[Previous]
[Next]
[Up]
[Title]
8.2. Possible locations for a permanent facility - options
The
host facility needs to be located in a Member country or DMC of the Bank. It
must also be in a country with high quality and diverse international Internet
connectivity, and little likelihood of government interference in Internet
traffic. These factors suggest the most suitable location will be in the
Asia-Pacific region, such as in North America, Australasia, Hong Kong,
Singapore or the Philippines. The facility could also be located in a European
Member Country of the Bank, but the lack of direct international Internet links
between Europe and many Asian countries make this less desirable.
The host must also be situated on a high bandwidth link to Internet backbones
within the country in which it is located. The main demand on the system is
likely to be the activity of the web spider. To support this, bandwidth of at
least T1 standard (1.5 Mbps) is desirable.
Depending upon the amount of use that DIAL receives when in full production, it
may be worth considering providing mirror sites in North America and possibly
other locations, so as to increase access speeds for users closer to those
locations. This is standard web practice for heavily-used sites and those
drawing substantial use from many locations in the world. The organisations
hosting the mirror facilities are often academic institutions which do so at no
cost.
- The most suitable location for the DIAL facility will be in the
Asia-Pacific region, such as in North America, Australasia, Hong Kong,
Singapore or the Philippines.
- The DIAL host should be situated on a high bandwidth link (at least T1
standard - 1.5 Mbps) to Internet backbones within the country in which it is
located.
- If and when necessary, consideration should be given to providing DIAL
mirror sites in North America and elsewhere.
The
most likely type of host institution for Project DIAL is an organisation that
already has a commitment to the provision of free Internet access to legal
information. Examples of such `public legal information institutes' are LexUM
at the University of Montreal in Canada, Cornell's Legal Information Institute
in the USA, AustLII at UTS/UNSW in Australia, and LawData in Norway (a
non-profit company which grew out of the Law Faculty of the University of
Oslo)[145].
Some government bodies also play a role in providing Internet access to legal
information from multiple sources, such as the SCALE system in Australia, but
this is unusual. Apart from academic institutions, other types of
non-government organisations such as bar associations or philanthropic
organisations do not seem to play a major role in the provision of legal
information via Internet.
Public legal information institutes based at academic institutions provide some
advantages in the hosting of a facility such as DIAL:
- There is a community service ethic and non-profit approach which supports
the provision of the information at low cost.
- Salaries at academic institutions at generally lower than the equivalent
commercial organisations, yet the skill levels of employees are often high, due
to the community service attractions to young graduates.
- Academic institutions can sometimes obtain computing equipment and
bandwidth at a lower cost than commercial entities.
There can also be
disadvantages:
- It may not be possible to host a facility based on advertising revenue or
`pay for use' in an academic institution, depending on local academic rules.
It
would be possible to create the DIAL facilities as part of a commercial
entity's web site, most likely that of a conventional legal publisher, an
`Internet only' legal publisher, or a general Internet catalogue site. A
commercial entity would probably only be likely to be interested if it could
make a profit from the operation of the DIAL service, because merely to operate
it in order to attract customers to other aspects of a commercial site is
unlikely to be attractive, particularly as those customers will not be of any
one predominant geographical location. It is not the practice of Internet users
to pay subscriptions for access to catalogues of links, or the use of search
engines over other sites, and there is no reason to expect that DIAL could be
operated successfully on a subscription basis. As discussed later in this
Chapter, a profit-making version of DIAL would have to be funded by
advertising, and there are problems with this option. Also, it is difficult to
see a commercial publisher wishing to operate the DIALogue facility, as the
commercial opportunities in operating a closed access e-mail system for DMC
official are negligible.
[Previous]
[Next]
[Up]
[Title]