National Center for State Courts

 

Improving Justice through Leadership
and Service to the Courts

      

  

Please note that these materials are provided for historical purposes only. The information presented is out of date and may be neither accurate nor useful. External hyperlinks may no longer be valid.

Part II — The Internet

Section 1 — What is the Internet?

The Internet is often compared to a road system, as in the “Information Superhighway.” This analogy provides an apt description, as the Internet acts as a highway connecting countless computers. It provides a roadway and a common set of rules to control traffic. The Internet is not any one service. It is not just the World Wide Web. It is not just e-mail, or Gopher, or FTP. It is simply the communication link over which these services communicate. In many ways, it is similar to our interstate highway system. You can think of your court's local area network (LAN) as a city. The links between different computers on your LAN are like city streets. Having your LAN on the Internet is like having a highway interchange. Pieces of information move through your LAN and the Internet like cars and trucks driving on the streets and highways. When you move information around your LAN by accessing a document on a file server, you are just driving around on the city streets. When you look at a World Wide Web page or send e-mail, you are accessing a computer somewhere else on the Internet. The information travels to your computer like a car traveling on the interstate highway from another city. The Internet is simply the connection between these “cities.”

Section 2 — Two Sides of the Internet Coin

There are two sides to the Internet coin: dissemination and access. A court can disseminate information to others over the Internet. A court can also access information being disseminated by others through the Internet. There are a number of ways in which a court can implement these two sides. By hiring outside contractors, like the National Center for State Courts, a court can disseminate information without being able to access the Internet at all. By subscribing to an on-line service, like America Online, CompuServe, or Prodigy, a court can access the Internet and the information that others have placed on it. A useful analogy is a magazine. You can be a publisher and disseminate information through your magazine. Or, you can be a consumer who buys the magazine, gaining the information that it contains. You can also be both.

Following the analogy, a court can disseminate information over the Internet by renting space on someone else's computer, or it can set up its own Internet site. In the magazine realm, you can publish magazines and sell them through stores owned by others, or you can establish your own store through which you can sell magazines. The first method is cheaper, but the second method provides more control over how the information is disseminated.

Section 3 — What are the Different Internet Services?

If the Internet is the connection, or highway, then services like e-mail and the World Wide Web are like different types of vehicles traveling over this highway. Each service travels over the same roads, but has different features and limitations.

Disseminating information over the Internet follows the same structure, whether that information travels via the World Wide Web or through another Internet service. In general, specialized software turns a computer into a “server.” The server receives requests for information from other computers and sends out information in response. Some services, like the World Wide Web, also allow users to send information back to your server.

Types of Internet Services

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is the current media darling of the Internet. The World Wide Web, or just Web, is a gigantic world-spanning collection of pages of information. You view these pages with software called a “browser.” Two important additions make the Web more than just a collection of information. First, Web pages can present many different kinds of information. They can contain text, graphics, sounds, animation, presentations, small programs, and even virtual worlds. Following our highway analogy, the Web is like a sport-utility vehicle: comfortable, easy to drive, and able to carry many different kinds of cargo.

The second addition that makes the Web special is the use of hypertext links. Each link can connect to another section on the same page, to another page on the same computer, or to another page located anywhere on the Internet. To follow a link, the person clicks on the linked section and his or her computer automatically retrieves the linked document. This turns the Web into one large, interlinked information source. In the court context, an on-line opinion could lead to other opinions or statutes. Simply clicking on a cite would lead to a related opinion or controlling statute.

One way to conceptualize the Web is as an extremely fast robot that can travel to any library in the world. Once at that library, the robot can retrieve a copy of any book from that library in mere seconds. As you read one of these books and come across a cite to another, the robot can retrieve a copy of that book in seconds. However, in the case of the Web, these books are multimedia documents, incorporating graphics, sounds, and animation along with the text.

To disseminate information via the World Wide Web, you create files, called Web pages, that contain your information and set up a computer, called a Web server, that sends those files out to the world. These Web pages reside on your Web server and can contain both information and navigation features. This information can be in many forms, including text, graphics, animation, tables, and even small programs. Web pages also can contain cites to other pages, called hyperlinks. Choosing a hyperlink takes you to a different page.

The World Wide Web is generally a means of distributing information. However, people can also send information back to your court through the Web. Today, there are three main avenues through which information can be sent back to you via the Web:

  1. via e-mail,
  2. via the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), or
  3. via another Internet service using Java.

A. Via E-mail

The simplest way to receive information is via e-mail messages. World Wide Web pages have a special formatting feature called a “mailto” tag. This tag marks e-mail addresses on Web pages. People with properly configured Web browsers can easily send e-mail to a marked address simply by clicking on it. This method is very easy to implement. It merely requires adding the “mailto” tags to your pages.

This method is also very limited. It only starts the process of sending an e-mail message. The Web page cannot control what information the user will put in that message. It cannot require that certain information be included. The mailto tag really just allows the computer to fill in the “To:” space in the e-mail message. In addition, this method will work only for people who not only have an e-mail system compatible with their particular browser, but also have it all correctly configured.

B. Via the CGI

The Common Gateway Interface, often redundantly called the “CGI gateway,” allows a greater variety of communication back to a court. The CGI gateway is an interface between Web pages and various programming languages. It provides a single interface, so you can write programs in a number of languages without having to learn a new interface each time. The process starts with a Web page that contains elements that you would typically find on a printed form. These elements include:

  • checkboxes that can be checked,
  • radio buttons that can be selected,
  • boxes that can be filled with a single line of text,
  • large boxes that can be filled with free-form text, and
  • lists of items from which to choose.

Web pages also usually contain:

  • a button that clears the form, usually marked “Clear” or “Reset,” and
  • a button that sends all the information to the CGI gateway, usually marked “Send” or “Submit.”


CGI Form

When the user clicks on the “Send” button, all the information entered into the form is sent to the CGI gateway. The gateway formats the information into a standard format and sends it to a program that you have written. Your program then performs whatever task you have programmed it to do. If your program needs to send more information back to the user, it sends the information to the CGI gateway, which then sends it back over the Internet to the user. Your program also can perform tasks like sending e-mail containing the entered information to you, manipulating databases, or creating graphics to send to the user.

CGI gateway programs can perform many different tasks. Typical uses include:

  • on-line evaluation forms, the results of which are e-mailed to the appropriate person,
  • database searching, which allows users to search your database and see the results using their browser,
  • allowing any user to e-mail a message to you, regardless of whether the user's own system supports any e-mail, and
  • electronic filing of documents.

Using the CGI gateway does require some programming expertise. Your choice of programming language depends on your Web server's operating system. If your system uses UNIX, then you can use C++ or Perl. If your system uses Windows NT, then you can additionally use Visual C++ or Visual Basic. Perl and Visual Basic are both very easy to learn for those with some programming experience.

Although very powerful, the CGI gateway limits the interaction possible. Users can send you only information that conforms to the forms-based input structures allowed by CGI. Your output back to the user is also similarly limited to standard Web page elements. In addition, using a large number of CGI gateway programs can drastically slow your server.

Software currently under development will allow electronic filing and remote database access. New applications should be appearing in the software marketplace in the next year or two.

C. Via Java

Originally designed by Sun Computers for controlling home appliances, Java is a new Internet-based programming language. Java programs reside on your Web server, but are then copied to a user's computer and run within his or her browser program. Java programs are not limited to any specific type of computer. Rather, they are designed for an imaginary computer. A second program, called a Java interpreter, re-creates this imaginary computer and runs the Java program in that environment. Once a Java interpreter is written for a particular type of computer, that computer can then run any Java program. Generally, these interpreter programs are part of a Web browser. Java interpreters presently exist for Windows 95 and Windows NT machines through the NetScape Navigator browser, versions 2.0 and higher, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, versions 3.0 and higher. Sun Computers also produces its own browser and Java interpreter, called HotJava. Presently, Java interpreters are being developed for other platforms, including the Macintosh operating system and Windows 3.1. Java programs can perform many tasks and can interact with the user in many ways. Java also provides many ways to send information back and forth between the user and your court. Since Java is a fairly new language, its full capabilities are still being discovered.

Gopher

Gopher is a predecessor of the World Wide Web. Instead of formatted screens and graphics, Gopher presents you with a simple menu of choices. Choosing a menu item leads to either another menu or a document. As with the Web, the new menu or document can be located on the same computer or on a computer located somewhere else on the Internet. Unlike Web documents, Gopher documents are plain text, with no fancy formatting, no graphics, no sounds, and no animation. In this way, Gopher is much like an economy car. It can do the job, but with few frills. As the Web continues to dominate the Internet, Gopher services are declining in popularity.

Given the popularity of the World Wide Web, it is unlikely that you will ever need to set up a Gopher service. The process is similar to setting up a World Wide Web site. The service is a combination of a Gopher server program, a computer connected to the Internet, and a collection of documents. While the World Wide Web combines both information and links to other documents within the same document, Gopher services have two different types of documents to handle these two tasks. One type of document contains only textual information. The other type contains a list of menu items and descriptions of where each menu choice leads. Creating the content for a Gopher service consists of collecting your information into a number of text documents, and then specifying a series of menus that point to the various documents. Sub-menus allow documents to be organized into logical groups, making it easier for others to find the information they need.

File Transfer Protocol

Another major Internet service is File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP is simply a way to copy files across the Internet from one computer to another. It could be used by attorneys to file documents in your court. It could also be a means for making court opinions available to attorneys or to the public. Like a truck, FTP can carry large amounts of any sort of information. Also like a truck, it can be hard to use. FTP uses text commands to connect to other computers and send files back and forth. If you do not like DOS commands, then you will not like FTP commands either. Luckily, there are programs available that hide these commands behind a graphical interface. Copying files becomes much more like copying files in Windows or on a Macintosh.

Setting up FTP services is quite similar to setting up World Wide Web and Gopher services. The FTP server program runs on a computer connected to the Internet. The server sends out information as files. FTP services do not format or display information to the user. FTP is only a means for copying files from one computer to another. Creating an FTP service requires very little set-up. Almost any UNIX system already will have an FTP server installed. Your only task is to collect the files you intend to make available. You can also organize FTP files into sub-directories, just as you organize files on your desktop PC. In addition to allowing users to copy files from the server, FTP allows users to copy files from their local computers to the server if you authorize them to do so.

E-mail

E-mail is like a motorcycle. It is a small, fast means of sending small amounts of information from one city to another. Just as a motorcycle can pull a trailer, e-mail can carry documents and other types of computer files. Just as there is a limit to the size of such a trailer, there is a limit to the size of e-mail messages. Very large files attached to e-mail messages do not always reach their destinations.

Compared to the other Internet services, e-mail can get quite complicated. There are two methods of implementing Internet e-mail. The first method is to have one computer handle all the e-mail. This computer is called a “POP3 server.” Setting up a dedicated POP3 server is a good choice if your court has no existing e-mail system. Each person in your court will need to have an account on this computer. The computer saves all messages until each person checks his or her e-mail. There are many programs available to allow people to access their e-mail from a POP3 server. The most popular is Eudora. If you are also supplying your personnel with World Wide Web browsers, you may not even need a separate e-mail program. Some browsers, such as NetScape Navigator, can access user e-mail.

If your court already has an internal e-mail system, then setting up a separate Internet e-mail server can be confusing to your own personnel. They would be using two different programs to access e-mail, one for internal court e-mail and one for Internet e-mail. Using a program called a Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) Gateway, you can often use your existing internal e-mail system to handle both internal and Internet e-mail. As Internet mail comes into the gateway from outside sources, the gateway converts those messages into your internal e-mail format and re-addresses them to the right people. The gateway also converts outgoing mail into Internet format e-mail and sends it off over the Internet. The main advantage to this method is that your court personnel need to learn how to use only one e-mail system. Their Internet e-mail arrives at their desktop computers right along with their normal internal e-mail. Unfortunately, with this method, the exact kind of gateway used depends on both the type of internal e-mail system and the particular computer and operating system on which the gateway will run.

Section 4 — How is the Internet Organized?

At some point, all analogies break down. The Internet is not really a physical highway, and services are not really cars. Some aspects of the Internet are easier to understand using different analogies. It is more helpful to look at the airline industry to get a view of the Internet's overall structure. If you want to fly from one small town to another, you rarely fly nonstop. Instead, you take a smaller plane to an airline hub city, take a large plane to another hub city, and then take another small plane to your destination.

The Internet is structured in much the same way. You travel over communication links of different capacities as you move from one computer to another. If you are a National Center for State Courts employee accessing the World Wide Web from your home in Williamsburg, Virginia, you first take a phone line to the Center using a 28.8 modem, then take a 56kb line 40 miles down the road to Norfolk, Virginia, and then travel on a T1 or T3 line on towards your destination.

Types of Connections

These different communication links all have different capacities. The phone line is like a single-prop airplane carrying only a small amount of information. The 56kb line is similar to a small commuter plane. Another choice would be a 128kb ISDN line, similar to a small jet. A T1 can be thought of as a good-sized jet and a T3 as a supersonic jumbo-jet. These hub cities on the Internet are collectively called the NSF backbone and are connected with jumbo-jet-sized T3 connections. Choosing a type of connection is similar to choosing what size airplane to fly to an Internet provider.

Section 5 — How Do Internet Services Find Their Way?

If different Internet services are like vehicles traveling over highways, then how do these “vehicles” find their way from one “city” to another? The navigation method is really very simple. Remember that local networks are like cities along the highway. At each city, there is an interchange. Small cities are at the ends of stretches of highway. Larger cities may have more than one highway entering their interchanges. (Remember that these highways are organized like an airline hub system.)

Unlike real highways, each of these interchanges has a guide standing there to answer questions. At each interchange, the vehicle asks the guide to point out the quickest road to head down in order to reach its destination. If the destination is within that city, the guide will send it into the city. Otherwise, the guide will send it off down the highway, in the right general direction. In the real world, these guides are computers called “routers.”


The Internet is organized into hubs.

This very simple system is very powerful. Individual guides do not need to know the exact location of every other city. Each needs to know only which of the roads leading out of its interchange is the best one to take for any given city. In addition, only the local guides need to know about damaged sections of road nearby. As long as the local guides know to direct cars away from the damage, traffic will continue to flow. This system of guides allows the Internet to stretch around the globe without requiring each site to know much beyond its own neighborhood. It also allows the Internet to route information around damaged or missing communication links without needing to inform every site on the Net about the break.

Section 6 — Court-Specific Concerns

Courts are in a special position regarding the Internet. There are some Internet-related concerns to which the courts need to pay special attention:

Court-Specific Concerns
  • Official Voice
  • Security
  • Document Formatting
  • Privacy Concerns

Official Voice

Courts need to remember that information and messages sent over the Internet are viewed as official court communications. The general informality of the Internet encourages people to send e-mail and publish information over the World Wide Web without subjecting it to the same scrutiny to which paper-based information is subjected. People say things in e-mail that they would never say in a printed letter. E-mail is not usually as formal as paper correspondence. Still, court personnel need to remember that e-mail messages reflect on the image of the court. Messages should not contain information that would not be appropriate in a normal letter. A good rule of thumb is to assume that every time you send an e-mail message, the worst possible person will eventually see it. This might be your boss, chief judge, or even the media.

The same problem exists for the World Wide Web. A court's Web pages reflect on that court just as its Annual Report does. Courts do not let people add material to Annual Reports without any review. Similarly, they should not allow people to place information on the World Wide Web without a review process. While these concerns are important for any organization, courts rely heavily on legislative bodies for funding, as well as on the public's trust. Poorly managed Web sites and inaccurate or inappropriate e-mail could have devastating consequences if they undermine the support of either the legislature or the public.

Security

While security is a concern for all organizations on the Internet, it is especially important for the courts. In most organizations, if someone circumvents security and gains access to private records, only time and money are lost. In comparison, compromised court records can create a host of problems:

  • Criminal records may be affected, conceivably detaining innocent people or letting the guilty go free, possibly affecting constitutional rights.
  • Sealed information may be revealed, affecting ongoing trials, again possibly affecting constitutional rights to privacy.
  • Legislature's trust may be lessened, affecting funding.
  • Public trust may be lessened, affecting the courts' ability to effectively administer justice.

Fortunately, there are many methods for securing your site, as well as securing communications via e-mail. In many ways, computer data is more secure than paper files.

Document Formatting

Perhaps more than any other body, the courts are concerned with the format of documents. Briefs must be in a certain format, with the right color cover, bound in a certain way. Opinions and orders begin with a case title and party information followed by the text of the opinion or order, usually formatted into two columns. Cites to opinions must be in Blue book format and must point to an exact page number in a specified printed version.

Some of this formatting can be difficult to replicate properly in an on-line format. While centering text is easy on World Wide Web pages, formatting text into multiple columns is much more difficult. Traditional page numbers make no sense in the context of World Wide Web pages. A “page” on the Web can be a sentence long, or it can run on for thousands of paragraphs. There are no traditional page breaks. This makes it difficult to cite to an on-line opinion. Although lawyers can read opinions on-line, they still may need to refer to a printed source in order to accurately cite parts of that case. Both the American Bar Association and the American Association of Law Librarians are working on these problems.

Privacy Concerns

One consequence of modern technology is the decrease in privacy concerning personal information. Most court records are public information. However, it has traditionally been quite difficult to find personal information among the large amounts of case information generated every year. If you wanted to find out what legal troubles your neighbors have had, you could go down to the courthouse and spend days searching through the records. Few people are willing to do this. So, while court records were technically public, they were effectively private. Technology changes this situation by allowing people to search easily through large amounts of information. If the court's opinions are available and searchable on-line, neighbors only need to type in a name to see cases involving that person. However, recognize that this type of data has also been collected by private marketing and credit database companies for many years.

Section 7 — Building an Internet Presence

There are three basic methods to getting your court on the Internet: doing it all yourself; renting space on a server for your own pages; and hiring a contractor.

Doing everything yourself involves obtaining and maintaining your own hardware and software. It also requires obtaining a connection to the Internet and creating the content for the Web pages.

Renting space on another server eliminates the need for your own hardware and software. You still need to connect to the Internet and create your own content.

Hiring a contractor can eliminate almost all of the court's work. The court provides the raw information, of course, but the contractor can perform all the other steps, from creating Web pages to maintaining a server.

Doing It All Yourself

There are some significant advantages to doing everything yourself. Setting up your own site also gives your court access to the Internet for information retrieval. In other words, not only can you disseminate information to others, but also your own personnel can go out onto the Internet to find information. In comparison, renting space on another server usually includes only a single Internet access account, usually designed for a single person's use. In order to provide fast connections for more than a couple of people, you will need to set up your own server.

A second advantage is ease of access. When you own the server, you have access to it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, making it very easy to add or modify files. This access also allows you to incorporate other information sources into your Internet site. For example, a Web page could be used to query a database or to automatically post a daily court calendar.

There are, however, several disadvantages to this method. First, it is the most expensive way to create an Internet site. You need to buy additional hardware and a fast connection to the rest of the Internet. You also need talented and trained staff on hand. Obtaining all of this can be quite expensive, on the order of $50,000 initially for the hardware, plus $1,000 a month for a good connection.

A second disadvantage, related to the cost, is that you must make a substantial investment right at the beginning. If you later decide to try one of the other methods listed below, you may end up stuck with expensive hardware. With the other methods, you can always change your mind later and start doing everything yourself.

A third disadvantage is the greater security risk. A locally connected Web server is a possible avenue for people to enter your system. There are ways to protect your system, but the risk is always there.

Regardless of the type of service you are creating, setting up your own Internet site requires choosing a number of things:

  • type of computer and operating system,
  • type of software, and
  • type of connection.

Since most courts are interested in setting up World Wide Web services, the following examples will deal primarily with that service. The choices are similar for Gopher or FTP services.

Choosing Hardware and Operating Systems

Servers

You have three main choices of computer and operating systems on which to run your Internet services: UNIX, Sun, and Windows NT.

UNIX-based systems come in many different versions. Some versions of UNIX are proprietary, meaning they are specific to particular brands of computers. For example, HP-UX is a version of UNIX for Hewlett Packard computers. Similarly, DG-UX is UNIX for Data General computers. Other versions of UNIX are designed for IBM-compatible computers. Some of these versions are fairly expensive commercial products, such as SCO UNIX. Other noncommercial versions are available for as little as $20. FreeBSDI and Linux are two such versions. Setting up a UNIX-based server can be complicated and requires in-depth knowledge of UNIX.

Windows NT systems are easier to set up. These systems now include most of the software you need to provide World Wide Web and e-mail services. Windows NT normally runs on IBM-compatible PCs, but can also run on Alpha computers made by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

Computers from Sun are even easier to set up. They are available as completely configured Internet servers. You plug them in and turn them on. However, this ease of use comes at a high price.

The trade-off in all these choices is that the cheaper noncommercial systems are not usually as stable as other choices. Additionally, there is no real support for noncommercial versions. If something goes wrong, there is no vendor to call. So, the less you spend on hardware and an operating system, the more you will spend paying technical staff to get it all working. Generally, the easier a system is to install and set up, the more expensive that system is apt to be. Versions of UNIX for IBM-compatibles will be cheaper but more difficult to set up and maintain than an all-in-one solution from Sun. Windows NT systems and proprietary versions of UNIX will fall somewhere in between these extremes.

Prices for any of these systems can vary widely. The Internet is very young as a commercial industry. Vendors are still experimenting with different pricing strategies. The only way to know the latest prices is to check with the various vendors by frequently visiting their Web sites.

Routers

Routers are the guides that direct traffic in and out of your Internet site. There are many brands of routers on the market, but the most popular routers on the Internet are CISCO routers.

Choosing Software

Running an Internet site can require a great deal of software. Each type of service provided requires a separate piece of software. Providing e-mail services to your court personnel requires a mail program. A World Wide Web server is another piece of software. Other services, such as FTP or Gopher, require software as well. Luckily, much of this software is either available free on the Internet or is included in most UNIX distributions.

Server Software

If you are planning to create a World Wide Web site, you will need a piece of software referred to as a Web server. The actual name of the program is “httpd.” There are a number of different versions of httpd available from different sources. The one you choose will partially depend on what operating system you are using.

If you are using UNIX or Linux, then there are many versions of httpd available at no cost. CERN and NCSA provide the two main versions of httpd. Both versions are available for free. These versions provide standard Web server functionality, without many extra features. Other versions, such as Apache, often allow for more precise control and better security.

In addition to free versions of httpd, commercial Web server software packages also exist. NetScape sells one of the leading packages, NetScape Commercial server. This server is expensive, but includes advanced security features that allow you to safely send data over the Internet, such as credit card numbers or sealed court information. The server version of Windows NT includes an httpd program. So, if you plan to use Windows NT as your operating system, then Web server software will come with the package.

Windows 3.1 is generally a poor choice as the operating system for a Web server. It lacks the multitasking features required to respond to multiple information requests. Even so, there are Web server programs available for it. Gopher server programs also are available free over the Internet. UNIX systems almost always include FTP server software.

Programming Languages

If you would like to have some interactivity through a CGI gateway, you also need software that supports the programming language you plan to use to handle information returned from users. Again, the language you decide to use partially depends on your operating system. If you are using a form of UNIX or Linux, then Perl is the typical language used. Perl programs require another program, called the Perl interpreter, in order to run. Some versions of UNIX come with a Perl interpreter already installed. For many others, a Perl interpreter is usually available at little or no cost.

If you are using Windows NT as your operating system, you have a rich selection of language choices. Windows NT now includes Perl, but NT also supports Visual C++ and Visual Basic as programming options as well. Visual Basic in particular is a simple language to learn, although both Visual C++ and Visual Basic lack many of Perl's powerful text handling functions.

Choosing a Connection and Internet Provider

In order to actually connect to the Internet, you will need to choose an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a type of connection to that provider. There are a number of factors that are important when choosing provider and connection.

They include:

  1. Service
  2. Speed of Connection
  3. Price
  4. ISP Capacity
  5. Context
Service

Creating a Web site for your court is a serious endeavor. You need an ISP that will deliver a high level of service. Keep in mind that judges and other professionals will be using this connection. They will expect high levels of service. You need an ISP that can provide service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Speed of Connection

The type of connection determines the speeds at which information can travel between you and your ISP. A modem over telephone lines just cannot carry much information. It is possible to run a Web service through a modem line, but it will not work adequately. The next step up, using 56kb lines, is much faster. For a small to medium-sized court, this connection may be enough. For a larger court, a faster connection, such as a 128kb ISDN line, might be more appropriate. T1 and T3 lines have the capacity to carry huge amounts of information. For all but the largest courts, a T1 would be overkill. T3 lines have the greatest capacity. They are extremely expensive and are entirely inappropriate for individual Web sites.

Price

All courts need to keep their costs low. The need for an affordable ISP directly opposes all the factors listed above. Generally, the better the service, the higher the cost. Faster connections mean higher costs as well. The hardest task in choosing an ISP is finding the right balance between cost and quality. If funds are especially scarce at your court, then you might need to settle for less than stellar service and connection speed. You need to decide how much your court can afford, and then find the best ISP you can at that price. If other county or state agencies need similar connectivity, an ISP might provide bundled services at a lower price.

ISP Capacity

ISP capacity refers to how good the connection is between your ISP and the rest of the Internet. The same types of lines explained above connect ISPs to the rest of the Internet. But the situation is a little different. Again, the airplane analogy can help explain. An ISP is like an airline hub. Planes come in from all the ISP's customers. At the hub, the pieces of information leave all those individual planes and board one other plane that then flies off to the next hub. If a hub had eight commuter planes coming in and only one commuter plane going out, then obviously some passengers are not going to be able to get on that out-bound plane. The same is true for an ISP. If its connection to the rest of the Internet is not much better than its connections to its clients (including your court), then some information is not going to get through right away. You need to be certain that your ISP has a good high-speed connection to the rest of the Internet, at least a T1 line, but better still, a T3. These are jumbo-jets that can easily carry all the passengers from the various commuter planes.


ISP Capacity

Context

Context is only important if you maintain Web pages on your ISP's computers rather than on your own. People often overlook the fact that an ISP has many clients. Some ISPs have little or no policies controlling the types of information that clients can put on their Web pages. These ISPs often attract clients who place adult-oriented materials on their Web pages. Different clients are like different neighbors along a storefront. You probably would not want your courthouse located between two adult bookstores. Similarly, you might not want your court's Web pages situated on an ISP that specializes in adult content.

Choosing Personnel

Choosing personnel to be responsible for maintaining your Internet site can be tricky. Personnel need strong technical skills to install, configure, and maintain the computers that form your site. They need strong data organization skills to collect and present information in an organized fashion. They also need strong design skills to make the information interesting and easy to use. Individuals rarely possess this combination of skills. It is generally a good idea to separate the tasks of running an Internet site into two areas: the actual upkeep of the computers and software versus the creation and upkeep of the information and content of the site.

Computer Upkeep

Setting up and maintaining the needed computers and software are generally tasks for your existing MIS department. These tasks require large amounts of technical knowledge, both of the Internet computers and your existing computer resources. System security is also part of this task. Every court's computer system is different. Only your MIS staff knows how adding new computers will affect existing computers. Your MIS staff will need to be very familiar with whatever operating system your Internet computers will be using, be it UNIX, Windows NT, Linux, or BSDI. Your MIS staff will also need to know about the TCP/IP protocols, how they interface with your existing networks, and how everything can be kept secure.

Information and Content Upkeep

Collecting and organizing your court's information requires high-level librarian skills. Hopefully, your court already has a library complete with highly trained staff familiar with court information. However, placing these materials in an electronic format does require some knowledge of computers. Your library already should be using recent technologies, including on-line services like Lexis and Westlaw, as well as CD-ROMs. If some members of the library staff have an interest in technology and the Internet and already have some computer skills, then they may be the perfect people to act as data librarians. If your library staff is not yet that familiar with technology and computers, you may need to use MIS or other technically proficient staff to actually prepare computer-based materials. This work can still be performed under the direction of library staff.

Additionally, the person actually preparing materials for the Internet should have some talent for design and document layout. While court sites do not need to be as flashy as many other Internet sites, they should not be too boring either. It is unlikely that you will need dedicated design staff, but look for any in-house talent that exists, officially or otherwise.

Renting Space on a Server for Your Own Pages

Renting space on a server has some distinct advantages. First, it can be a very cost-effective option. You can usually rent a few megabytes of storage on a server for around $30 a month. Even a fairly extensive Web site will use only a few megabytes of storage. You do not need any additional hardware, other than a PC on which to develop your pages and modem with which to copy them to the rented server. In addition, you do not need to get your own connection to the Internet, with its attendant costs. Finally, you do not need to actually maintain the server.

Of course, there are disadvantages. It is not as convenient as having a server located in-house. To update pages, you need to connect with a modem and copy the files to the server. This process usually requires a fair knowledge of basic telecommunications. Since most servers renting space use the UNIX operating system, someone on your staff will also need that skill.

This method also precludes connecting other information sources to the Internet. For example, on-line databases are difficult to create because the database and the Web pages reside on completely different systems.

Choosing a Server on Which to Rent Space

If you choose to rent space on a server, you no longer need to buy your own hardware. But you still need to choose an appropriate server on which to rent space. For the purposes of renting space, the considerations explained earlier still hold, only more strongly. Instead of relying on an Internet Service Provider for just a connection to the Internet, you are also relying on them to maintain a server for your pages. You need to choose a service provider that can really provide a high level of service. The National Center for State Courts can provide space on its server at minimal cost. Center staff also can help you create your pages. Unlike most other Internet service providers, the National Center also has extensive court experience. Other service providers can be found via the World Wide Web.

Choosing Software

If you are renting space on another server, you only need to obtain software to format your information. Information for e-mail and FTP services requires no additional software. Gopher services require just a text editor. The World Wide Web is a different matter.

The nice fonts and formatting seen on Web pages, as well as the hyperlinks, are possible through a set of formatting codes called HyperText Markup Language tags, or HTML for short. HTML tags are simply short segments of letters enclosed in angle brackets. For example, to underline a portion of a sentence, you would use the <u> tag to start underlining and the </u> tag to stop underlining. In HTML, it looks like this:

Part of this line is <u>underlined</u> as an example.

But on the screen, it is displayed as:

Part of this line is underlined as an example.

While most of these tags are not difficult to understand and use, there are many computer tools, called editors, available to help you create your own Web pages. These editors give you different levels of help from minimal text assistance to full graphical interfaces. Virtually all Web page editors are available over the Internet as shareware. Shareware is a marketing concept in which you are encouraged to use a piece of software for a specified period of time. After your trial period has expired, you need to either pay for the software or stop using it. Shareware allows you to try a product before you have to buy it. Shareware makes it easy to try various editors and helps you decide which one you will eventually buy. Some editors give you only a minimal amount of help. Technical types prefer these editors because they give the user a great deal of control over the finished document. However, these editors rarely show you exactly how a document will look in a browser and are thus more difficult to use. Other editors provide increasing numbers of features. At the high end, some editors show you exactly how a page will look when accessed with a browser. Other add-on editors allow you to format your information in your word processor and then automatically convert the formatting into HTML codes. These add-ons are available for most major word processors, including WordPerfect and Microsoft Word.

Choosing Personnel

Since renting space on a server eliminates the need to maintain your own hardware, little MIS staff support is needed. You still need a data librarian similar to the one described earlier. Additionally, someone needs to copy the Web pages to the server, which requires the data librarian to have some experience with UNIX and telecommunications.

Hiring a Contractor

The third approach to creating an on-line presence is to hire an outside contractor. Hiring someone else can be the easiest solution. Contractors can provide the server as well as the expertise to run it. They can also provide the talent to create Web pages. All you need to do is provide information to the contractors and approve their work.

There are many companies in the business of providing such services. Keep in mind that most people involved in making Web pages and Web sites do not regularly work with the courts. Most contractors are familiar with commercial organizations, companies that have potential profit as their prime motivation and want to target their information to 18- to 34-year-olds. These contractors are not generally familiar with organizations that serve the public and that orient much of their information towards judges and lawyers. Court-related organizations, like the National Center for State Courts, can design Web pages for your court and host them on its own server. Contracting through a court-related organization ensures that your pages will be designed and maintained by staff familiar with court-based information and with court-specific concerns.

One disadvantage is that this method may not give your court access to the rest of the Internet. Some contractors provide only the dissemination side of the Internet coin. If you also want to be able to retrieve information over the Internet, your court may still need to pay for an account through some other Internet service provider. Secondly, using in-house talent to create Web pages may be less expensive than hiring a contractor or outside artist to create them. Finally, updating information can be difficult. The additional step of telling the contractor what to change can add days to the process. This limitation makes it difficult to disseminate frequently updated information.

When you hire someone else to create and host your Web pages, all you need to do is choose a contractor and send him or her your information. There are many willing organizations available. Organizations like the National Center for State Courts have years of experience with the court community and are more likely to be familiar with court information and how to present it. Obtaining a trial account with an on-line service like America Online, CompuServe, or Prodigy will allow you to search for such organizations over the Internet and will let you take a look at the work of a particular organization.

Another alternative is using internal government services. Other areas of your state or local government may already be using the Internet and may be able to help your court. However, beware of possible conflicting priorities and interests.

Section 8 — Suggested Course

Given the many possibilities described above, it can be difficult to decide which path to choose, especially considering the possible costs. There is also a Catch 22. The best information about Internet service providers and contractors is available primarily on the Internet. In order to get access to the Internet, you need to obtain this information. But, in order to obtain the information, you need to already have Internet access. In light of this situation, a suggested course to follow is:

  1. Sign up with an on-line service temporarily in order to gain access to information on the Internet. Services like America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe make it very easy to sign up. Their software is often included along with computer magazines at newsstands. You can just scan the magazine racks at a supermarket and choose a magazine that includes a disk. These on-line services also provide a number of free on-line hours during which you can evaluate their services. You can use this free time to search the Internet for other Internet access providers in your area. This information can then help you decide which future steps to take. There are many places on the Internet where you can find information about service providers, but two are stand-outs.
    • Yahoo is a Web site that categorizes lists of World Wide Web sites. It organizes service providers into geographical areas, making it easy to find one in your particular area.
    • Boardwatch magazine also maintains a comprehensive list of Internet providers in the United States. This list is available on-line at Boardwatch's Web site. New Boardwatch subscribers receive a free printed copy of this list.
  2. Hire a contractor or rent space on a server and begin posting court information. Be sure that any contracts you sign specify that your court owns the pages created and can move them to your own server in the future. The National Center for State Courts can design Web pages for your court and host them on the National Center's server at a reasonable cost. Other contractors are also available and are easily found on the Internet.
  3. If desired, set up your own server and complete Internet site when you actually have the time, money, and personnel. Move all your files from the rented server to your own in-house server.

Section 9 — Types of Information to Put On-line

Once you have put your court on-line, you need to determine what information to make available to the public. Given the graphical abilities of the Web, it is important to remember that a Web site should be content-rich. Graphics should enhance the information, but not displace it.

Types of Information to Put On-line
  • General Court Information
  • Contact Information
  • Court Opinions
  • Court Rules
  • Calendars and Dockets

Almost any information can be sent over the Internet. Text can be placed easily on Web pages, with most of the formatting intact. Images and audio, as well as video in a limited form, can be sent over the Internet. Web pages can act as a front end for accessing a database. While nearly any information can be presented, there are some general areas of information that are especially appropriate for courts.

General Court Information

General court information is a good place to start. Let the public know what your court does. The Web is a great tool for displaying graphical information, so you can include maps showing the location of your court. You could include pictures of your judges and your courthouse. Your court or state seal will look great on a Web page. Other graphical touches could include nice marble backgrounds, scales of justice, gavels, and any other judicial-related graphics you can find.

Contact Information

Web pages can be a great place to display detailed contact information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. Web pages can act as a front end to a database, allowing people to search for the particular person they want to contact.

Court Opinions

Web pages can also act as opinion banks. Instead of requiring staff to go to the courthouse to look up opinions, people, including attorneys, can look them up on the Web. You can list opinions any way you please, by party, by case number, or even by topic. You also can enter your cases into a database and allow people to search them on-line, creating a mini-Westlaw. If your court presently charges for copies of opinions, there are methods by which you can charge people to access your opinions over the Web.

Court Rules

Large documents, like court rules, are ideal for disseminating electronically. Sending a large document electronically is less expensive than mailing a printed version. An electronic document is also more useful to the receiver, since it can be easily searched for pertinent information.

Calendars and Dockets

Web pages also can display calendars and dockets. The Web provides an immediacy that is lacking in most other dissemination methods. Once you put the latest calendar on your Web site, it is immediately available to the public. If your case management system can create a copy of your calendar as a text file, you may be able to automatically update the calendar every day.

Section 10 — Security

Security is a major concern on the Internet. Court information is vitally important, and you want to disseminate accurate data. Unfortunately, there are individuals who may want to access private information or change information that your court is making public. You need to make sure that the information you are sending over the Internet is secure from unauthorized tampering. Internet security is a broad topic; there are entire books covering the subject. Here are a few things to remember about security.

Lock Your Doors

Remember the highway analogy from the beginning of these guidelines? Your local network was a city street system, the Internet was the interstate highway system, and the router was the guide at the interchange between the two. Following this analogy, your individual computers on your local networks are all buildings within the city. As in the real world, you should ensure that the doors to your buildings are locked against unauthorized access. The biggest security problems result from poorly chosen passwords. If users choose passwords that are easy to guess, then they have left the keys under the door mat. Passwords should be at least 8 characters long. They should contain both upper- and lowercase letters as well as numbers and even punctuation marks. Passwords should never contain names, personal numbers (e.g. phone or social security numbers), dates, computer terms, or any words found in the dictionary. Additionally, many UNIX systems are initially configured with standard maintenance and system passwords. These passwords should be changed or deleted. The best locks in the world are useless if someone leaves the key lying around.

Firewalls

Someone will inevitably pick a poor password, or some other security hole will exist in your system. To ensure personal security, some communities have installed gates. To enter these communities, you must first pass by a guard whose purpose is to ensure that each person entering the community has legitimate business there. Something similar happens in the Internet world. At the interchange between the Internet highway and your local network city streets, there is a guard, called a “firewall,” who checks the identification of everyone trying to enter. It checks to see if a particular vehicle is an approved type, such as an e-mail motorcycle or FTP truck, and denies entry to those not approved. On the Internet, the firewall is a computer that checks all information coming into your network to verify that it is not really a person trying to gain unauthorized access to your system. A firewall is typically a separate computer. It can also be part of a router or even part of one of your other computers, such as your Web server. It is safer to have your firewall running as a separate computer. Having your firewall installed on the same computer as your Web server is like having the guard's post somewhere within the city. By the time an unfriendly visitor reaches the guard, he or she is already inside the city.

Electronic Filing (E-filing) and Encryption

Electronic filing promises great advances in efficiency and accuracy. The present method of accepting filings at a court makes little sense given the computer technology now used in the legal community. Anything filed with a court was probably first created on a computer. Attorneys composed, printed, and sent these document to the court. At the court, people retyped parts of these filings and then stored the document. This process is expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with possible data entry errors. If a court could receive the word processor file instead, then the case management system could extract important information from the filing automatically, without requiring any staff and without introducing retyping errors. The whole text of the filing could then be indexed into a database and stored electronically for instantaneous access later.

Most states do not yet have court rules that allow the court to accept filings electronically. As more states enact rules that allow electronic filing, encryption will become very important. In order for the electronic filing process to work for the courts, there must be some guarantee that third parties will not modify or read the filing while the document is traveling from the attorney to the court. While Internet e-mail does not provide any such guarantee, encryption does. Using current encryption technology, your court could accept electronic filings and be certain of three things:

  1. the document came from one specific attorney;
  2. the document could not be read by anyone but your court; and
  3. the document was not modified while traveling over the Internet to your court.

Many different encryption algorithms exist. One of the best is the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) algorithm. In addition to being very difficult to break and available free for noncommercial use, this algorithm allows the use of two different keys, a public key and a private key. (Keys are long strings of digits or letters that are used to encrypt and decrypt information.) Until recently, encryption algorithms used the same key to encrypt and decrypt information. In RSA, information encrypted with one key can be decrypted only with the other. You typically make your public key available to everyone. If someone needs to send you a message, he or she encrypts it with your public key. You then decrypt it with your private key. No one else can read the message but you. This has obvious application in the courts for electronic filing. If you need to make information public, but the recipients need to know that it came from you and was not modified by someone else, then you encrypt that information with your private key. Recipients decrypt it with your public key. Since only your private key could have encrypted the information such that your public key could decrypt it, the recipients know it must have come from you. Again, encryption has obvious applications in the distribution of opinions, orders, calendars, and other court documents.

Other Security Aspects

There are many other aspects to computer security, but the details vary for particular systems. If your network will be attached to the Internet, you need to obtain current security information for your system.

Section 11 — Liability for Information

Making information available on-line can put your court at a liability risk. People may depend on the information that you disseminate. If people rely on information that is in error, then liability issues arise. To prevent such problems, be sure your on-line information contains the same liability disclaimers as your printed materials. Similarly, the same rules that pertain to distributing copywritten materials also apply to the Internet. Finally, remember that people from nearly anywhere in the world can access any information you place on the Internet. Do not put materials there that legally cannot be sent to other countries.

Section 12 — Resources

General Resources

Hardware Manufacturers

Operating Systems

Server Software

Web Page Editors

Languages

On-line Services

Contractors

Electronic Filing and Encryption

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