BPN 1747: Dutch telco KPN wants to redeem a precious IP brand

The Dutch telco KPN has published its intention to abolish the brand name of its IP subsidiary XS4ALL. This has led to a storm of indignation and solicited a petition to reconsider the decision, signed in the meantime by some 45.000 of the IP’s pioneers, subscribers and sympathizers. 

Dutch internet pioneer 

XS4ALL is one of the oldest Dutch IPs. It originated from the hackers’movement Hack-Tic and offered its internet services since May 1^st, 1993. On its first day it registered 500 subscribers, a score which was helped by one of the rare articles on internet in the national daily de Volkskrant. XS4ALL was one of the first Dutch pioneer IPs together with NLnet, Knoware and IAF. The foundation grew fast and gained speed, when beginning 1994 the Digital City in Amsterdam was launched.

By 1998 the Dutch scene of IPs had changed drastically. Competition between the new IPs had become fiercely, with competitors like Digital City, Planet Internet and World Online. In order to stay technically ahead, the foundation was faced with heavy investments, which they could not put on the table. So they put together a bidbook and offered that to the IP community. 

Wonderment 
The press and internet community was astonished when the winner was announced. The Dutch telco  KPN had beaten the other competitors, being in need of technical knowledge and having deep pockets. The astonishment was based on the difference in company mentality. KPN being a stock listed company and technical business was not in line with the free, anarchistic mentality of XS4ALL. Yet KPN guaranteed an independent course of management. 

Not just an IP 
XS4ALL was an early Dutch IP and kept its freshness from the beginning. So it stood side by side when the IP stood sideby side in a court case of a subscriber against the Scientology Church, which lasted from 1995 till 2005. In 1996 XS4ALL together with the Voice of America supported the continuation of the broadcasts of radio station B92 from Belgrado, which had been stopped by the then Federal Republic of Juguslavia. The IP was also a party in a censoring case with the German government. It also fought a legal battle in the Pirate Bay case with the Dutch copyright watchdog Brein. 

Shift

From 2016 a shift was noticed in the attitude of KPN towards XS4ALL. KPN parted with two independent foundations, which guarded over the origin and legacy of the internet pioneers. The attempt to take over the foundations failed and the annual contributions were stopped. But with the entry of anew CEO in 2018, a new marketing plan was developed: the brand name KPN would be leading for all subsidiary brand, including XS4ALL. The announcement on January 10, 2019 to say farewell to the brandname, sollicited immediate reaction from the subscribers, who threatened to discontinue their subscription. KPN tried to appease the subscribers saying that nothing would change in the service of XS4ALL, but that only the name of the pioneer company would be abolished. But the action committee of subscribers was not appeased. Of the more than 200.000 subscribers some 20.000 joined the action group as did some 25.000 of supporters. After a talk with KPN the group threatened to leave the KPN company and even start up a new company with the help of a third party.

BPN 1746: Launch Digital City Amsterdam 25 years ago

Today it is 25 years ago that the Digital City Amsterdam was launched. Digital City Amsterdam was a historic project as it meant a breakthrough for internet in The Netherlands, but also an example of a virtual community. 

Breakthrough
By 1993 technical access to Internet was available in the Netherlands. Three ISPs (NLnet, XS4ALL and Knoware) delivered the technical access mostly to companies, but did not offer any other services. They invested hardly any effort in marketing and promotion as most clients found their way to the companies/foundations. This changed drastically in 1994 when the De Digitale Stad (DDS) came online. This foundation was an initiative of De Balie, XS4ALL and was set up in order to form a discussion platform for six weeks for the upcoming municipal elections. It was a success from the start, partly because a visitor got a free e-mail address and free access to other textual information. So far internet visitors had to fiddle a lot with their PC settings in order get contact with the host. But through DDS internet could be reached via a dial-in connection and through public terminals at the City Hall and the debatting centre De Balie.


'Mayor' Marleen Stikker cuts the cake in celebration of the first year anniversary

The site
DDS was heavily promoted in the media as well as with citizens and in institutes like old folks homes by the virtual mayor of the digital city, Marleen Stikker. Once DDS was on its way, it got support to continue from the municipality of Amsterdam, grants from the ministry of Economic Affairs and the ministry of Internal Affairs and sponsorship deals. But after a year free access to Internet DDS had to close this facility. In one year DDS attracted 10.000 subscribers and by 1997 DDS had 50.000 subscribers.




The development of the interface from a first not executed design of the digitalcity (top), the first textual screen (middle) and the first graphical screen (under)
 
The first version of DDS was a textual interface. But this changed, when on October 15, 1994 the world wide web interface was introduced. This was a bold graphic interface, which brought out the virtual city elements such as squares and buildings as well as homes. By 1997 around 6500 subscribers had an own home, of whom 1500 inhabitants had their own front door. Besides visitors, DDS also had inhabitants, who could build their own house for free with 5Mb; they also received an e-mail address for sending mails in and outside the virtual city. Inhabitants could also accept another fantasy identity, but this could always be checked. They could also see where other people were in the city and talk to them, while in cafes they could chat with each other.


The Sports Square (left) and De Baarsjes neighbourhood with houses in the middle (right)
 
By the end of the millennium DDS did have trouble to cover debts and the board decided to change the foundation into a limited company. DDS became part of the commercial ISPs. This transition solicited a lot of emotions from inhabitants and led to a schism, named the only genuine digital city (DeDS).


A map of the Netherlands with digital regions, digital cities and villages

Digital cities
DDS was the first digital city in the Netherlands. But soon digital regions, cities and villages popped up like mushrooms and usually died as fast as they came up. In 1986 Wegener and later on VNU Newspapers launched City Online, a project designed by Maurice de Hond. The format looked similar to that of Digital City Amsterdam, complete with houses for inhabitants. It was an expensive project, which was dependent on the goodwill of the editor-in-chief of the printed newspaper in the city or region. City Online never really took off and by January 1, 1988 the project was over. Presently regional newspapers still experiment with digital cities, villages and regions e.g. 010 in Rotterdam andDichtbij (Near) in Enschede.

Web archeology project

An archive of Digital City Amsterdam was created, when the foundation changed into a limited company. But in 2016 the web archeology project, RE: DDS, was set up by De Waag, a foundation operating at the intersection of science, technology and arts, Amsterdam Museum, the Free University and the University of Amsterdam. The recovered digital devices, magnetic tapes and CDs and were able to emulate software even to a presentation level. One of the results of the RE: DDS project was the FREEZE! manifest.


Celebration 
Ther will be a celebration in Amsterdamat the Public Library. The former virtual mayor will speak and address the pressure on the public character of the internet: "Internet companies enter the public space of the city and also put the public character of the Internet under pressure. The digital public space that we saw before us 25 years ago is now a 'market place', where power is centralized in a handful of large companies with a data hunger that seems unstoppable. Can the mores of these companies be combined with the values of our society? And who actually determines the rules, now that online and offline are becoming increasingly interwoven?"

BPN 1736: Manifesto FREEZE! Save and preserve digital heritage

The project group The Digital City Revived consisting of of the Amsterdam Museum, Waag Society, University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has presented its final results of: FREEZE! Save and preserve our digital heritage. The Digital City as a case study for web archaeology.

The final results of FREEZE! contain three parts:

• Do It Yourself Manual for Web Archaeology (Dutch language);
• Feasibility Study Presentation (Dutch language);
• FREEZE! A manifesto for safeguarding and preserving born-digital heritage.

Version 1 – November 2017

Aims

Finding ways to preserve born-digital heritage has become a matter of urgency and growing concern. Websites, games and interactive documentaries each bring specific challenges that need to be addressed. It takes three to tango: Ensuring that our digital lives and digital creativity are not lost to future generations requires a joint effort by the principal players: creators, heritage professionals and policy makers. This manifesto lays out the actions they need to take today to safeguard born-digital heritage.

Creators

Digital products are at risk of being lost from the moment they are created. Creators are therefore part of the preservation process - whether by writing code, editing digital content or by creating some other form of digital expression. We encourage creators as follows:

• Invest time to describe your work carefully, whatever platform you use to store and manage your work. Provide at least a minimal set of metadata (who, what, where, when). Always include versioning data and information about the rights status of the work.

• Document your work as copiously as possible. Documentation enables future users

to understand and reuse your work more easily. Describe the technical specifications of your work, for example the hardware and software used to create the work.

• If possible, assign open licenses (such as Creative Commons) to your work. This enables content to be reused. Reuse will help to ensure the longevity of your work.

• Where possible, use open-source software and open-source hardware. Your work will withstand the test of time better, since open means: independent of proprietary technology and vendor lock-in, and transparent availability of the source code and building blocks of your work.

Heritage Professionals.

Digital material presents several challenges for heritage professionals. For instance, the sheer amount of material created, dispersed among diverse platforms, hardware and domains makes selection a daunting task. There is little standardization of file formats and environments that supports these. Norms for describing and managing this complexity are inadequately developed. The tasks involved in collecting, preserving and making digital materials accessible fall into three categories. We encourage heritage professionals as follows:

Policy

• Identify vulnerable digital heritage in your area of activity and find out which forms of digital heritage your organisation develops, manages or intends to manage (in line with collection policy plans). Create a convergent digital landscape by harmonising collection policies with other institutions. To ensure success, avoid overlaps and gaps in the combined collections.

• Develop policies for acquiring and keeping born-digital material accessible sustainably. Use existing models, as described in the ‘DIY Handbook of Web Archaeology’.

• Obtain legal advice regarding storage and reuse. Act responsibly when using, managing and making personal data or information accessible.

Implementation

• Where possible, cooperate with (fellow) institutions and industrial partners to find collective solutions. Choose robust –preferably open - technical infrastructures and operating systems.

• Assume that your current technology will need to be updated regularly. So prepare your exit strategy: can you move data from system A to system B easily?

• Use well-documented, open standards, e.g. for storage formats and exchange protocols. Non-dependence on suppliers ensures your archive material remains interchangeable in the future.

• Agree clear guidelines for delivery of acquired and transferred born-digital material: when, why and under what terms. Outline the rights and obligations before and after material is transferred. If accessibility is an objective, organise this when the acquisition is realised: lay down terms for accessing the collections.

• Ensure copious metadata records are kept of digital objects so that the context in which these were created is clear for future users. E.g. record the hardware and software environment in which objects function. Document data in the form of descriptions, photos, screenshots, screencasts, videos etc, and establish conservation procedures.

• Ensure collections can be used and reused, that digital objects can be found, accessed, interoperated, reused and stored in a sustainable manner. Use and reuse by a large group of users increases awareness of the importance and need for preservation.

Knowledge sharing

• Exploit the power of the community. Introduce your team to the original creators, inventors and users. Organise meetings to share expertise.

• Keep track of developments in amateur communities involved with digital works. Much can be learned from bottom-up initiatives by amateurs who keep older digital cultures alive.

• Invest in your co-workers’ increasing expertise and keep track of developments by following blogs, seminars and participating in domestic and international expert communities, such as NDE (Digital Heritage Network Netherlands) or iPRES.

• New born-digital products require new instruments and new research queries. To keep pace with rapid changes in technology, be prepared for new ways of working and new ways of cooperating.

Policy makers

You hold the key to creating a sustainable policy that ensures sustainable digital heritage. We encourage policy makers to do the following:

• Stimulate cross-domain collaboration and use of collaborative instruments. Value hands-on expertise. Encourage the experts who love tracking down bit rot, annotating ancient code and building emulators. Put them in a position to share their knowledge and obtain recognition for their contribution.

• Bring the need to develop sustainability policy and preservation policy to the attention of institutions.

• Stimulate the emergence and use of open and collective services to ensure that as many heritage institutions in the Netherlands as possible will be able to guarantee long-term access to the digital collections they manage. Encourage collaboration within the Digital Heritage Network, based on the National Strategy for Digital Heritage.

• Encourage copyright reform to facilitate the preservation, availability and reuse of born-digital heritage.

Invitation

There are many ways to advance the aims outlined here. We are the steering committee of the DDS project, realised in 2016 and 2017 with support from Mondriaan Fund, National Coalition Digital Preservation, Digital Heritage Network, Prince Bernhard Culture Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL. We welcome your feedback regarding this version of our manifesto and are keen to learn about other activities designed to pursue these goals. We encourage others to join us to help further the overarching objective of preserving born-digital heritage.

Judikje Kiers Amsterdam Museum

Julia Noordegraaf University of Amsterdam

Johan Oomen Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Marleen Stikker Waag Society

More information: http://hart.amsterdam/freeze

This material is licensed under Creative-Commons-Licence BY 4.0 International: http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/

BPN 1703: Internet has caught up with Dutch pensionados

In the Netherlands we have reached a milestone: 9 out of 10 people are using internet daily, says CBS Statistics. Faster connections through broadband (cable and fiber), better access to internet, a larger offer are leading to more online activities such as listening to the radio, reading news, watching tv and e-shopping. The percentage internet users has gone up from 68 to 90 procent from 2005 till 2014. In 2005 already three quarters of youth between 12 and 25 years were on internet every day, but in 2014 they were increasingly using smart phones to connect to internet. In 2014 three quarters of the internet users between 65 and 75 years use internet daily.

It has taken twenty years for silver tsunami of pensionados to become digital natives. They were resp. between 45 and 55 years when Digital City (De Digitale Stad – DDS) started to roll out consumer internet. Now they are intensively using internet in order to find their forebears, mail, skype and transfer (photo)files with their kids, grandchildren, relatives and friend as well as electronic banking.

A real tipping point in this development is the reading habit of the pensionados as they are officially still seen as the majority of readers of printed newspaper. But this is changing rapidly. With the rise of online newspapers, the print editions of the newspapers are going down with rapid speed. Between the third quarter of 2011 and 2014 print has decreased no less tah 15 percent of the paid print newspapers, regardless of the age brackets. But the pensionados can be seen as the last wall of the print Mohikans, so print will die off more rapidly in the next ten years. This will pose the next problem of transformation for the newspapers. Now the online newspapers are divided in freesheets and registered and/or paid subscription papers. In the coming years the companies will mainly continue to land paid subscriptions. Yet the pensionados will discover as the the younger generations have already done, that they like to compose their own newspaper and buy articles instead of editions. So there is a future for article kiosks like Blendle. (But their business model will have to be finetuned so that the publishers will pay their freelance journalists for republishing on Blendle and the freelance journalist can publishedarticles for pay without publishers).

Are there now main differences between the generation born with digital tools or the pensionados finally arriving as digital natives. I recently had the opportunity as a guest lecturer of a University of Applied Sciences to make a digital X-ray of the students. The study communication and are in the second year of their bachelor of arts. They are between 19 and 25 years old. Of course you do not have to ask wether they use internet, that is like asking for the use of the holy book  (Bible, Quran, Thora) in a sanctuary. They all have a portable computer and a smart phone; only few of them had an iPad or tablet and only one an e-reader. Of course, they all bank electronically.

Interesting was to make an inventory of their reading habits. Yes there were a minority of students reading printed newspapers, freesheets as well as paid newspapers. The majority however was reading free online newspapers, the free shortened versions of paid newspapers as well as the advertsiement papers with some news bullits. Only one of the students did have an e-reader and many, many e-books! And their was one student reading one of his three e-books on a tablet.

Part of the X-ray are questions about the digital background of their parents. These parents are globally of the generation of 40 to 50 years. These parents were the digital migrants. The responses tell that most a gaming console was a digital first at home. A computer for home use was introduced from 1996 onwards; former generations bought an encyclopedia for self education and that of their children. From the answers it was clear that the parents had started to work with computers at work. But internet came into their homes after 2000 and so they also took on the habit of banking electronically.  

The results of CBS combined with the X-ray of a limited group of students clearly shows that pensionados are now joining the ranks of digital migrants and that the present group of students are the first generation of digital natives. The difference between the digital pensionados and the digital natives is the smart phone and most likely the iPad/tablet.While you would suppose that the students have been born with a smartphone, the digital pensionados still sit behind their desk computer or portable PC or they start their day with reading the news on their iPad/tablet in bed. Besides pensionados have started to read books on an e-reader But give it another five years and improved interfaces and the digital pensionados will have catched up with the smartphone and the students with the iPad and tablet.

 

BPN 1677: Launch Digital City Amsterdam (1994)

 

Launch Digital City in Amsterdam

15 January 1994

  

 

BPN 1634: Twenty years internet access for Dutch consumers

It is not clear who the first Dutch supplier of Internet access for consumers was. In 1992 there were only 239 companies users of the internet systems of service providers (ISPs) such as XS4ALL, NLnet, Knoware and IAE. For example, a company would pay for a subscription 100 guilders  (45.50 euros) to XS4ALL. The number of companies connected to the Internet was not large, because the internet online system was only known by small group of entrepreneurs, mostly university graduates. Entrepreneurs outside this group did not have any idea of ​​the Internet and were linked to other systems such as Videotex Netherlands, ASCII databases and email systems as Low Cost Linking.

The  ISPs were really yet interested in consumers. The ISPs did not have the marketing machines and helpdesks. If a consumer accidentally wandered by and wanted to have a subscription, h/she would get it, but without a manual. All that started to change in 1992.

XS4ALL arose from the organization Hack-Tic, a group of people that exchanged hackers tricks, tips and files with each other. The organization initially made use of the facilities of the University of Amsterdam. But the university stopped the group from using its computernetwork. So that was the time Hac-Tic started  the foundation XS4ALL.

From 1992 XS4ALL started to accept members of the Hobby Computer Club (HCC) besides companies. And early 1993 the management decided to accept consumers. So 20 years ago on May 1, 1993 XS4ALL started to offer consumers access to its servers for 30 Dutch guilders (roughly 13 euro) a month . XS4ALL was the first ISP who started to take consumers seriously. They management predicted that  50 subscribers would sign on the first day. By the evening of May 2nd, 1993 at 19.00h the ISP had registered 500 consumers. There was clearly a need for internet among consumers. The first wave of consumer subscribers might have been helped by an article about internet, which was published in the Dutch national morning daily De Volkskrant that day.

From May 1, 1993 the number of subscriptions to Internet for consumers increased steadily, but not by the hundreds. Until later in the year XS4ALL started to collaborate with the political and cultural centre De Balie in the project and the Digital City in Amsterdam. The project had been devised to promote the municipal elections in the spring of 1994. Apart from the local television, radio and print media, the Digital City would be part of the public debate. On Monday, January 17th 1994 the Digital City opened its doors. This project caught the fascination of  many of the  national media wonder and as a side effect  it generated a lot of publicity for internet. In 1994 alone this project generated eight television and radio fragments, starting with an interview with Frank de Grave and the mayor of the Digital City Marleen Stikker in the 8 o'clock news on January 15, 1994 according to the database of Sound and Vision. After six weeks the project had tallied up more than ten thousand registered users.

In 1996 the foundation created a company, which was sold to the incumbent telecom operator KPN in 1998. However XS4ALL remained independent as a subsidiary and now offers various internet access services such as ADSL, SDSL and fibre and via KPN information and entertainment packs.