The reality of the internet often falls short of the ideals it was founded upon - freedom of information, transparency, free sharing of content and democracy, or at least power for the people.
This is regrettable. After all, they are ideals, and financial considerations will invariably hold the upper hand over egalitarianism. Google may come in for criticism for its willingness to co-operate with the Chinese authorities to produce a censored version of its search engine, but it has a business to run.
Admirably, there are millions of people prepared to fight for their right to keep the web for its users, but unfortunately one man's democracy is another man's mob rule, as Eric Bauman recently found out.
Bauman founded the humour website www.ebaumsworld.com as a teenager in 1998. A practical joker, Bauman provoked his teachers into a rage, taped their tantrums and posted the videos on his site. The popularity of the site grew beyond Bauman's classmates by word-of-mouth and he began to diversify the content, mainly from submissions sent in by the site's fans.
The content ranges from "knock-knock" jokes to movie trailer parodies, such as Brokeback to the Future, where Back To The Future meets Brokeback Mountain. There are also audio clips of prank calls, home videos, out-takes and a discussion forum.
The style of the website betrays its secondary-school origins - lots of exclamation marks, busy pages and "zany" humour. Submissions are judged on "extremeness and uniqueness".
However, the project has long surpassed the dreams of most students. The site sees 1 million hits a day, has more than 50,000 registered members and is ranked as one of the 500 most popular sites in the world.
The company was incorporated in 2002 and Bauman dropped out of his community college course to concentrate full-time on the site as chief executive.
His father, Neil, is the chief financial officer of Ebaum's World and says of his multmillionaire son: "He never came out of his room, he never graduated from college, he didn't date girls, and his mother and I were quite worried about him. But this kid is a nerd beyond belief, and he took to it like a proverbial duck to water."
Bauman has been reluctant to go public with the company as it would mean the loss of the more "extreme" content on the site, but another opportunity has come calling. Fox is producing an Ebaum television show, to go out on the USA network after its late-night wrestling slot.
On first glance then, Ebaum's World is a harmless if insanely popular, site. The material is mostly puerile, often funny and occasionally ingenious. However, a lot of the higher quality content is lifted directly from other sites and rebranded with its own logo, and it is here that the problem lies. The original artists are not always thrilled to see their work lifted and stamped with the Ebaum's brand, and many contact the Baumans and ask them to remove the offending material.
However, the Baumans have a reputation for ignoring these requests.
The sites that post the original material are often run as a hobby and the creators do not have the exposure or the financial muscle of Ebaum's World, so their protests are unlikely to be heard.
Incidents like this have led to the growth of an internet movement - "We all hate Ebaum's" - which has inspired songs, animation clips, blog posts and discussions all selling the opinion that the people behind Ebaum's World are plagiarists, or even thieves.
There can be no doubt that this movement's activists despise and mock Ebaum's World. As the site is the first port of call for millions of people looking for a quick laugh, Eric Bauman and his crew could probably withstand the jibes and accusations of theft if it were not for the Lindsay Lohan incident, where animosity and ill-feeling turned into vandalism.
Last month, Ebaum's World posted a clip of Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan that had originally appeared on popular humour site www.ytmnd.com - whose name is inspired by the line "You're the man now, dog", spoken by Sean Connery in the film Finding Forrester. The clip, entitled "Lindsay Lohan has no facial expression", was an animated montage showing the actress in a variety of poses and outfits, but seemingly retaining the same blank facial expression in each one. YTMND files like this consist of images juxtaposed together with a sound loop.
The site was set up by Max Goldberg, who created the first YTMND in 2001, using the aforementioned Sean Connery clip, to host the images and act as a discussion forum for members.
By hosting and watermarking the clip on its own site, Ebaum's World provoked the YTMND community to retaliate. The hatred towards Bauman's site had reached breaking point and on January 7th Ebaum's was hit by denial of service (DOS) attacks, where external users disrupted the site's system in an effort to bring down the server and crash the site.
DOS attacks are simple to carry out, but are only effective if enacted in large numbers.
Seething over years of perceived wrongdoing, Ebaum's detractors descended on the site en masse for several hours.
Angry YTMND members led the attacks, but they had little problem recruiting thousands of users of other internet communities to their cause. The attacks forced Ebaum's World to close down parts of the site and seek legal advice.
Not content with cyberterrorism, some chose to trespass on Ebaum's offices in New York state and bombard the company with prank phone calls. The Bauman's response was to call in the authorities, including the FBI, to deal with the offenders, the vast majority of whom are in their early teens. Goldberg's response was to condemn the attacks.
"As many of you have noticed by the anti-Ebaum sentiment, last night things seemed to reach boiling point," he said.
"I tried to stop this all when it was a snowball, but it just turned into an avalanche. I'd like to make an open statement to the community, in regards to DOS. Don't do it. It sets a whole new precedent and will not end well, it affects a lot more than just Ebaum's World and really crosses the line.
"I think there is a general distaste for Ebaum's World in the internet community and things just exploded last night. While I never supported or condoned attacking anything, I was amazed to see so many communities come together for a vulgar display of power."
This did not stop Neil Bauman from sending a series of e-mails to Goldberg, written in an unusual style for an executive vice-president.
It was straightforward at the beginning: "To whom it may concern: Please be advised that several of your forum soldiers have decided to personally visit our corporate office . . . You can consider this formal notification that we have initiated a criminal complaint with several agencies including the FBI cyber terrorism unit."
However, things went downhill from there: "I realise that most of your website is comprised of pathetic, pimply-faced maladjusted pre-teens whose parents don't love them, and their best Saturday night date takes AA batterie . . . we don't care how you advertise your stupidity, but Ebaum's World lives in the real world, and we are very tolerant and sensitive to the underprivileged and the mentally challenged."
Goldberg issued a public reply noting his astonishment at the language and tone used by Bauman and offered a truce: YTMND would remove all mentions to Ebaum on its site if Ebaum's World removed the Lohan clip.
An uneasy peace has descended, but with the imminent television show, it cannot be guaranteed that the Baumans are safe from any more attacks, be they virtual or physical.
Many now feel that major television networks would be reluctant to get embroiled in accusations of plagiarism and copyright theft, and this will lead to wholesale changes in how Ebaum's World conducts its business, but that remains to be seen.
Few would disagree that Ebaum is operating in a moral grey area, but fewer still would condone the tactics employed by the disaffected.
Whatis interesting, but ultimately unsurprising, is that one of the biggest stories to come out of the row over who owns what on the web - a huge issue affecting civil liberties and censorship - revolved around an amateur gag at the expense of a Hollywood teen princess. As Goldberg said: "I think there is something to be said for communities coming together for a common goal, even if it is over something so petty."
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