why we were

convinced we were right with our approach and

Larry backed us of course. If he would have drawn

the plug we would have been lost of course.

But on the other end, from the technical side

we were faster developing the infrastructure than

they could follow. That was the real thing. Right?

If you have an isolated service somebody can say

migrate it to a different installation. Move it there

and hosting is done there the next day. But it be-

came so complex. Perhaps it was visible on one of

the charts, what was the route that the GND was

supposed to take over. They refused. Because they

Page 7

said they were not able to run it without any inter-

ruption. It was clear if the e-mail service would not

run for two days the users would really give, run a

big protest. And so we worked in parallel and then

reached the good end where we moved to the full

Internet suite in 1989.

And then we thought the game is over, the bat-

tle is over. But then DFN moved to TCP and did

the same game but then concentrated on Dortmund

and really got vulgar with DENIC, the registry for

Germany. Then the Dortmund people had to fight

and I could observe what happens.

A mixture of thinking, having the right vision

or the right way and doing technical development

faster than them helped us to survive.

Wolff: Your biggest sin was success.

Jennings: This is the extraordinary thing, that

Steve just said is that the biggest sin was that ev-

eryone who was doing this work at the time was

doing it sort of unofficially outside the official Eu-

ropean government, European Union funded Open

Systems Interconnection approach to networking

and outside the approaches that were approved by

the PPTs.

Let me tell you just a little bit about the PPTs.

Back in ‘83 when the early EARN leased lines

were connected and that’s EARN, the European

Academic Research Network, the European part of

BITNET that I was involved in. The France Tele-

com installed their end of the line to Rome, one of

the major links and they issued the bill for it. But

they refused to connect it because of the issue

called “passing of third party traffic.” It was

against the law for one party to take traffic, a party,

the third party, to take traffic from the first party

and pass it on to another party. Get this right. To

take first party….

Karrenberg: It was illegal to compete with the

PPT.

Jennings: That’s the summary. It was illegal to

compete with the PTTs in every aspect of commu-

nication. In fact in Ireland the law was so written

that technically it was illegal to speak and to use

the air between people to communicate because

that was actually covered by the communications

act. So it was a regulatory environment that was

very hostile then to doing ad hoc things that actu-

ally worked and that continued on.

Jay, as a historian what lessons do you draw

from this early history of the 80s?

Hauben: I think the lesson to draw is to realize

that first there was a vision, a deep vision, from J.

C. R. Licklider and the people in the 60s. That vi-

sion was of the Intergalactic network. Somehow,

by connecting a few, you were eventually going to

connect everybody. But it’s also true if anything

good ever happened it is because some good peo-

ple worked very hard over a very long period of

time to overcome the obstacles. I think we know

something real happened because it was so hard to

get there. I think each of these stories contributes

to the fact that despite the obstacles people have an

understanding that what they are doing is suffi-

ciently valuable and important that they will con-

tinue trying to do it. The job for the historian to

gather up these pieces which are not very well doc-

umented and put them together to show the grand

flow that has come forward.

The surprising thing was that when Werner

told me the China e-mail story, it was a good story

but is it exactly accurate? So I looked on the

Internet and in books. I found that there was a to-

tally different story being told that didn’t have an

international component. For whatever reason, the

main essence of the first e-mail China story, which

was that all of this activity was international, was

missing in the telling of it. To clear that up it

required digging. When I dug I found Werner was

telling it straight.

I think the value of what we are doing here is

we are hearing from some of the pioneers. So we

are getting the clues of how to get the history right.

It is very important that the stories be known and

be told and be gathered up. So I hope there will be

more panels like this one.

Jennings: Excellent. Larry, tell us a little bit about

the Landweber Networkshops because those

networkshops were key.

Landweber: Go back to 1982. I went to a meeting

in London that Peter Kirstein had. And I hadn’t

traveled very much and I decided, gee wouldn’t it

be nice to see more parts of the world. I had been a

theoretician. Mostly I went to one conference a

Page 8

year or two conferences a year. But now I had got-

ten involved in CSNET and had switched my work

to networking sometime in the 70s. And it was ex-

citing and by coincidence I started being in contact

with people around the world who were thinking

about national networks, sometimes the Internet,

sometimes like EUNET, and sometimes EARN,

BITNET and there was no easy way for people to

communicate. So what I did was try to identify one

or two people in each country. As we went along

the number of countries expanded. So that we

brought them together once a year in a nice place

and spent several days exchanging ideas, exchang-

ing software, talking about plans and it was a way

of supporting the continuing development of the

network. Daniel was at, you were at a couple of

these, right? I think Dennis was. I met Dennis 1984

in Paris and Werner was and Steve was (were you

at, no maybe you weren’t) 1984. And so gradually,

first it was people from North America and Eu-

rope. Then there were some people from Latin

America. Then there was Kilnam Chon from Ko-

rea, Then there was Jun Murai from Japan. And

then there was Florencio Utreras from Chile, etc.,

etc. We just gradually—Juha Heinänen from Fin-

land and gradually we expanded and it built a com-

munity and that community was very important for

sharing ideas. Might I add one more thing?

Jennings: Please.

Landweber: OK. For me all of this has a real im-

portant geopolitical, economic, global lesson. And

it is that governments have no role in deciding

which technologies are superior to other technolo-

gies. That’s the lesson. In the case of the OSI ac-

tivity, governments around the world spent billions

of dollars in an effort to build a technology that

was poorly conceived and not well executed in

planning it. They very actively objected to and

worked against the Internet.

Now, a former student of mine was at the Eu-

ropean Commission and at one point he was in

charge of supporting networking at the Commis-

sion. I always used to make a point of thanking

him whenever I saw him because through his ef-

forts he helped American industry. I mean, if you

go back to 1980, U.S. industry, European industry,

Japanese industry were on an equal par when it

came to telecommunications. Governments around

the world by suppressing the creativity of their in-

dustry relating to the Internet made it possible for

the major companies in the Internet field to

initially develop in the United States. And I think it

significantly for a period hurt their economies.

And so this is something I hope will be written

some times by historians as a lesson. There is a

wonderful paper by François Fluckiger from

CERN which discusses this. It’s about 10 years

old,

Jennings: Fifteen

Landweber: fifteen years old which actually talks

about the European experience. That’s the lesson,

the global lesson that I have from this.

Jennings: Steve, pick that up. Governments

shouldn’t mandate technology? Isn’t that what we

did in the NSF? Didn’t we, didn’t I go around and

particularly say it has to be TCP/IP?

Landweber: No. No.

Wolff: But we did that. Yes. But we were lucky.

Landweber: May I interject.

Jennings: You may.

Landweber: There was a battle. The NFSNET by

accident became Internet. There was a committee

and if there was a battle, the physicists wanted

DECNET. They wanted to have connections from

their universities to supercomputer centers and

they wanted DECNET. They didn’t want Internet.

There were a few people, like Ken Wilson, the No-

bel Prize winner who wanted Internet. And so

there really was also within the U.S. govern-

ment…. You were there when that was happening.

Jennings: I fought that happening.

Landweber: and so it wasn’t obvious that Internet

was going to be the backbone of the NSFNET.

Jennings: But Steve

Wolff: No, it wasn’t obvious. But it was a battle

that, Dennis, you fought and I fought as well be-

Page 9

cause I think it was clear to us where the smart

people were. It is usually a good bet to ally your-

self with intelligent people and it seemed to us that

the most intelligent people were those who were

explaining why TCP/IP were good protocols and

what the difficulties were with DECNET and the

other various protocols which were being touted at

the time.

But I wanted to say something to Jay. I am try-

ing to remember the source of a quote which I

think is relevant to your activities. It’s from a Ger-

man author and I do not know the German but the

English translation goes something like this: Those

things and deeds which are not written down are

condemned to oblivion and given over to a sepul-

cher of darkness.

Larry, I am very grateful to you for not having

thrown anything away because the original source

material is all that we have to reconstruct the ac-

tual history.

Jennings: Daniel can you give us a quick com-

ment because it is coming towards the time. Given

that we have talked about all the difficulties, all the

battles, how did the Internet actually come to Eu-

rope?

Karrenberg: Oh, that’s a tall order. [I think] Let

me deviate slightly but still have some essence into

the story. I think it came many, many ways. The

thing about, one of the reasons the TCP/IP proto-

cols were better than others is that they allowed the

network to grow without any central authority,

without any central control, central network center,

or whatever. And so people made a link here, a

link there, a link there. Werner converted his links

to the U.S. I think at some point to IP. We did the

same. At some point we were just doing the store

and forward thing I talked about earlier. And then

it became economical to buy actually leased lines.

Then we had the leased lines it was quite easy ac-

tually, it was like flipping a switch to put TCP/IP

on it. And we didn’t have to ask anyone in the U.S.

permission besides the people that we were actu-

ally talking to. Whether we could connect to the

NSFNET and things like that was a different thing.

But just to have this TCP/IP link, was just you call

them up or send them an e-mail actually and say

hey um tomorrow at 10:00 we switch UUCP to

TCP/IP and PIP and that was that. And then when

we had more links into different countries that be-

came leased lines it was very easy to convert them

as well one after another and it grew organically.

And somebody else said I have an island here that

uses TCP/IP. Let’s make a link and connect the

islands. The Internet! That’s where it came from.

So that’s how it came. That’s the one reason why

TCP/IP was better. The other, obviously, is that it

did not concern itself so much with the applica-

tions like any of the other proposals did. The appli-

cations are actually outside in the end systems

rather than in the network. The physicists could do

their thing over it. The computer scientists could

do their thing over it and so on.

Jennings: It was an internet.

Zorn: For me the approval by the NSF was one of

the important things for us to maintain the e-mail

service to China. I am sure in China that approval

was very little known. There were many other at-

tempts to draw lines and links to CERN and else-

where. Other groups tried their best to get a con-

nection to some situation they worked with. What

would have happened in the whole interconnected

networks with BITNET and everything around if

the NSF would have said no?

Landweber: To the China link?

Zorn: To China. Politically “no.” Like you say, no

nothing to North Korea, nothing to…. Was it pol-

icy to control every network with every exit and

whatever in China? Without permission, it would

be thrown away and the links would be cut or

what?

Jennings: Let me address the question and see if

people agree with me. I think what would have

happened, it would have been done anyway. Fol-

lowing Steve’s maxim, Yes it was nice to ask for

permission and yes it was very nice to get the per-

mission. But I think back then we would have done

it anyway and then asked for forgiveness. And I

think we would have gotten away with it.

Wolff: Do you suppose I didn’t think that?

{Laughter}

Page 10

Jennings: Maybe we recognized it was going to

happen anyway.

Hauben: I don’t know if anyone would have paid

attention. Who down the line would have actually

said, “I am not going to pass on the e-mail message

that’s come. I am not going to do relay these e-

mail messages any more.” I don’t know which hu-

man being in the chain who had invested so much

of his or her time and energy and spirit would have

said, “OK, I’ll be the one who doesn’t continue it.”

Landweber: If there were not even the hint of the

permission and if, remember we were depending

on the Defense Department

Jennings: Yes

Landweber: Bob Kahn had I think a very similar

world view to Steve which was things happen and

he was hoping the network would grow. But if his

bosses had learned of it, the people who are the

real military people, they could have made us stop.

Jennings: They were scary people back then.

Landweber: There were plenty of people and

there were countries where we would not have at-

tempted. We would not have attempted a link to

North Korea for example in those days.

Jennings: Steve.

Wolff: One of the consequences might have been

that it would have taken longer for what happened

in 1994 because the precedent set by getting per-

mission from the United States government for an

interconnection. I think and only Madame Hu can

speak to this but I imagine it set the stage for cer-

tain things to happen within China so that later

when the formal, basically the IP connection was

sought that was a very formal ceremony and it was

an actual agreement between governments. And I

think that might have taken longer to happen if the

stage had not been set by the first connection.

Jennings: So Madame Hu, do you have some

comments on the battles these people fought to get

the Internet going?

Hu: The description of the early days when the

Internet entered China may differentiate depending

on the different events the different individuals had

been experiencing at that time but the main stream

is quite clear that the scientific research and inter-

national exchange played the role of the engine.

Also we should not leave out the High Energy

Physics Institute of CAS, with their partner, the

SLAC in Stanford University. The earlier digital

communication between the latter partners took

place even for 1 year ahead of the first e-mail sent

by Wang Yunfeng and Werner Zorn and their

teams to Germany, via an X.25 telecommunication

link.

Looking back to 1994, at that time my feeling

was the obstacles were not in the technology. Be-

cause the key person of our technology team, Pro-

fessor Qian Hualin and others, told me that they

had full success in the test with Sprint. There were

no technical obstacles. Everything is ready. Just

the gate is still closed somehow. So I remember

very clearly when I came to Dr. Neal Lane, the

NSF Director at that time, to ask for help. That was

in the early April, when I was in Washington DC

as a member of the China delegation attending the

U.S.-China Combined Committee Meeting on the

collaboration in Science and Technology between

the two countries. Dr. Neal Lane immediately

made a chance for me to talk with Stephen Wolff.

Stephen just told me, “Don’t worry. No problem.

You will be connected to the Internet.” I was not

very sure about that. I asked him, is it that simple?

He said yes it is simple. No contract, no sign, no

document, the only document we had provided

before that was the AUP (Accepted Use Policy.

And then after a few days I got the news from my

colleagues in China that the connection is done, it

goes through smoothly. Everything is OK. Then I

thought, “Oh, Steve Wolff is really great!” This

man had a magic stick. The magic stick pointed

and the gate opened. Is it that simple? I guess it is.

Jennings: On what better note to end.

With all the hard work and all the battles, at the

end of the day it took a little magic to make this fit

together and to forge the links to China to enable

the first e-mail twenty years ago from China to the

rest of the world.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Panel, thank you very

much indeed. {Applause}

Page 11

*Transcribed from the video at:

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3204.html. Slightly

edited by some of the participants.

[Editor’s note: The following is a news report, on

Xinhuanet, based on an intervew with Werner

Zorn, Berlin, Sept. 19, 2007.]

“Across the Great Wall

We Can Reach Every

Corner in the World.”

by Liming Wu

(English translation by Virginia Zorn)

This is the first e-mail mesage sent from

Beijing abroad on Sept. 20, 1987. This also means

that the internet era knocked on the door of China.

Professor Werner Zorn, who was then a com-

puter science professor at the University Karlsruhe

in Germany and who sent this first e-mail from

China 20 years ago, told the journalists when he

was interviewed by the Xinhuanet:

In September 1987, Professor Zorn visited

Beijing for a scientific conference. After four years

of preparatory work and two weeks of extremely

hard tests the joint German-Chinese team success-

fully connected the Beijing Institute of Computer

Application (ICA) and the computing centre of

University Karlsruhe. On Sept. 20, he made the

draft of this first e-mail and together with Profes-

sor Yunfeng Wang successfully sent it to one of

the computers at the University Karlsruhe.

Prof. Zorn, who helped China to get into

internet, remembered: “The first response to the

mail came from an American computer science

professor Larry Landweber. Later on there were

more and more responses from all over the world.”

Professor Zorn is known as the father of the

Internet in Germany. Germany entered the Internet

on Aug. 2, 1984 with the first e-mail received by

Prof. Zorn from CSNET. In 2006 Zorn was

awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his efforts.

Prof. Zorn recalled that it was out of the simple

wish to facilitate the communication between the

computer science professionals to connect the

computer networks from both countries. A letter

required at that time at least eight days and

telephone or telegraph was extremely expensive.

After the first success to help China to get into

the internet, Prof. Zorn continued to help China

with its development. On Nov. 28, 1990, Prof Zorn

registered .CN domain name for China, and set the

primary DNS server in University Karlsruhe. This

server was handed over to China in 1994.

Zorn said he did realise the epoch-making

meaning of the first e-mail sent from China. “It

was a sensational event.” But what the internet

means today, was out of his imagination at that

time.

Twenty years later, e-mail has become the

most popular communication media now. China,

with 162 million internet users, is the second

largest internet country after U.S.A. The internet

has become an indispensable part of life for many

Chinese people and the internet technology is en-

joying a dramatic boom.

Twenty years have passed. Prof. Yunfeng

Wang, who worked together with Prof. Zorn to get

China on the internet, passed away ten years ago.

Prof. Zorn is now 64 years old and would retire

soon. What comforts him is, that the Chinese Peo-

ple have not forgotten him. Zorn said, he often got

invitations to visit China.

On Sept. 18 dozens of scholars worldwide

gathered at the University of Potsdam, in

Germany, to celebrate the 20

anniversary of the

Chinese internet. Professor Qiheng Hu presented in

the name of the Chinese internet community a

crystal award to Prof. Zorn. On the crystal award is

inscribed:

We hereby present our sincere appreciation

to Professor Werner Zorn, for your invalu-

able support to Internet’s early development

in China.

Page 12

[Editor’s note: The following is a speach given on

Sept 18, 2007 at the event to commemorate the 20

anniversary of the first e-mail sent from China to

Germany.]

Cordial Thanks to Our

Friends

by Qiheng Hu

Internet Society of China, CNNIC

International collaborations in science and

technology are the driving forces for computer net-

working across country borders and facilitated

early Internet development in China. Among them,

the collaborations of CANET of China with

Karlsruhe University in Germany and the CSNET,

BITNET of the U.S. contributed directly to the in-

troduction of the Internet into China.

China connected to CSNET and

BITNET, and the first e-mail sent from

China to Germany

Professor Werner Zorn attended the first

CASCO Conference of 1983 in Beijing. To reduce

the cost of data transfer between scientists, and

make the communication more effective, Prof.

Zorn thought of the possibility of computer con-

nection with Chinese counterparts. The major col-

laborator was a team led by Professor Wang Yuen

Fung of the Institute of Computer Application

(ICA), China.

In July 1985 Prof. Zorn wrote a letter to the

former Chief Officer of Baden-Wuerttemberg and

suggested the program with budget application. In

Autumn 1985 the budget was approved.

In 1987 the connection between Germany and

China had had some troubles, Zorn asked for help

from the CSNET International Collaboration Divi-

sion Leader, Lawrence H. Landweber. In Septem-

ber 1987 Zorn arrived at Beijing to test the connec-

tion with the software CSNET-BS2000 which was

authorized by Lawrence H. Landweber. November

1987 the project for computer connection between

China and the U.S.A. suggested by Executive

Chairman of CSNET David Farber and Dr.

Landweber was approved by the NSF.

With the support from a team at Karlsruhe

University led by Prof. Werner Zorn, the group in

the Institute of Computer Application in Beijing

led by Prof. Wang Yuenfung and Dr. Li

Chengjiong built up an e-mail node in ICA, and

successfully sent out an e-mail on September 20 of

1987 to Germany. The e-mail title was: “Across

the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the

world”.

In November 1987 a Chinese delegation was

invited to participate in the 6

international net-

work workshop held in Princeton. During the con-

ference a congratulatory letter from NSF recogniz-

ing the connection of China into the CSNET and

BITNET of the U.S., signed by Dr. Stephen Wolff,

was forwarded to the head of delegation, Mr. Yang

Chuquan.

Registration of the CCTLD .cn

In October 1990 Prof. Wang Yuen Fung on

behalf of the ICA , authorized Dr. Zorn to register

the .cn ccTLD at the InterNIC in name of Chinese

Computer Network for Science and Technology

CANET .

Dr. Zorn registered .cn in 26 November 1990

and the Administrative Liaison for ccTLD .cn was

Prof. Qian Tianbai of the ICA.

Starting from 1991 the DNS server for the

ccTLD .cn had been resigned to University of

Karlsruhe through a trusteeship to Dr. Zorn.

On 21 of May, 1994 CNNIC, which is located

in by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was estab-

lished and authorized by Chinese Government to

move the ccTLD server for .cn to China.

China connected to the Internet: April

1994

In June 1992 at INET’92 in Japan Prof. Qian

Hualin of Chinese Academy of Sciences visited the

NSF official who was responsible for the Interna-

tional relations in the Division of Computer Net-

works to make the first discussion on the issue of

China connecting to the Internet.

At INET’93 of June 1993, Chinese participants

repeated the request of connecting to the Internet.

After INET’93 Prof. Qian Hualin attended the

CCIRN (Coordinating Committee for Interconti-

nental Research Networking) that made a special

topic in the program the issue of China connecting

to the Internet. The dominant response was

strongly supportive.

Page 13

In April 1994 Vice President of the Chinese

Academy of Sciences Dr. Hu Qiheng visited the

NSF to meet with Dr. Neal Lane and Dr. Stephen

Wolff, appealing for the China connection to the

Internet backbone. The request was fully supported

by the NSF.

On 20 of April 1994 China at last succeeded to

make a full-function connection onto the Internet.

For all the support and help we received from

our overseas friends during the early days develop-

ment of Internet in China, today when the Internet

has greatly contributed to the Chinese economy

and social progress, we feel deeply grateful and I

would like to take this opportunity to extend our

cordial thanks to our friends.

First of all, I’d like to thank Prof. Werner Zorn

and the HPI of Germany for providing this oppor-

tunity to me to come here to express gratitude on

behalf of the Chinese Internet Community to

friends who have provided invaluable help and

have contributed to the early development of the

Internet in China.

Our sincere thanks go to Prof. Werner Zorn!

Our sincere thanks go to Dr. Stephen Wolff!

Our sincere thanks go to Dr. Lawrence

Landweber!

Also we thank Dr. Daniel Karrenberg and Dr.

Dennis Jenning for their support and contributions

to the early days’ Internet in China!

The Internet is changing the world, also China,

opening the door to the information society. We’re

grateful to the Internet creators. We’re grateful to

the world Internet community: so many colleagues

from different corners of the world have provided

their help and support for the Internet to develop in

China.

[Editor’s note: The following article is based on an

e-mail message from Mdm Hu. A fuller account of

“Growth of the Internet in China since 1987” can

be viewed at

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_

lecture3203.html. The slides for this presentation

a re a t: h t t p : / / w w w .h pi . u n i- p ot s d a m . d e /

fileadmin/hpi/veranstaltungen/china/slides/070919_S1_

2_HU_Internet_in_China.pdf.]

Early Steps Toward China

on the Internet

by Qiheng Hu

Internet Society of China, CNNIC

The description of the early days when the

Internet entered China may differentiate depending

on the different events the different individuals had

been experiencing at that time but the main stream

is quite clear that the scientific research and inter-

national exchange played the role of the engine.

The essential motivation to connect to the Internet

was to decrease the cost of data and information

exchange between the collaborators, e.g. the Insti-

tute of Prof. Wang Yunfeng and his team, with the

Karlsruhe University in Germany, also the High

Energy Physics Institute of the Chinese Academy

of Sciences (CAS), with their partner, the Stanford

Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) near San Fran-

cisco. The earlier digital communication between

the latter partners took place even for one year

ahead of the first e-mail sent by Wang Yunfeng to

Germany, via a X.25 telecommunication link. As

one of the key persons for the Internet entrance

into China, Professor Qian Hualin told me, both of

those Institutes were connected to the world via the

DECNet links. The High Energy Physics Institute

(HEPI) of CAS was linked to the Energy Sciences

Network (ESnet) of the U.S. Department of Energy

(DOE), as the only partner from China side.

Today we can say for sure that the very first

true Internet connection in China was implemented

by the triangle network of the Zhongguancun Area,

National Computing and Networking Facility of

China (NCFC), in April, 1994. The NCFC was a

World bank loan project, aimed on the establish-

ment of a supercomputer center, shared by the re-

search institutes of CAS in the Zhongguancun

Area, the Tsinghua and Beijing Universities. I was

the chairperson of the Decision-making Committee

Page 14

of this project. In 1993 the Committee took a deci-

sion that was the pursuance of the researchers and

teachers that we should try our best to link to the

Internet. The first demand was budget. This deci-

sion became feasible only because the MoST

(Ministry of Science and Technology) and NSFC

(National Science Foundation of China) made the

financial support for the networking beyond the

NCFC budget.

The second issue is the possibility to have the

acceptance from the U.S. side. To make this issue

solved, efforts have been made through all possible

diversified channels by many people, including

Chinese and our friends from other countries. Pro-

fessor Qian Hualin and Ma Yinglin of CAS partici-

pated in some of these activities. As Prof. Qian

told me, in June 1992, at the INET’92 in Japan, he

had the first talk on this topic with Mr. Steven

Goldstein (at that time he was responsible for the

international connections of U.S. NSFNET) which

was followed by many talks with him later in other

chances. Qian considered the most important event

the meeting convened after INET’93. Qian had

talked with Steven Goldstein, Vint Cerf, and David

Farber, etc. to seek for the understanding of the

pursuance being connected into the Internet. Pro-

fessor Richard Hetherington, director of Computer

and Communication Department of Missouri-Kan-

sas University was among the foreign friends who

supported our pursuance. During that time Qian

Hualin and others had many discussions with

Sprint (authorized by NSFNET for international

connection) on the technical details. After the

INET’93, in Bodega Bay, San Francisco, the

CCIRN (Cooperation and Coordination for Inter-

national Research Networks) took place. The issue

of the China connection was listed in the agenda.

As Qian Hualin remembered, all speakers

supported the acceptance of China. Professor

Kilnam Chon, at that time the chairman of AP-

CCIRN, provided a ride to Qian Hualin, to attend

this important meeting.

As the technical team leader from China side,

Qian Hualin had gotten information in early 1994

that China will be connected. The test of the satel-

lite channel started in March 1994 and in April 20,

1994 implemented the full-functional connection

to the Internet. His feeling is that the final solution

of the issue was somehow related with the U.S.-

China Combined Committee Meeting on the col-

laboration in Science and Technology between the

two countries. The U.S. side may have wanted to

enhance the friendly atmosphere for this meeting.

At that time my feeling was the obstacles were

not in the technology. Because the technology

team, Professor Qian and others, told me that they

had full success in the test with Sprint. There were

no technical obstacles. Everything is ready. Just

the gate is still closed somehow. So I remember

very clearly when I come up to Dr. Neal Lane, the

NSF Director at that time, to ask for help. That was

in the early April, when I was in Washington DC

as a member of the China delegation attending the

U.S.-China Combined Committee Meeting on the

collaboration in Science and Technology between

the two countries. Dr. Neal Lane immediately

made a chance for me to talk with Stephen Wolff.

Stephen just told me, “Don’t worry. No problem.

You will be connected to the Internet.” I was not

very sure about that. I asked him, is it that simple?

He said yes it is simple. No contract, no signing,

no document. The only document we had before

that was the AUP (Accepted Use Policy). And then

after a few days I got the news from my colleagues

in China that the connection is done. It goes

through smoothly. Everything is OK. Then I

thought, “Oh, Stephen Wolff is really great!” This

man had a magic stick. The magic stick pointed

and the gate opened. Is it that simple? I guess it is.

Afterward, later in 1994, with the help of Prof.

Zorn we moved the “.cn” server back to China

from Karsruhe University, and in 1997 the CNNIC

was approved by Chinese governmental authority.

The Chinese people online started to grow fast. In

May 2001 we established the Internet Society of

China, (ISC), and, to our great honor, we success-

fully hosted the 2002 ISOC Conference in

Shanghai.

Page 15

[Editor’s note: The following talk was presented in

Potsdam on Sept 19, 2007. A video of the presen-

tation can be viewed at:

http://www.tele-task.de/

page50_lecture3204.html.

The slides from this presentation can be seen at:

http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/hpi/-

veranstaltungen/china/slides/070919_S3b_2_haube

n_netizenmovement.pdf]

Netizens and the

New News

The Emergence of Netizens and

Netizen Journalism

by Ronda Hauben

Part I – Introduction

I am happy to be here today and to have this

chance to contribute to this conference to celebrate

the 20

anniversary of the first international e-mail

sent from China to Germany and the collaboration

of researchers that made this early e-mail commu-

nication possible.

I have been asked to speak about the Netizen

movement and its impact. The title of my talk is

“Netizens and the New News: The Emergence of

Netizens and Netizen Journalism”

Part II – About Netizens

First I want to provide some background.

In 1992-1993, a college student who had gotten

access to the Net wondered what the impact of the

Net would be.*

The student decided to do his research using

the Net itself. He sent out several sets of questions

and received many responses. Studying the

responses, he realized something new was devel-

oping, something not expected. What was develop-

ing was a sense among many of the people who

wrote to him that the Internet was making a differ-

ence in their lives and that the communication it

made possible with others around the world was

important.

The student discovered that there were users

online who not only cared for how the Internet

could help them with their purposes, but who

wanted the Internet to continue to spread and

thrive so that more and more people around the

world would have access to it.

He had seen the word ‘net.citizen’ referred to

online. Thinking about the social concern he had

found among those who wrote him, and about the

non-geographical character of a net based form of

citizenship, he contracted ‘net.citizen’ into the

word ‘netizen’. Netizen has come to reflect the

online social identity he discovered doing his re-

search.

The student wrote a paper describing his

research and the many responses he had received.

The paper was titled, “The Net and Netizens: The

Impact the Net has on People’s Lives.” This

research was done in the early to mid 1990s just at

the time that the Internet was spreading to coun-

tries and networks around the world.

The student posted his paper on several of the

discussion forums known as Usenet newsgroups

and on several Internet mailing lists on July 6,

1993. It was posted in four parts under the title

“Common Sense: The Net and Netizens: the Im-

pact the Net is having on people’s lives.” People

around the world found his article and helped to

spread it to others. The term netizen quickly

spread, not only in the online world, but soon it

was appearing in newspapers and other publica-

tions offline. The student did other research and

posted his articles online.

In January 1994, several of the articles about

netizens and about the history of the Net were col-

lected into a book to be available via file transfer

protocol (ftp) to anyone online. The title of the

book was “Netizens and the Wonderful World of

the Net.” Then in 1997 the book titled Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet was published in a print edition in English

and soon afterwards in a Japanese translation.

The concept and consciousness of oneself as a

netizen has continued to spread around the world. I

want to mention a few of the more striking early

examples.

A netizen from Ireland put the online book into

html to help it to spread more widely.

A review of the book was done by a Romanian

researcher. He recognized that netizenship is a new

development and acts as a catalyst for the develop-

ment of ever more advanced information technol-

ogy.

In 1995 the student was invited to speak at a

conference about netizens and community net-

works in Beppu Bay on Kyushu Island in Japan.

Page 16

The conference was held by the Coara Community

network.

A Japanese sociologist gathered a series of arti-

cles into a book in Japanese titled “The Age of

Netizens.” The book begins with a chapter on the

birth of the netizen.

Also in the mid 1990s a Polish researcher was

doing research connected with the European Union

to try to determine what form of citizenship would

be appropriate for the E.U. Looking for a model

that might be helpful toward understanding how to

develop a European-wide form of citizenship. He

found the articles about netizens online. He recom-

mended to E.U. officials that they would do well to

consider the model of netizenship as a model for a

broader than national but also, a participatory form

of citizenship.

Among other notable events showing the im-

pact of netizens around the world are:

A Netizen Association formed in Iceland to

keep the price of the Net affordable.

A lexicographer in Israel who wrote a dictio-

nary definition for a Hebrew dictionary making

certain that she described a netizen as one who

contributes to the Net.

A Congressman in the U.S. who introduced a

bill into the U.S. House of Representatives called

the Netizen Protection Act to penalize anyone sent

spam on the Internet.

While the word ‘netizen’ like the word

‘citizen’ has come to have many meanings, the

student who had discovered the emergence of

netizens felt it was important to distinguish

between the more general usage that the media has

promoted, that anyone online is a netizen, and the

usage the student had introduced, which reserved

the title ‘netizen’ for a social identity.

In a talk he gave in Japan in 1995, the student

explained:

“Netizens are not just anyone who comes on-

line. Netizens are especially not people who

come online for individual gain or profit. They

are not people who come to the Net thinking it

is a service. Rather they are people who under-

stand it takes effort and action on each and ev-

eryone’s part to make the Net a regenerative

and vibrant community and resource. Netizens

are people who decide to devote time and ef-

fort into making the Net, this new part of our

world, a better place.” (Talk given at the

Hypernetwork ’95 Beppu Bay Conference in

Japan)

The second usage of netizens is the usage I am

referring to as well.

In his article “The Net and the Netizens” the

student proposed that the Net “gives the power of

the reporter to the Netizen.” I want to look today at

this particular aspect of netizen development by

considering some interesting examples from South

Korea, Germany, the U.S. and China.

III – South Korea and the Netizens

Movement

In South Korea, over 80% of the population

have access to high speed Internet. Along with the

spread of high speed Internet access is the develop-

ment of netizenship among the Korean population.

During a recent trip to Seoul, I asked a number of

different people that I met if they are netizens.

They all responded yes, or “I hope so.”

In South Korea, the overwhelming influence of

the three major newspapers on politics has led to a

movement opposing this influence known as the

“anti-Chosun movement.” (Chosun Ilbo is the

name of the largest, most influential newspaper in

South Korea.)

Among the developments of this movement,

was the creation of an alternative newspaper called

OhmyNews by Oh Yeon Ho in February 2000. Mr.

Oh had been a student activist and became a jour-

nalist for an alternative monthly magazine. He

saw, however, that the alternative press monthly

was not able to effectively challenge the influence

over politics exerted by the mainstream conserva-

tive media in South Korea. With some funds he

and a few other activist business people were able

to raise, he began the online daily newspaper

OhmyNews.

Mr. Oh felt that some of the power of the con-

servative mainstream media came from the fact

that they were able to set the standards for how

news was produced, distributed and consumed. He

was intent on challenging that power and reshaping

how and what standards were set for the news. The

goal that OhmyNews set for itself was to challenge

the great power of the mainstream news media

over news production, distribution and consump-

tion.

Page 17

He had limited financial means when he started

OhmyNews so he began with a staff of only four

reporters.

1) Selection and Concentration of Articles:

To make the most use of this small staff, he

decided to focus on carefully chosen issues. Not

only would there be carefully selected issues, but

there would then be several articles on these issues

so they could have the greatest possible impact.

2) Targeting Audience:

The staff of OhmyNews decided to aim their

coverage of issues toward the young Internet

generation, toward progressives and activists and

toward other reporters.

3) Challenge how standards are set and what they

are:

One of the innovations made by Mr. Oh was to

welcome articles not only from the staff of the

young newspaper, but also from what he called

“citizen reporters” or “citizen journalists.”

“Every citizen is a reporter,” was a motto of

the young newspaper, as they didn’t regard jour-

nalists as some exotic species. To be a reporter was

not some privilege to be reserved for the few.

Rather those who had news to share had the basis

to be journalists. Referring to citizen journalists as

“news guerrillas,” OhmyNews explains that:

The dictionary definition of guerrilla is “a

member of a small non-regular armed forces who

disrupt the rear positions of the enemy.”

One of the reasons for calling citizen journal-

ists “news guerrillas” OhmyNews explains, is that

it found that citizen journalists would “post news

from perspectives uniquely their own, not those of

the conservative establishment.”

This viewpoint, the viewpoint challenging the

conservative establishment was an important in-

sight that OhmyNews had about the kinds of sub-

missions it was interested in for its newspaper,

submissions from those who were not part of their

staff but whose writing became a significant con-

tribution to OhmyNews.

Articles submitted by citizen journalists would

be fact checked, edited, and if they were used in

OhmyNews, a small fee would be paid for them.

Articles could include the views of their

authors as long as the facts were accurate. In this

way OhmyNews was changing both who were con-

sidered as journalists able to produce the news, and

what form articles would take.

Basing itself mainly on the Internet to distrib-

ute the news, OhmyNews was also changing the

form of news distribution.

(Once a week a print edition was produced

from among the articles that appeared in the online

edition during the week. There was a need to pro-

duce a print edition in order to be considered a

newspaper under the South Korean newspaper

law.)

The long term strategy of OhmyNews was to

create a daily Internet based newspaper superior to

the most powerful South Korean newspaper at the

time (the digital version of Chosun Ilbo, the Digital

Chosun)

In its short seven year existence there have

been a number of instances when OhmyNews suc-

ceeded in having an important impact on politics in

South Korea. A few such instances are:

1) Helping to build what became large candlelight

demonstrations against the agreement governing

the relations between the U.S. government and

South Korea. This agreement is known as the Sta-

tus of Forces Agreement. (The U.S. has approxi-

mately 30,000 troops in South Korea.)

2) Helping to build the campaign for the presi-

dency of South Korea for a political outsider Roh

Moo-hyun in Nov-Dec 2002

3) Helping to bring to public attention the death of

a draftee from stomach cancer because of poor

medical treatment in the military. Articles in OMN

helped to expose the problem and put pressure on

the South Korean government to change the condi-

tions

4) Helping to create a climate favorable to the de-

velopment of online publications

IV Telepolis – the Online Magazine

In Germany a different form of online journal-

ism has developed. One influential example is

Telepolis, an online magazine created in March

1996 to focus on Internet culture. The online

magazine is part of the Heise publication network.

Telepolis which celebrated its 10

anniversary in

2006, has a small staff and also accepts articles

from freelancers for which it pays a modest fee. It

publishes several new articles every day on its web

site and also has an area where there is often lively

online discussion about the articles which have

Page 18

appeared. The articles are mainly in German

though some English articles are published as well.

Describing Telepolis in 1997, David Hudson

writes:

“Over eight hundred articles are up (online),

many of them in English, and people are

reading them. The number of pageviews is ru-

mored to rival that of some sites put up by

well-established magazines. So…Telepolis has

actually done quite a service for some of the

more out of the way ideas that might not other-

wise have become a part of European digital

culture.” (Rewired,

http://www.rewired.com/97/1010.html)

One example of what I consider Telepolis’s

important achievements is the fact that the day af-

ter the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade

Center, a series of articles began in Telepolis ques-

tioning how quickly the U.S. government claimed

it knew the source of the attacks, despite the fact

that no preparations had been made to prevent the

attacks. A lively discussion ensued in response to

the articles on Telepolis. Serious questions were

raised comparing what happened on Sept. 11 and

the ensuing attacks by the U.S. government on

civil liberties using Sept. 11 as a pretext. Compari-

sons were considered and debated comparing Sept

11 and the response of the U.S. government with

what happened in Germany with the Reistag fire

and the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Describing the

response he received to his articles in Telepolis, the

journalist Mathias Broeckers writes:

“Never before in my 20 years as a journalist

and author of more than 500 newspaper and

radio pieces have I had a greater response than

to the articles on the World Trade Center series

although they were only published on the

Internet. Although? I reckon it’s rather because

they were only to be found in the Internet mag-

azine Telepolis, and soon after on thousands of

Web sites and forums everywhere on the

Internet, that they achieved this level of

response and credibility.” (Conspiracies, Con-

spiracy Theories and the Secrets of 9/11, Prog-

ress Press, June 2006)

Similarly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I

wrote an article for Telepolis about the large

demonstration held in New York City on Saturday,

February 15, 2003. In the article I proposed that

the demonstration would have been even larger but

for a number of obstacles the U.S. government put

in the path of those wanting to protest the U.S. in-

vading Iraq. A significant discussion among the

readers of Telepolis followed in which the issues

raised in the article were carefully examined and

other sources used to fact check the article and to

compare the view I presented with that which

appeared in the more mainstream press.

V- Blogs in the U.S.

There is no U.S. online publication equivalent

to OhmyNews in South Korea or Telepolis in

Germany. There are a number of blogs, which of-

ten challenge the reporting of the mainstream me-

dia in the U.S. or which respond, often critically, to

U.S. government policy and actions.

One blog I have found particularly interesting

is the blog “China Matters.”

The author of the blog is anonymous, using the

name “China Hand.” He introduces his blog by

explaining that U.S. policy on China is very impor-

tant, yet there is relatively little information pre-

sented about China to the public in the U.S.

China Hand writes: “America’s China policy

evolves with relatively little public information,

insight or debate. In the Internet age, that’s not de-

sirable or justifiable. So China Matters. The pur-

pose of this website is to provide objective, author-

itative information and to comment on matters

concerning the People’s Republic of China.”

An important role the China Matters blog

played recently was to help provide information

about the U.S. Treasury Department’s actions to

freeze North Korean funds in a bank in Macau,

China, the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) bank.

To fill in some background, in September

2005, an agreement was reached to serve as a

foundation for negotiations among the six coun-

tries negotiating a peace agreement for the Korean

Peninsula. Shortly afterwards, the U.S. government

announced that it had taken an action under the

U.S. Patriot Act to freeze $25 million of North Ko-

rean funds held in a bank in Macau, China. This

action stalled any continuation of the negotiations

until the money would be released and returned to

North Korea via the banking system.

The China Matters blog posted documents

from the owner of the bank in China demonstrating

that no proof had been presented to justify the U.S.

government’s actions. The publication of these

Page 19

documents made it possible for of the publications

to carry articles so that a spotlight was focused on

the problem. The problem was then able to be

resolved. The money was released to North Korea,

paving the way for the resumption of the Six-Party

Talks.

VI – Netizen journalism in China

China, like the U.S. doesn’t appear to have an

online newspaper or magazine like OhmyNews or

like Telepolis. There are, however, a number of

active online forums and blogs.

Perhaps one of the most well known recent

activities of Chinese bloggers is known as “the

Most Awesome Nail House” saga.

A nail house, according to an article in

OhmyNews International is the name given by real

estate developers to describe the building of an

owner who opposes moving even when his prop-

erty is slated for demolition.

This past February, a blogger posted a photo-

graph of one such building on the Internet. The

picture spread around the Internet. The building

was owned by Yang Wu and his wife Wu Ping. It

was the building where they had lived and had a

small restaurant. The nail house was located on

number 17 Hexing Road, Yangjiaping, Changqing,

Real estate developers planned to build a shop-

ping center on that spot and had successfully ac-

quired all the surrounding buildings. Yang Wu and

his wife, however, were determined to resist until

their demand for what they felt was fair compensa-

tion was met.

In September 2004, demolition of the sur-

rounding buildings began and by February 2007

only Yang’s building remained. The developers cut

off the water and electricity even though this was

illegal.

The story spread not only over the blogs but

soon also in the Chinese media. At one point, how-

ever, the story was not being reported in the Chi-

nese press. A blogger from Hunan, Zola Zhou

wrote on his blog, “I realize this is a one-time

chance and so from far far away I came to

Changqing to conduct a thorough investigation in

an attempt to understand a variety of viewpoints.”

On his blog, Zola reports that he took a train

and arrived two days later at the Changqing train

station. On his way to the nail house, he stopped to

have rice noodles, and asked the shop owner what

he thought of the nail house saga. Along the way

he spoke to other people he met. He reported on

the variety of views of the people he met on his

blog. Some of those he spoke with supported Yang

Wu and Wu Ping. Others felt Yang Wu and Wu

Ping were asking for a lot of money. (20 million

RMB) and that the developer was justified in re-

fusing to pay such an outlandish amount. Another

person told Zola that Yang Wu was only asking for

the ability to be relocated to a comparable place

and that the developer was offering too little for

the property.

After arriving in Changqing, Zola reports on

his blog that he bought the newspapers and looked

to see if there was any news that day about the Nail

House saga. He reports he didn’t find any cover-

age, though he was told there may have been some

in the paper from the previous day.

One of the surprises for Zola in Changqing was

to find that other people who were losing their

homes and businesses had gathered around the

Nail House hoping to find reporters to cover their

struggles against developers.

One such person offered Zola some money to

help with the young blogger’s expenses. “I’d never

come across a situation like this before,” he writes,

“and never thought to take money from people I’d

help by writing about, so I firmly said I didn’t want

it, saying I only came to help him out of a sense of

justice and that it might not necessarily prove suc-

cessful.” Zola explains that he wondered if accept-

ing the money “would lead me to stray further and

further from my emerging sense of justice.” Even-

tually, he let the person buy him lunch and later, he

accepted money to be able to stay in a hotel room

for a few days to continue to cover the story on his

blog. Also Zola eventually asked Yang Wu’s wife

Wu Ping what her demand of the developer is. Her

answer, he writes, is “I don’t want money. What I

want is a place of the same size anywhere in this

area.”

Zola had heard a rumor that Wu Ping could

hold out for her demands to be met by the develop-

ers because her father was a delegate for the Na-

tional People’s Congress.

Zola asked Wu Ping if her father is a delegate

for the National People’s Congress. Wu Ping

responded, “No” her father wasn’t a delegate. She

had had some background, however, reading law

books and had had the experience of going through

Page 20

a law suit which she won. But Wu Ping did not

want a law suit against the developer because she

said that “A lawsuit goes on for three to five years.

I may win the law suit but I end up losing money.”

In April, the Awesome Nail House was

demolished.

In preparing my talk for today, I sent Zola e-

mail asking a few questions. I asked him what the

outcome was of the Nail House struggle. He said

that Yang Wu and Wu Ping were given another

house and 900,000 RMB for what they lost during

the time they couldn’t operate their restaurant.

I also asked him, “Do you consider yourself a

netizen? Can you say why?” He answered, “Yes, I

do. Because I read news from Internet, Make

friends from Internet, communicate with friends by

Internet, write a blog at the Internet.”

Another example of netizen activity on the Net

in China is the story that Xin Yahua posted about

young people in the provinces of Shanxi and

Henan being kidnapped and then subjected to slave

labor working conditions. Families reported the

disappearance of young people in the vicinity of

the Zhengzhou Railway Station, bus stations, or

nearby roads. A discovery was made that a number

of young people had been abducted and then sold

for 500 yuan (about $62) to be used as slave labor

for illegal brick kilns operating in Shanxi.

On the evening of June 5, 2007, a post

appeared on the online forum at “Dahe Net,”

which attracted much attention and many page

views.

The post appeared as an open letter from 400

fathers of abducted children. The letter described

how when the fathers went to the local government

to ask for help they were turned away, with the

excuse given that the kilns where the slave labor

conditions were being practiced, were in a differ-

ent police jurisdiction from where the abductions

had taken place. “Henan and Shanxi police pass

the buck back and forth,” the letter explained.

“Who can rescue them,” the letter asked. “With the

governments of Henan and Shanxi passing the

buck to each other, whom should we ask for help?

This is extremely urgent and concerns the life and

death of our children. Who can help us?”

Xin Yanhua, a 32 year old woman who was the

aunt of one of the abducted young people, wrote

the letter. She originally posted it under an anony-

mous name (“Central Plain Old Pi”). Her nephew

had been abducted, but then rescued and returned

home by some of the fathers looking for their own

children. She was grateful to those who found her

nephew and wanted to find a way to express her

gratitude. Originally she tried to offer the fathers

who found her nephew money, but they said “This

is not about the money. This is about the wretched

children.” She tried to get the local newspapers and

television to cover the story. The 400 word article

that appeared in the local newspaper didn’t lead to

any helpful action. The TV coverage wasn’t

followed up with any further stories. Nothing re-

sulted from it. Xin Yanhua finally drafted the letter

from the “400 Fathers of the Missing Children”

and posted it in an Internet forum.

The forum moderator placed the post in a

prominent position on the Dahe Net forum and

posted it with some of the photographs from the

Henan TV Metro Channel coverage. It was subse-

quently reposted on the Tianya forum. As of June

18, the Dahe post generated more than 300,000

page views and the reposting of it at the Tianya

forum had generated more than 580,000 page

views and many many comments. Many of the

comments expressed dismay that such conditions

existed and expressed empathy for the victims and

their families.

A few weeks later Xin Yanhua posted a second

letter titled, “Failing to Find their Children, 400

Parents petition again.”

The media converged from around the country

to cover the story. As a result of the posts and dis-

cussion on the Internet, state officials issued direc-

tives and the Shanxi and Henan provincial

governments initiated an unprecedented campaign

against the illegal brick kilns.

When Xin Yanhua was asked why she had

done the posts, she emphasized that she didn’t

want fame or credit. The Internet had become the

only option to obtain aid for the situation. She had

wanted to express her gratitude to the parents who

had rescued her nephew even though they hadn’t

been able to find their own missing children. Xin

wanted to be able obtain justice.

“This case is yet another in a growing list of

cases of citizen activism on the Chinese Internet

and another sign that the government is listening to

the online chatter,” one post explained.

I hope that these examples help to show that,

“Focusing too closely on Internet censorship over-

Page 21

looks the expanded freedoms of expression made

possible in China by the Internet,” as one Chinese

computer researcher has commented.

Conclusion

The few examples I have had the time to pres-

ent are just the tip of an ice berg, to indicate that

already the Net and Netizens are having an impact

on our society. The impact on the role the press

and media play may have different expressions in

different countries, as my examples demonstrate

with respect to South Korea, Germany, the U.S.

and China. But in all these instances the Net and

Netizens are having an impact not only on the role

of the media on society, but on government activ-

ity and on the very nature of the press itself.

I want to draw your attention to a cartoon

(

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/cartoon.ppt). In the

cartoon there are several scientists (palentologists)

who have come to look for something they have

been told is very large. They are discussing

whether they should turn back as they don’t see

anything. But if you look carefully at the cartoon,

you can see that they are standing in the midst of a

huge footprint. The problem is that it is so large

that they can’t see it.

I want to propose that like the cartoon the

Internet and Netizens are having an impact on our

society, which can be difficult to see but yet may

be very large. I want to propose that we don’t

make the mistake of turning back because we can’t

see it.

*The student referred to is Michael Hauben. He is

co-author of the book Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet.

(http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/)

Conference Presentation

Videos Online

The “Across the Great Wall” twentieth anniversary

celebration was sponsored and hosted by the Hasso

Plattner Institute. The program and biographical

information about the participants can be seen at:

http://www.hpi.un i-potsdam.de/fileadmin/hpi/

veranstaltungen/china/slides/conference_binder.pdf.

The Institute has archived online video files of the

presentations. Some of those presentations can be

viewed at:

“Introduction to the Forum” (in German and Chi-

nese, no English translation)

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3201.html

“Connecting China to the International Computer

Networks” Werner Zorn

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3202.html

“Growth of the Internet in China since 1987” Hu

Qiheng

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3203.html

“Panel discussion: The Impact of the first e-mail”

chaired by Dennis Jennings

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3204.html

“Brief Introduction to CNNIC and IDN in China”

Zhang Jianchuan

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3233.html

“The Netizen Movement and Its Impact” Ronda

Hauben

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3234.html

“Building the global Metaverse” Ailin Guntram

Graef

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3235.html

“W3C und W3C World Offices” Klaus Birkenbihl

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3236.html

“Supported Vocational Education Instructors

Training for China at Tongji University Shanghai”

Thorsten Giertz

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3237.html

“Internet and the freedom of opinion” Wolfgang

Kleinwächter

http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3238.html

Most of these presentations are referred to al-

ready in this issue. The presentation by Zhang

Jianchuan outlines some of the history and current

state of the Internet in China and discusses the ef-

fort to have Chinese character internet addressing

available with its advantage for Chinese speaking

people. The slides for his presentation are at:

Page 22

http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/hpi/

veranstaltungen/china/slides/070919_S3b_1_

ZHANG_CNNIC.pdf.

The presentation by Wolfgang Kleinwächter

discusses the questions of freedom of opinion and

of censorship. As it applies to China, he stressed

that the advances of free expression are the main

aspect not as is often erroneously cited, censorship.

The slides for his presentation are at:

http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/hpi/

veranstaltungen/china/slides/070919_S3b_6_

Kleinwaechter_Internet_Freedom_of_Opinion.pdf

[Editor’s note: The following article attempts to

put the colaborration which led to the first e-mail

massage from China to the world over the CSNet

in the context of internetional computer and net-

working cooperation.

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/context.ppt ]

Some Context for the

Spread of CSNET to the

Peoples Republic of China

by Jay Hauben

This article puts the spread of CSNET e-mail

to the Peoples Republic of China into a particular

historical context.

A clue to that context is where the first e-mail

message went when it left Beijing. The Cc: line on

the September 20, 1987 e-mail message tells us

that the message not only went from Beijing to

Karlsruhe, from the Peoples Republic of China to

the Federal Republic of Germany. It went also to

lhl, Larry Landweber at the University of Wiscon-

sin and to Dave Farber at the University of

Deleware both in the U.S. using the CSNET and to

Dennis Jennings in Dublin Ireland using CSNET

and BITNET. And it went to the CSNET Coordi-

nation and Information Center, CIC.

The message on this China-Germany link went

across a supposed ideological and many geo-

graphic and technical borders. What Professors

Wang Yunfeng and Werner Zorn and their teams

had done was spread the international computer

science e-mail network CSNET to the People’s

Republic of China. They had taken a step toward

an internet connection between the people of China

and the online people of the rest of the world.

As an historian and a journalist I want to go

back in time and trace a tradition of sharing and

crossing borders that is a characteristic of com-

puter development and computer science. I will

start with the Hungarian-born scientist and math-

ematician John von Neumann just after the Second

World War.

Von Neumann had set a very solid scientific

foundation for computer development in his work

for the U.S. government during the war. He fore-

saw that it would not be possible to know how

computers would be used and so the most general

purpose computer should be built.

He wrote a report presenting detailed argu-

ments for the axiomatic features that have charac-

terized computers ever since. But when the war

ended there began to be a battle over who would

get the patent for the basic ideas that were embod-

ied in the ENIAC, one of the first successful elec-

tronic digital computers. Von Neumann saw a po-

tential conflict between scientific and commercial

development of computers.

Von Neumann argued that the foundation of

computing should be scientific and that a prototype

computer be built at the Institute for Advanced

Study at Princeton, NJ to insure that a general pur-

pose computer be build by scientists. He wrote: “It

is…, very important to be able to plan such a ma-

chine without any inhibitions and to run it quite

freely and governed by scientific considerations.”

The computer became known as the Institute for

Advanced Studies or IAS computer.

Von Neumann also set the pattern in the very

beginning that the fundamental principles of com-

puting should not be patented but should be put in

the public domain. He wrote:

“…[W]e are hardly interested in exclusive patents

but rather in seeing that anything that we contrib-

uted to the subject, directly or indirectly, remains

accessible to the general public…[O]ur main inter-

est is to see that the government and the scientific

public have full rights to the free use of any infor-

mation connected with this subject.”

He was here placing his contributions to com-

puter development into the long tradition of the

public nature of science, the norm of sharing scien-

Page 23

tific results. That norm had been interrupted by the

war.

Von Neumann gathered a team of scientists

and engineers at the Institute for Advanced Studies

to design and construct the IAS computer. He and

his team documented their theoretical reasoning

and logical and design features in a series of

reports. They submitted the reports to the U.S. Pat-

ent Office and the U.S. Library of Congress with

affidavits requesting that the material be put in the

public domain. And, they sent out these reports –

175 copies of them by land and sea mail – to scien-

tist and engineer colleagues in the U.S. and around

the world. The reports included full details how the

computer was to be constructed and how to code

the solution to problems.

Aided by the IAS reports, computers were

designed and constructed at many institutions in

the U.S., and in Russia, Sweden, Germany, Israel,

Denmark, and Australia. Also, scientific and tech-

nical journals began to contain articles describing

computer developments in many of these coun-

tries. Visits were exchanged so the researchers

could learn from each other’s projects. This open

collaborative process in the late 1940s laid a solid

foundation for computer development. It was upon

that scientific foundation that commercial interests

were able to begin their computer projects starting

by the early 1950s.

The end of the war had unleashed a general

interest in the scientific and engineering communi-

ties for computer development. Many researchers

had to be patient while their counties recovered

from the devastation of the war before they could

fully participate. Still computer development was

international from its early days.

Scientific and technical computer advances

continued in the 1950s. A new field of study and

practice was emerging, Information Processing,

what is called today Informatics or Computer Sci-

ence.

Starting in 1951, in the United States national

biennial Joint Computer Conferences (JCC) were

held for American and Canadian researchers from

the three professional associations active in com-

puter development.

What may have been the first major

international electronic digital computer confer-

ences was organized in 1955 by Alwin Walther, a

German mathematician. It was in Dramstadt Ger-

many. There were 560 attendees. One of the sixty

speakers at the meeting was Herman Goldstine,

von Neumann’s partner in the IAS Computer Pro-

ject and one of the signatories of the affidavit putt-

ing all his work into the public domain. The ab-

stracts were all published in both German and Eng-

lish. This conference and others held during the

time of the division of Germany were partly the

result of efforts by German scientists on both sides

of the divide to keep in touch with each other’s

work.

In China also computer development was on

the agenda. In 1956, the Twelve-Year Plan for the

Development of Sciences and Technology

included computer technology as one of the 57

priority fields.

Describing the mid 1950s, Isaac Auerbach, an

American engineer active organizing the Joint con-

ferences, reports that “In those days we were con-

stantly talking about the state of the art of com-

puters…. I suggested then that an international

meeting at which computer scientists and engi-

neers from many nations of the world might

exchange information about the state of the com-

puter art would be interesting and potentially valu-

able. I expressed the hope that we could benefit

from knowledge of what was happening in other

parts of the world…. The idea was strongly en-

dorsed….” Auerbach projected such a conference

would be a “major contribution to a more stable

world.” This line of thought helped suggest

approaching UNESCO, the United Nations Educa-

tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization to

sponsor such a conference.

UNESCO was receiving proposals from other

countries as well. The result was the first World

Computer Conference, held in 1959 in Paris.

Nearly 1800 participants from 38 countries and 13

international organizations attended. Auerbach

wrote that “by far, the most important success of

the conference was the co-mingling of people from

all parts of the world, their making new acquain-

tances, and their willingness to share their

knowledge with one another.” Computers and

computing knowledge was treated at this confer-

ence as an international public good. The level of

development reported from around the world was

uneven but sharing was in all directions.

During the UNESCO conference, many atten-

dees expressed an interest in the holding of such

Page 24

meetings regularly. A charter was proposed and by

Jan 1960 the International Federation for Informa-

tion Processing (IFIP) was founded. IFIP’s mission

was to be an “apolitical world organization to en-

courage and assist in the development, exploitation

and application of Information Technology for the

benefit of all people.” Eventually, IFIP subgroups

sponsored annually hundreds of international con-

ferences on the science, education, impact of com-

puters and information processing.

The success of the IFIP in fulfilling its mission

is attested to by the fact that all during the Cold

War, IFIP conferences helped researchers from

East and West to meet together as equals to report

about their computing research and eventually

about their computer networking research and ac-

tivities. [As an aside, when the IFIP held its Six-

teenth World Computer Conference in the year

2000 it was in Beijing.]

The sharing among researchers by letter and at

conferences was also being built directly into the

computer technology itself. The 1960s, were ush-

ered in by the beginning of development of the

time-sharing mode of computer operations. Before

time-sharing, computers were used mostly in batch

processing mode where users left jobs at the com-

puter center and later received back the results.

Computer time-sharing technology made possible

the simultaneous use of a single computer by many

users. In this way more people could be using

computers and each user could interact with the

computer directly.

The human-computer interactivity made possi-

ble by time-sharing suggested to J. C. R. Licklider,

an American psychologist and visionary, the possi-

bility of human-computer thinking centers. A com-

puter and the people using it forming a collabora-

tive work team. He then envisioned the intercon-

nection of these centers into what he called in the

early 1960s the “intergalactic network,” all people

at terminals everywhere connected via a computer

communications system. Licklider also foresaw

that all human knowledge would be digitized and

somehow made available via computer networks

for all possible human uses. This was Licklider’s

vision for an internet.

In 1962, Licklider was offered the opportunity

to start the Information Processing Techniques Of-

fice a civilian office within the U.S. Defense De-

partment. As its director he gave leadership insur-

ing the development and spread of time-sharing

interactive computing which gave raise to a com-

munity of time-sharing researchers across the U.S.

Computer time-sharing on separate computers

led to the idea of connecting such computers and

even how to connect them.

Donald Davies, a British computer scientist,

visited the time-sharing research sites that

Licklider supported in the U.S. Later he invited

time-sharing researchers to give a workshop at his

institution. Davies reports that after the workshop

he realized that the principle of sharing could be

applied to data communication. He conceived of a

new technology which he called packet switching.

The communication lines could be shared by many

users if the messages were broken up into packets

and the packets interspersed. Davies’ new technol-

ogy treated each message and each packet equally.

By sharing the communication system in this way

a major efficiency was achieved over telephone

technology.

By 1968 Licklider foresaw that packet

switching networking among geographically sepa-

rated people would lead to many communities

based on common interest rather than restricted to

common location. Licklider expected that network

technology would facilitate sharing across borders.

Licklider and his co-author Robert Taylor also

realized that there would be political and social

questions to be solved. They raised the question of

access, of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. They wrote:

“For the society, the impact will be good or

bad, depending mainly on the question: Will

‘to be on line’ be a privilege or a right? If only

a favored segment of the population gets a

chance to enjoy the advantage of ‘intelligence

amplification,’ the network may exaggerate the

discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual

opportunity.”

Licklider and Taylor were predicting that the

technology would have built into it the capacity to

connect everyone but spreading the connectivity

would encounter many obstacles.

Von Neumann’s putting his computer code in

the public domain was repeated. In 1969, mathe-

maticians at the U.S. telephone company AT&T

Bell Labs started to build a computer time-sharing

operating system for their own use. They called it

UNIX. It was simple and powerful. AT&T was

forbidden to sell it because computer software was

Page 25

not part of its core business. The developers made

UNIX available on tapes for the cost of the tapes.

They also made the entire software code available

as well. Being inexpensive and powerful and open

for change and improvement by its users, UNIX

spread around the world. UNIX user organizations

united these people into self-help communities.

The computer time-sharing scientists that

Licklider supported also began in 1969 an experi-

ment to connect their time-sharing centers across

the U.S. Their project resulted in the first large

scale network of dissimilar computers. Its success

was based on packet switching technology. That

network became known as the ARPANET, named

after the parent agency that sponsored the project,

the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA).

The ARPANET was a scientific experiment among

academic researchers not as is often stated a mili-

tary project.

The goal of the ARPANET project was “to fa-

cilitate resource sharing.” The biggest surprise was

that the ARPANET was used mostly for the

exchange of text messages among the researchers

about their common work or unrelated to work.

Such message exchanges occurred in every time

sharing community. The ARPANET only in-

creased the range and number of users who could

be reached. Thus was born e-mail, an effective and

convenient added means of human communica-

tion. The idea of swapping messages is simple.

Communication technologies that make an e-mail

system possible is the challenge.

The ARPANET started with four nodes in

early 1970 and grew monthly. Early technical

work on it was reported at the joint conferences in

the U.S. and in the open technical literature. Simi-

lar packet switching experiments took place else-

where especially France and the U.K. Visits were

exchanged and each other’s literature was eagerly

read.

The thought of interconnecting these networks

seemed a natural next step. Again the technology

itself invited sharing and connecting, all of which

requires collaboration.

The spark toward what we know today as the

internet emerged seriously in October 1972 at the

first International Computer Communications Con-

ference in Washington DC. Not well known is the

fact that the internet was international from its very

beginning. At this conference researchers from

projects around the world discussed the need to

begin work establishing agreed upon protocols.

The International Working Group (INWG) was

created which helped foster the exchange of ideas

and lessons. Consistent with IFIP purposes this

group became IFIP Working Group 6.1.

The problem to be solved was how to provide

computer communication among technically dif-

ferent computer networks in countries with differ-

ent political systems and laws. From the very be-

ginning the solution had to be sought via an inter-

national collaboration. The collaboration that made

possible the TCP/IP foundation of the internet was

by U.S., Norwegian and U.K. researchers.

Throughout the 1970s the ARPANET grew as

did computing and computer centers in many

countries. Schemes were proposed to connect na-

tional computer centers across geographic

boundaries. In Europe, a European Informatics

Network was proposed for Western Europe. A

similar networked called IIASANET was proposed

for Eastern Europe. The hope was to connect the

two computer networks with Vienna as the East-

West connection point. IIASANET got its name

from the International Institute for Advanced Sys-

tem Analysis which was an East-West institute for

joint scientific work. When the researchers met for

joint work in the IIASA Computer Project or at

IFIP conferences, they were pointed to or had al-

ready read the journal articles describing the de-

tails of the ARPANET. The literature had crossed

the Iron Curtain and now the researchers tried to

get networks to cross too. At this they failed. The

reason seemed both commercial and political. The

networks depended on telephone lines and the

telephone companies were reluctant to welcome

new technology. Also, with the coming of Ronald

Reagan to the U.S. Presidency, hard line politics

derailed East-West cooperative projects.

Efforts in the 1970s to exchange visits among

computer scientists also included China. In 1972

six substantial U.S. computer scientists on their

own initiative were able to arrange a three week

visit to tour computer facilities and discuss com-

puter science in Shanghai and Beijing. They re-

ported that the Chinese computer scientists they

met were experienced and well read in western

technical literature. The discussions and sharing

were at a high level. They felt their trip was a use-

ful beginning to reestablish “channels of communi-

Page 26

cation between Chinese and American computer

scientists.” A few months after their visit, a tour of

seven Chinese scientists of the U.S. included Li

Fu-sheng a computer scientist.

In the U.S., the advantage of being on the

ARPANET especially e-mail and file transfer

attracted the attention of computer scientists and

their graduate students. But most universities could

not afford the estimated $100,000 annual cost nor

had the influence to get connected. A common

feeling was that those not on the ARPANET miss-

ed out on the collaboration it made possible.

To remedy the situation two graduate students

Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis developed a way to use

the copy function built into the Unix operating sys-

tem to pass messages on from computer to com-

puter over telephone lines. The messages could be

commented on and the comments would then be

passed on with the messages. In that way the mes-

sages became a discussion. They called the system

USENET short for UNIX Users Network. Since

UNIX was wide spread on computers in many

countries, USENET spread around the world.

Based at first on telephone connections between

computers the costs could be substantial. Some

help with phone costs was given by AT&T the reg-

ulated U.S. phone company. Computer tapes con-

taining a set of messages were sometimes mailed

or carried between say the U.S. and Europe or

Australia as a less expensive means of sharing the

discussions.

At the same time, Larry Landweber, a com-

puter scientist in the U.S., gathered other computer

scientists who lacked ARPANET connectivity. The

ARPANET connected universities were pulling

ahead of the others in terms of research collabora-

tion and contribution. Landweber and his col-

leagues made a proposal to the U.S. National Sci-

ence Foundation (NSF) for funding for a research

computer network for the entire computer science

community.

At first the NSF turned the proposal down.

There were favorable reviews, but some reviewers

thought the project would have too many problems

for the proposers to solve and that they lacked suf-

ficient networking experience. Although disap-

pointed, Landweber and his colleagues continued

to work to put together an acceptable proposal.

They received help from many researchers in the

computer science community By 1981 they had

support for their Computer Science Research Net-

work (CSNET) project which would allow for con-

nection with the ARPANET, telephone dialup con-

nections and what was called public data transmis-

sion over telephone lines.

Landweber’s group got funding and manage-

ment help from the NSF. Piece by piece they

solved the problems. A gateway was established

between CSNET and the ARPANET and CSNET

spread throughout the U.S.

But it didn’t stop there. Landweber and his co-

workers supported researchers in Israel soon fol-

lowed by Korea, Australia, Canada, France,

Germany, and Japan to join at least the CSNET e-

mail system. Also, CSNET was a critical driver in

helping the NSF see the importance of funding an

NSFNET and thus, contributed to the transition to

the modern Internet.

In 1984, computer scientists at Karlsruhe

University notably Michael Rotert and Werner

Zorn succeeded in setting up a node for Germany

to be on the CSNET system. These scientists

wanted to spread this connectivity. It was via that

node that they conceived of the possibility that

computer scientists in China could have e-mail

connectivity with the rest of the international com-

puter science community. The rest is the history

we are celebrating!

To sum up, there is a solid tradition associated

with computers and computer networks. The tech-

nology and the people involved tend to support

sharing and spreading of the advantages computing

and networks bring. Part of that tradition is:

Von Neumann insisting that the foundation of

computing be scientific and in the public domain.

Alwin Walther and Isaac Auerbach insuring

that computer science was shared at international

conferences.

J. C. R. Licklider envisioning an intergalactic

network.

Donald Davies conceiving of packet switching

communication line sharing technology.

Louis Pouzin and Bob Kahn initiating internet-

working projects.

Tom Truscott initiating Usenet.

Larry Landweber persisting to get all computer

scientists onto at least e-mail.

And Werner Zorn and Yufeng Wang insuring

that Chinese computer scientists were included.

Page 27

I feel we today are celebrating and supporting

that long tradition.

[Editor’s note: The following interview was con-

ducted on Sept 23, 2007 in Berlin for the book,

Wem gehört das Internet? Gabrielle Hoofacker is

the founder of the Munich Media-Store and

Journalists-Academy.]

Netizen Journalism:

An Interview,

Berlin Sept 23, 2007

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Would you say that

netizen journalism is the same as grassroots jour-

nalism?

Ronda Hauben: They are not quite the same.

Netizen journalism includes grassroots journalism,

but the significance I understand is that a netizen

has a social perspective and does something from

that perspective. Some of the origin of the term

netizen was when Michael Hauben, then a college,

student did some research in 1992-1993. He sent

out a number of questions on Usenet which was at

the time and still is an online forum for discussion.

Usenet was very active in the early 90s. He also

sent his questions out on internet mailing lists.

In the responses to his questions people said

that they were interested in the internet for the dif-

ferent things they were trying to do but they also

wanted to figure out how to spread the internet, to

help it to grow and thrive and to help everybody

have access. What Michael found was that there

was a social purpose that people explained to him.

People had developed this social sense from the

fact that they could participate online and find

some very interesting valuable possibilities online.

Many of the people that responded to his questions

shared with him that they wanted to contribute to

the internet so that it would grow and thrive.

In my opinion this set of characteristics is

broader than grassroots journalism. Grassroots

journalism I would interpret as people from the

grassroots having the ability to post. But where

there is also a social desire and purpose, that is

what I would define as netizen journalism.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: You also said political

participation?

Ronda Hauben: Yes a political and a social pur-

pose. By social I mean that people support some-

thing happening for other people, that the net be

shared and be available to a broader set of people.

This includes a political focus as well.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I just remember one of

my first keynote speeches. I had to speak about

empowering the information poor in 1994. It was a

meeting of pedagogic teachers and I told them that

they should try to make it possible for many people

of all classes to have access to the internet. That I

think is some of the sense of being a netizen.

Ronda Hauben: That is being a netizen.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m afraid many people

think participation only means economical and not

political and that especially people in Eastern Eu-

rope mainly wanted to take part economically.

Ronda Hauben: In the U.S. for example there has

been a lot of pressure supported by the U.S. gov-

ernment for seeing the internet as a way to enrich

yourself. But that is not what grew up with the

internet community. The pressure for the internet

to be for economic purposes was in opposition to

the netizen developments in the U.S.

Jay Hauben: At one point it became clear that

there was beginning to be the internet for

economic purposes in contradiction to the original

internet. That is when Ronda and Michael received

a lot of help toward having appear a print edition

of their book, Netizens*. People said, we must de-

fend the internet from this new pressure, which is

coming as an economic pressure. That was a great

impetus and support for publishing the book.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: We just talked about

the Chinese bloggers and you told me that they call

themselves netizens.

Ronda Hauben: I asked a Chinese blogger, Zola

Zhou, who I had written to if he thought of himself

as a netizen. He said yes he did. Also, I have seen

articles about the internet in China that actually say

Page 28

that the netizens are a small set of the Chinese on-

line population but are those who have political

purpose and activities. That is inline with research

that Michael originally did in the 1990s with re-

gard to the internet and which helped his coming to

understand that such people online around the

world were netizens.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: You told me that there

is a great blogger community without censorship

and also political?

Ronda Hauben: No, there is censorship in China.

But there is a big blogger community and

something that I found in one of the articles that I

read I thought was very hopeful. It quoted a Chi-

nese internet user who said that focusing too

closely on internet censorship overlooks the

expanded freedoms of expression made possible in

China by the internet. I thought that seemed cor-

rect. All I ever hear from the U.S. press is that in

China the internet is censored. Such framing of the

internet in China leads away from trying to look

and understand what is happening in China with

the internet. It turns out that there is something

very significant developing and that has already

developed, which involves a lot of people who are

being very active trying to discuss the problems of

China and trying to see if they can be part of help-

ing to solve those problems. That is the opposite of

the sense you get from the news media that talks

about censorship all the time.

Jay Hauben: The chairwoman of the Internet So-

ciety of China (ISC) Madame Hu Qiheng spoke to

me about this. She said that there are some very

high Chinese government officials who have blogs

and they invite anybody and everybody to post.

They answer as many posts as they can and they

are learning the importance of blogging. She feels

that they will be supportive to the changes that are

needed to make the internet even more extensive

and more well spread in China. She was optimistic

that at least some in the Chinese government were

seeing the importance of the blogging activity and

were learning how to be supportive of it in some

way. She wanted that to be known to the world.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m not sure whether I

understand. Do they hope if the people blog they

will learn to use the internet?

Jay Hauben: No, she said the government offi-

cials themselves had their own blogs and receive

from the population criticisms and complaints and

other things and they try to answer some. Those

officials who have entered into this back and forth

exchange she feels will learn from it and be sup-

portive in the expanding support for blogging in

China.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: There are some exam-

ples that netizens can sometimes get control over

the government. Could you give us one example?

Ronda Hauben: A question that I have is whether

netizens can have some impact on what govern-

ment does. Traditionally people like James Mill,

writing in England in the 1800s argued that if a

people do not have some oversight over govern-

ment then government can only be corrupt. That is

why a society needs processes and ways that peo-

ple can discuss what government is doing and

watch government. I like to use the word ‘watch

dogging’ government. A piece of my research is to

see if there are ways that by having the internet

and the ability to participate in the discussion of

issues netizens can have an impact on what gov-

ernment is doing. I have found situations where

there is an impact on government.

One example I give is a blog that is called

‘China Matters’. Also there have been articles in

OhmyNews International, which is the newspaper

for which I write. It is the English edition of the

Korean OhmyNews an online newspaper started in

2000.

The blog China Matters was able to post some

original documents from a case involving ‘The

Six-Party Talks Concerning the Korean Peninsula’.

The six parties are North Korea, South Korea, the

U.S., Russia, China and Japan. There was a

breakthrough in the Six-Party Talks in September

of 2005 leading to a signed agreement toward

denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

Immediately after the breakthrough, the U.S.

Treasury Department announced that it was freez-

ing the assets of a bank called Banco Delta Asia in

Macau, China. Macau is a former Portuguese col-

Page 29

ony now a part of China as a special administrative

region. Banks in Macau are under the Chinese

banking authority and supervision. The U.S. gov-

ernment was determining what would happen with

this bank in China. The Banco Delta China had

accounts containing $25 million of North Korean

funds. In response to the U.S. causing these funds

to be frozen, North Korea left the Six-Party Talks

saying it would have nothing to do with the talks

until this matter got resolved.

In late January and the beginning of February

2007 there were negotiations between a U.S.

government official and a North Korean official in

Berlin. An agreement was reached that there would

be an activity to work out the Banco Delta Asia

problem so that the negotiations could resume in

the Six-Party Talks.

But often with negotiations with the U.S.

whenever there is an effort to try to straighten

something out, the implementation is not done in a

way that is appropriate. In this case what was of-

fered was that North Korea could send someone to

Macau to get the funds but it could not use the in-

ternational banking system to transfer the funds

which is the normal procedure.

U.S. Treasury Department officials went to

China for negotiations allegedly to end the finan-

cial problems the U.S. had caused for North Korea.

Officials from the different countries were waiting

to have this settled so the negotiations could go on.

Instead the U.S. Treasury Department officials

failed to allow the international banking system to

be used to be able to get the funds back to North

Korea.

On the China Matters blog, the blogger posted

the response of the Banco Delta Asia bank owner

to these activities. If you read the owner’s response

you would realize that the bank owner was never

given any proof of any illegal activity that had

gone on with regard to the funds in his bank, so

there was no justification presented for having

frozen the funds of his bank. The U.S. Treasury

Department under the U.S. Patriot Act was able to

be the accuser and then the judge and jury, to make

the judgement and then have banks around the

world go along.

Jay Hauben: By posting these documents on his

blog, the China Matters blogger made it possible

for journalists to write about this aspect of the

case. In one of his blog posts he also put links to

U.S. government hearing documents that helped to

expose the rationale and the intention of the Trea-

sury Department.

Ronda Hauben: Based on what I had learned from

these blogs and then subsequent research that I had

been able to do using the internet to verify what

the blogger said, I wrote articles that appeared on

OhmyNews International. I was subsequently con-

tacted by somebody from the Korean section of the

Voice of America, the official U.S. State Depart-

ment world wide broadcasting service. She asked

me about the articles I had written. Essentially the

Voice of America reporter said that if this situation

went on and the funds were not returned, the Voice

of America was going to ask questions of the peo-

ple I had identified who had come up with this pol-

icy. It would ask them to explain what they had

done and to respond to the issues raised by my arti-

cles.

Just at this time, however, a means was found

to get the funds back to North Korea via the inter-

national banking system. All the other prior times,

this had failed.

It was very interesting that this was all happen-

ing at the same time. It provides an example of

how a netizen media of blogs and online newspa-

pers can take up issues like this one, get under the

surface to the actual story and even have an influ-

ence on government activity.

The China Matters blog is very interesting be-

cause it says that there is U.S. policy about China

being made without the knowledge of the Ameri-

can people. Therefore the American people do not

understand what is going on or what the issues are.

They are not given a chance to discuss and con-

sider the policy. Somehow these issues have to be

opened up, they have to be more public so that

there will be a good policy with regard to what

happens between the U.S. and China.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: So the way was from

the netizens and the bloggers directly to the

government and not via mainstream media?

Ronda Hauben: In this situation there was one

mainstream press that was different from all the

rest. It was the McClatchy newspapers. McClatchy

actually had an article about the China Matters

Page 30

blog. That was helpful for people to know about

the blog. Here was collaboration between the

blogger and the mainstream media but it was not

that the rest of the mainstream media picked up

any of that or discussed it. Most of the English

speaking mainstream media just said that North

Korea is being very difficult and that it should be

allowing the Six-Party Talks to go on instead of

making this trouble. McClatchy articles and my

articles on OhmyNews tried to understand why

North Korea was insisting that this money be re-

turned using the international banking system. In

this situation there was no need to influence what

the rest of the mainstream media said or did. Voice

of America Korea and the U.S. State Department

responded to my articles in OhmyNews directly.

Jay Hauben: In a presentation at a recent sympo-

sium, Ronda spoke of a situation in China of child

abduction and labor abuse with little response by

the local government. The situation had been casu-

ally covered by local media butt was not solved.

Only later when the story appeared prominently in

online discussion sites did it spread. Then it was

discussed by a large cross-section of the popula-

tion. Finally the government started to act. In this

case, the government had not been influenced by

coverage by the local mainstream media but was

pushed by the coverage of the netizen media.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Ronda, you are a fea-

tured writer for OhmyNews. I do not know whether

there is a German edition?

Ronda Hauben: No, there is none at this point.

OhmyNews has a Korean, a Japanese and an Eng-

lish language international edition. There are

German writers who write in English for Ohmy-

News International. There is however a German

online magazine which I am honored to write for

in English, Telepolis, which I would call an exam-

ple of netizens journalism.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Why do you think that

OhmyNews is a good thing?

Ronda Hauben: The Korean edition of

OhmyNews pioneered a concept which is very in-

teresting. The founder of OhmyNews, Mr. Oh

Yeon-Ho, had worked for an alternative monthly

magazine, Mal, for almost 10 years. He saw that

the mainstream media which is basically conserva-

tive would cover a story and it would be treated as

news. On the other hand, he had uncovered for Mal

a very important story about a cover-up of a mas-

sacre during the Korean War. His story, however,

got very little coverage in the mainstream media

and his coverage had no effect. About three years

later, an American reporter covered the same story

and got a Pulitzer Prize. Then the Korean

mainstream media picked up the story and gave

great coverage to it.

Mr Oh realized that it was not the importance

of an issue that determined if it would be news, it

was rather the importance given to the news orga-

nization that determined that. He decided that Ko-

rea needed to have a newspaper that could really

challenge the conservative dominance of the news.

So he set out with a small amount of money and a

very small staff to try to influence how the press

frames stories, how it determines what should be

the stories that get covered. He also decided to

welcome people to write as citizen reporters, to

support the kinds of stories that were not being told

in the other newspapers. He ended up welcoming

in and opening up the newspaper so that a broader

set of the Korean population could contribute arti-

cles to it and could help set what the issues were

covered.

One example is the story of a soldier who had

been drafted into the South Korean army. He de-

veloped stomach cancer. The medical doctors for

the army misdiagnosed his illness as ulcers and hid

the evidence that it could be cancer. He did not

find out until the cancer was too far advanced for

successful treatment. He died shortly after his term

in the army was over. People who knew the soldier

wrote the story and contributed it to OhmyNews.

The OhmyNews staff reporters wrote follow up

articles. There were a number of articles, which led

to really looking into what the situation was.

Jay Hauben: There were 28 articles in 10 days.

The government first said that the incident was not

significant and that it happened all the time. But as

more and more articles were written and more and

more people were commenting and more and more

people were writing letters and more and more

people were blaming the government, the govern-

ment changed its tune and acknowledged that there

Page 31

was something seriously wrong here. The govern-

ment eventually said it would put 10 billion won

over a five year period to have a better medical

system in the armed services. That was the result

of this 10 days of constant articles. Everybody

knew someone in the army that might get sick and

they did not want that to happen. Every mother

was upset. It was a major national phenomenon

from these 28 stories in 10 days.

Ronda Hauben: That is the kind of thing that

OhmyNews has done in the Korean edition. The

English language edition does not have regular

staff reporters the way the Korean edition does so

is weaker in what it can do.

A lot of the analysis of OhmyNews in the jour-

nalism literature is only looking at the fact

OhmyNews uses people as reporters who are not

part of a regular staff. This literature does not look

at the whole context of what OhmyNews has

attempted and developed.

But even the practice of the English edition is

worth looking at. There, the Banco Delta-North

Korean story was covered in a number of articles.

The OhmyNews staff welcomed these articles. Not

only did it welcome articles on this topic with no

similar coverage elsewhere, there was on the staff

an editor who used his experience and knowledge

of North Korea to help the journalists with their

articles. He was a very good person to have as an

editor in the English language edition, to be helpful

towards covering that important aspect of the Ko-

rean story. Unfortunately he is not an editor any

longer as they had to cut back on their editors.

Journalism articles written about OhmyNews

rarely describe this aspect of OhmyNews, that re-

porters need a supportive editorial staff that is

knowledgeable about the issues and willing to be

really helpful to the people doing the reporting so

that they are not just off on their own but they can

have a discussion and a communication with the

people who work with the paper itself.

Jay Hauben: As a minor footnote, Ronda has

some evidence that the U.S. embassy in South Ko-

rea reads OhmyNews. She heard this from the U.S.

ambassador to South Korea and read it in a U.S.

State Department press release.

Ronda Hauben: The press release referred to one

of my articles and something that somebody else

had written.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: So netizen journalism

is something political?

Jay Hauben: From our point of view, yes.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m asking this because

some German publishers/newspapers have another

kind of amateur journalism in mind. They think

that journalists are too expensive because they

must be paid wages. So they tell their readers to

send them photos, videos and texts and say that

they will publish them. The journalist union is not

happy about this.

Ronda Hauben: The dean of the Columbia Uni-

versity School of Journalism in New York City

wrote an article in the New Yorker magazine where

he complained about what he called ‘citizen journal-

ism’ and referred to OhmyNews. He wrote that it

was “journalism without journalists.” When you

carefully read his article, what it came down to,

was that the business form of journalism - which is

basically corporate-dominated in the U.S. and

which aims to make a lot of money - has very little

regard for the nature and quality of the coverage

that the newspapers are allowed to do. He was ba-

sically defending the business form of journalism

in the name of defending the journalists.

He was not defending the journalists because

he was not critiquing in any way what the journal-

ists who work for these big corporations must do to

keep their jobs and the crisis situation that

journalism is in in the U.S. because of it.

What was interesting is that he knew about

OhmyNews and he is the dean of the Columbia

Journalism School and yet he presented nothing

about the important stories that OhmyNews has

covered. Instead he referred to one particular day

and he listed three stories covered by three differ-

ent journalists on this day and said this was just

like the kind of journalism you would have in a

church publication or in a club newsletter. It

showed no effort on his part to understand or seri-

ously consider what OhmyNews has made possible.

I critiqued what he did in an article in

OhmyNews International. I also sent an e-mail

Page 32

message to him asking if he had seen a prior article

I had done in response to what a professor of the

journalism school had posted on ‘The Public Eye’

at CBS News.com. My prior article answered the

same argument the dean was now making. The

‘Public Eye’ even gave a link to what I had written

in OhmyNews.

The dean of the Columbia Journalism School

answered my e-mail acknowledging that he had

seen my answer and still he made the same argu-

ment that had been made prior rather than

answering my critique of the argument.

One of the things I pointed out in my critique

was that OhmyNews had helped make it possible

for the people of South Korea in 2002 to elect a

candidate to the presidency from outside of main-

stream political community. The dean mentioned

nothing about that when he trivialized what

OhmyNews has done and what the developments

are. He presented none of the actual situation and

had instead a trivial discussion about the issues.

Yet he was allowed to publish his article in the

New Yorker. OhmyNews sent my response to his

article to the New Yorker. The magazine would

not publish it. It was interesting that this is being

promoted as the evaluation and the understanding

of netizen journalism. It is totally inaccurate.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m afraid that some

professional journalism teachers in Germany think

in narrow-minded categories and only see the pro-

fessional standard of journalism and their own

journalists but do not realize what the aim of jour-

nalism is anymore – the political participation and

the control of the government.

Ronda Hauben: What I see is that netizen

journalism is getting back to the roots of why you

need journalism and journalists.

In the U.S. there is a first amendment because

there was an understanding, when it was formu-

lated, that you have to oversee government and

that there has to be discussion and articles and a

press that looks at what government is doing and

that discusses it and that that discussion is neces-

sary among the population. Now the internet is

making this possible. But the corporate-dominated,

profit-dominated form of journalism in the U.S.

will not allow that to happen even on the internet.

Netizen journalism fortunately makes it possible.

What is of interest to me is that the Columbia

Journalism School claims that it supports ethics in

journalism. Yet here is a challenge, a challenge to

treat this seriously and to learn about it, to support

it, to encourage it and to help it to spread it.

Instead, its dean does the opposite.

Jay Hauben: Let me add two points. One is that

OhmyNews and Telepolis pay their contributors. So

this is not free journalism. This is a respect for

journalistic effort.

The second point is one Ronda is raising in her

current research. Not only is this new journalism

getting back to the roots and the purpose of jour-

nalism but also it is doing something new and dif-

ferent. Is there something more than just being the

real journalist taking over because mainstream

journalism is failing? There is an intuition that the

internet is making possible a new journalism. Per-

haps the Chinese are speaking to that when they

ask, “Are we not being citizens and is it not jour-

nalism when we communicate with each other

about the news as we see it and our understandings

as we have them?”

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Do you think that

netizen journalism will affect the mainstream jour-

nalism or that the mainstream journalism will learn

from it?

Ronda Hauben: It turned out to be very surprising

to me that the reporter from Voice of America Ko-

rea asked me some very serious and interesting

questions. I would have expected maybe left-wing

journalist to ask these questions but not a

mainstream or State Department journalist.

Why was the Voice of America reporter asking

me these questions? Perhaps some people at the

State Department realized there was serious dis-

cussion going on online reflected by my articles

but not on Voice of America or in the mainstream

media. And if there is discussion among people

about what is going on, then that leads to the main-

stream media having to learn something or become

irrelevant.

Maybe that is already happening because even

BBC is exploring ways of opening up its discus-

sions and processes. Maybe netizen journalism has

already had some impact and there is change hap-

pening even though we do not see it yet.

Page 33

Jay Hauben: Maybe also the distinction between

mainstream and other media is changing. At least

in South Korea, OhmyNews is already a

mainstream media. Three years after it was cre-

ated, OhmyNews was reported to be one of the

most important media in the whole society, judged

to be among the top six most influential media in

South Korea.

It is not so clear that what we call the great me-

dia or the mainstream media is left alone to have

that title. The position might be changing. The

founder of OhmyNews, Mr. Oh Yeon-Ho says he

would like OhmyNews to be setting the news

agenda for the Korean society. It is his objective

that OhmyNews be the main, mainstream media or

at least he says 50 percent of what happens in the

mainstream media should be from the progressive

point of view. There should not be only the conser-

vative mainstream media but there should be a pro-

gressive mainstream media as well and then those

two together – that is what would serve the society.

Ronda Hauben: Let me add that in South Korea

other online progressive publications have devel-

oped and online conservative publications have

developed. The media situation is much more vi-

brant now than it had been, I think as a result of

what Mr. Oh Yeon-Ho has achieved.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: When you look into the

future and imagine what journalism and netizen

journalism will be like in 10 years? What are your

expectations? What do you hope and what do you

think?

Ronda Hauben: It is an interesting challenge that

is being put to us. There is a lot of support from

governments and others towards making big

money off of the internet. But meanwhile for ex-

ample the U.S. society is in deep trouble because

of the ability of government to do things without

listening to the people or considering what the peo-

ple’s desires are. In my opinion netizen journalism

holds out the hope and the promise that there can

be a means for the citizens and the netizens to have

more of a way of having what is done by govern-

ment be something that is a benefit to the society

instead of harmful. The form this will take is not

clear. But one of the things that Michael wrote in

1992-1993 was that the net bestows the power of

the reporter on the netizens. He saw that that was

already happening then. And we see Telepolis

which last year celebrated its 10

anniversary and

which unfortunately we did not get to talk about

now but which has pioneered a form of online and

netizen journalism that really is substantial and

which has achieved some very important things.

There is OhmyNews in South Korea and there are

the Chinese bloggers and people posting to the fo-

rums. Even in the U.S. some important news fo-

rums and blogs have developed.

Jay Hauben: There are also the people’s journal-

ists in Nepal who took up to tell the story to the

world about the struggle against the king’s dictato-

rial powers.

Ronda Hauben: They were able to do that because

of OhmyNews International.

I just looked at those few countries for a con-

ference presentation I gave recently in Potsdam. I

did not look at all the other places where things are

developing. It turns out that online there is a very

vibrant environment. Something is developing and

that is a great challenge to people interested in this,

to look at it seriously and try to see, firstly what is

developing and secondly, is there a way to give it

support and to figure out if there is way of begin-

ning to have some conferences for people to get

together and have serious papers about what is

happening and some serious discussion towards

the question, can we give each other help for ex-

ample to start something like OhmyNews or

Telepolis in America or similar things elsewhere. I

feel that something will turn up. It is exciting that

so much is in fact going on.

*Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet, Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Wiley-IEEE

Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, 1997, ISBN: 978-0-

8186-7706-9.

—

Edited by Jay Hauben and Ronda Hauben, December, 2007

Page 34

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben

(1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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