The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities.  The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for disseminating information, and an open forum allowing collaboration and free exchange of ideas between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location.

Today people can search thousands of databases and libraries worldwide in several languages, browse through hundreds of millions of documents, journals, books and computer programs, and keep up to the minute with wire service news, sports and weather reports.  All this is done via a global network of interconnected computers that allows individuals and organizations around the world to communicate and share information. The "web," a collection of information resources contained in documents located on individual computers, is the most widely used and fastest-growing part of the Internet.

A web site consists of at least one, and often many, interconnected web pages. Web pages are computer data files written in Hypertext Markup Language ("HTML") that contain information such as text, pictures, sounds and video recordings. Web pages also usually contain connections ("hyperlinks") to other web pages on the same site and to linked web sites of others.  Web page browsing and linking are made possible through the use of web addresses in the form of unique domain names.