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The internet café and Library on the Golden Princess.

An internet café or cybercafé is a place which provides internet access to the public, usually for a fee. These businesses usually provide snacks and drinks, hence the café in the name. The fee for using a computer is usually charged as a time-based rate.

History[link]

SFnet logo circa 1993, San Francisco, CA

Cyberia: one of the world's first Internet cafés, London, 1994

A solar powered internet café in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.

An internet café in Kulim, Kedah, Malaysia.

The online café phenomenon was started in July 1991 by Wayne Gregori in San Francisco when he began SFnet Coffeehouse Network. Gregori designed, built and installed 25 coin operated computer terminals in coffeehouses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The café terminals dialed into a 32 line Bulletin Board System that offered an array of electronic services including FIDOnet mail and, in 1992, Internet mail.^[1] The concept of a café with full Internet access (and the name Cybercafé) was invented in early 1994 by Ivan Pope. Commissioned to develop an Internet event for an arts weekend at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, and inspired by the SFnet terminal based cafes, Pope wrote a proposal outlining the concept of a café with Internet access from the tables. The event was run over the weekend of 12–13 March 1994 during the 'Towards the Aesthetics of the Future' event.

In June 1994, The Binary Cafe, Canada's first Internet café, opened in Toronto, Ontario.

After an initial appearance at the conference site of the 5th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA, in August 1994, an establishment called CompuCafe was established in Helsinki, Finland, featuring both Internet access and a robotic beer seller.

Inspired partly by the ICA event, a commercial establishment of this type, called Cyberia, opened on September 1, 1994 in London, England. In January 1995, CB1 Café in Cambridge, installed internet and is the longest running Internet Café in the UK, still operating today.^[2]

The first public, commercial American Internet café was conceived and opened by Jeff Anderson in August 1994, at Infomart in Dallas, Texas and was called The High Tech Cafe.^[3]

Next, in the USA, three Internet cafés opened in the East Village neighborhood of New York City: Internet Cafe^tm, opened by Arthur Perley, the @ Cafe, and the Heroic Sandwich.^[4] In 1996, the Internet café Surf City opened in downtown Anchorage, Alaska.

A variation of Internet café called PC bang (similar to LAN gaming center) became extremely popular in South Korea when StarCraft was released in 1997. Although computer and broadband penetration per capita were very high, young people went to PC bangs to play multiplayer games.

Characteristics[link]

Internet cafés are located worldwide, and many people use them when traveling to access webmail and instant messaging services to keep in touch with family and friends. Apart from travelers, in many developing countries Internet cafés are the primary form of Internet access for citizens as a shared-access model is more affordable than personal ownership of equipment and/or software. A variation on the Internet café business model is the LAN gaming center, used for multiplayer gaming. These cafés have several computer stations connected to a LAN. The connected computers are custom-assembled for gameplay, supporting popular multiplayer games. This is reducing the need for video arcades and arcade games, many of which are being closed down or merged into Internet cafés. The use of Internet cafés for multiplayer gaming is particularly popular in certain areas of Asia like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and the Philippines. In some countries, since practically all LAN gaming centers also offer Internet access, the terms net cafe and LAN gaming center have become interchangeable. Again, this shared-access model is more affordable than personal ownership of equipment and/or software, specially since games often require high end and expensive PCs.

There are also Internet kiosks, Internet access points in public places like public libraries, airport halls, sometimes just for brief use while standing. Many hotels, resorts, and cruise ships offer Internet access for the convenience of their guests; this can take various forms, such as in-room wireless access, or a web browser that uses the in-room television set for its display (usually in this case the hotel provides a wireless keyboard on the assumption that the guest will use it from the bed), or computer(s) that guests can use, either in the lobby or in a business center. As with telephone service, in the US most mid-price hotels offer Internet access from a computer in the lobby to registered guests without charging an additional fee, while fancier hotels are more likely to charge for the use of a computer in their "business center."

For those traveling by road in North America, many truck stops have Internet kiosks, for which a typical charge is around 20 cents per minute.^[5]

Internet cafés come in a wide range of styles, reflecting their location, main clientele, and sometimes, the social agenda of the proprietors. In the early days they were important in projecting the image of the Internet as a 'cool' phenomena.

Evolution[link]

Internet cafés are a natural evolution of the traditional café.^{[citation needed]} Cafés started as places for information exchange, and have always been used as places to read the paper, send postcards home, play traditional or electronic games, chat to friends, find out local information. Cafés have also been in the forefront of promoting new technologies, for example, the car in 1950s California.

As Internet access is in increasing demand, many pubs, bars and cafes have terminals, so the distinction between the Internet cafe and normal café is eroded. In some, particularly European countries, the number of pure Internet cafés is decreasing since more and more normal cafés offer the same services. However, there are European countries where the total number of publicly accessible terminals is also decreasing. An example of such a country is Germany. The cause of this development is a combination of complicated regulation, relatively high Internet penetration rates, the widespread use of notebooks and PDAs and the relatively high number of WLAN hotspots. Many pubs, bars and cafés in Germany offer WLAN, but no terminals since the Internet café regulations do not apply if no terminal is offered. Additionally, the use of Internet cafés for multiplayer gaming is very difficult in Germany since the Internet cafe regulations and a second type of regulations which was originally established for video arcade centers applies to this kind of Internet cafes. It is, for example, forbidden for people under the age of 18 to enter such an Internet café, although particularly people under 18 are an important group of customers for this type of Internet café.

While most Internet cafés are private businesses many have been set up to help bridge the 'digital divide', providing computer access and training to those without home access. For example, the UK government has supported the setting up of 6000 telecentres.

In Asia, gaming is very popular at the Internet Cafes. This popularity has helped create a strong demand and a sustainable revenue model for most Internet cafes. With growing popularity, there also comes with this a responsibility as well. In fighting for competitive market share, the Internet cafes have started charging less and hence are adopting alternate means to maximize revenue. This includes selling food, beverages, game and telephone cards to its patrons.

In July 2008 the worlds first Internet Cafe on the Internet was released in Karlskoga, Sweden. Virtual Internet Cafe^[6] use the same principles as a regular Internet Cafe, but is completely based on the Internet. Users of Virtual Internet Cafe remote control designated Cafe computers instead of using their own computers on the Internet. This gives the users the option to be completely anonymous on the Internet while protecting their own computers from malicious software and spywares.

Censorship and copyright violation[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

To combat terrorism, the Italian government requires positive identification from all users of internet cafes. (Florence, May 2006)

In places with censoring regimes such as Singapore, Internet cafés are closely controlled. In some places computers are in booths to allow private access to pornography. In some areas of Los Angeles they are controlled because they attract street gangs.^{[citation needed]}

Copyright violations by clients are cause for concern by Internet café operators. For example, the EasyInternetcafe chain discontinued its CD burning services because it was held responsible for copyright violations by clients.

Venues[link]

This article may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. You can help. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (March 2009)

Brazil[link]

In Brazil, the initial concept brought by Monkey Paulista was based on the business model used by Internet cafes in South Korea, since this was the first house LAN to exist in Brazil, inaugurated in São Paulo, starting its activities in 1998. The company closed in 2010. However, just a week later for reasons of bureaucracy, the company Lan Game @ The House^[7] was opened and today is the 1st lan house of Brazil in activity. Today it is seen as the country as a way to test new technologies and demonstration of games and products.

Mainland China[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

According to the "Survey of China Internet Café Industry" by the People's Republic of China Ministry of Culture in 2005, Mainland China has 110,000 Internet cafés, with more than 1,000,000 employees contributing 18,500,000,000 yuan to P.R. China's GDP. More than 70% of Internet café visitors are from 18 to 30 years old. 90% are male, 65% are unmarried, and 54% hold a university degree. More than 70% of visitors play computer games. 20% of China's Internet users go to Internet cafes.

Milestones:

• Before 1995 - An Internet Café called 3C+T appeared in Shanghai, probably the first in China. The price was 20 Yuan per hour($2.50 per hour)

• 1995~1998 - China's Internet Cafés proliferate. Playing unconnected games is the main purpose of café users. The average price was 15~20 Yuan per hour.

• 1998~2000 - A period of great expansion for Internet cafes with more competition.

• 2000~2002 - Increasing popularity in Internet games. The first Internet chain café opened in 2001. Because nine people were killed in an Internet café fire in Beijing in June, 2002, a new regulation was passed giving the Ministry of Culture full responsibility for licensing Internet cafés.

• After 2002 - Heavy censorships were imposed, including real-name registration. At the end of 2004, more than 70,000 Internet cafés were closed in a nationwide campaign.

• 2008 - Microsoft attempts to make Internet Cafes profitable in Asia and other emerging markets. After discussions with the governments of these countries, it helps to establish safe Internet cafes.

2009: Over 6,000 Internet cafes in countries like Thailand and Indonesia have voluntarily signed up to provide a safe software experience for its patrons. With over 100,000 computers involved in this program, it is the largest mass improvement of Internet cafes in the world.

Greece[link]

First Internet Cafe in Greece was Museum internet cafe 1998-2008. Popularity of Internet games had as result the growth of internet cafe at all cities and islands with Salonika leading the progress. Most of them are Gaming stations and few are original Internet cafes mostly in Central Athens, Glyfada, Islands. Prices 1-3 euros per hour and offers are available. On 2010 and 2011 many of the internet cafes closed due to economical crisis.

Indonesia[link]

Internet café
Korean name
Hangul	PC방, 피시방 or 피씨방[8]
Hanja	PC房, 피시房, 피씨房
Revised Romanization	pisibang or pissibang
McCune–Reischauer	p'isibang or p'issibang

According to APWKomitel^[9] (Association of Community Internet Center) there are 5,000 Internet Cafes in urban Indonesian cities in 2006 providing computer/printer/scanner rental, training, PC gaming and Internet Access/Rental to the people who do not have PC or Internet access at home. The website^[10] also contains a directory listing some of these warnet/telecenter/gamecenter in Indonesia. In urban areas, the generic name is Warnet (or Warung Internet) and in rural areas the generic name is Telecenter. Warnets/ Netcafes (i.e.: Java NetCafe^[11] established in 1998) are usually owned by private SME as bottom-up initiatives, while Telecenters in rural villages are usually initiated by Government and Donors as top-down financing. Information on Netcafe/Warnet in Indonesia can also be found in a book titled: Connected for Development:Indonesian Case study.^[12]

Currently, no special license is required to operate an Internet Cafe or Warnet in Indonesia, except for the ordinary business license also applied to cafe or small shop. Because of hype and many Internet cafe starting their business without proper planning, some of them closed down for lack of a business plan. Although the number is still growing, associations such as APWKomitel^[13] urge new Internet cafe owners to do a feasibility study before planning to open an Internet cafe, and provide a business model called Multipurpose Community Internet Center or "MCI Center"^[14] to make the business more sustainable and competitive.

Malaysia[link]

In Malaysia, most of the teenagers love to visit Internet cafes to enjoy their gaming time with friends. The Internet cafe in Malaysia also called as cybercafe,"Kafe Internet" in Malay and "网吧" in Chinese, some of the Internet cafe in Malaysia combine the characteristics of a F&B cafe and an Internet cafe.

Philippines[link]

In the Philippines, internet cafés are found on every street in major cities and there is at least one in most municipalities or towns. There are also internet cafés in coffee shops and malls. High-end restaurants and fast food chains also provide free broadband to diners. Rates range from P10 ($0.20) on streets, up to P100 ($2) in malls.

South Korea[link]

In South Korea, Internet cafes are called PC bangs.^[15] They are ubiquitous in South Korean cities, numbering over 20,000.^[16] PC bangs mostly cater to online game playing for the younger generation. On average and mode, use of a PC bang computer is priced at around 1,000 won per hour (about USD$0.88).

Taiwan[link]

In Taiwan, many people go to Internet cafés. The Internet café in traditional Chinese is "網咖" (wangka). The first character means "net" and the second character is the first syllable of "café."

See also[link]

	Internet portal
	Business portal

• Hotspot (Wi-Fi)
• Manga cafe
• Net cafe refugees
• Public computer
• Telecenter

Notes[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (February 2012)

References[link]

• John Flinn (1991). "High-Tech Small Talk at City's cafes", The San Francisco Examiner, Front Page.
• Katherine Bishop (1992). "The Electronic Coffeehouse", New York Times.
• John Boudreau (1993). "A Cuppa and a Computer", Washington Post, Front Page.
• Marian Salzman (1995). "SFnet Leads Cyber Revolution", San Francisco Examiner.
• SFnet.org, Press Archive.
• Stewart (2000). Cafematics: the Cybercafe and the Community, in Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information and Communications Technologies. ed M. Gurstein.Idea Group, TorontoPDF (202 KB)
• Sonia Liff and Anne Sofie Laegran (2003) Cybercafés: debating the meaning and significance of Internet access in a café environment, New Media & Society Vol 5 (3)PDF
• Anne-Sofie Lagran and James Stewart(2003), Nerdy, trendy or healthy? Configuring the Internet cafe, New Media & Society Vol 5 (3) 35PDF
• Madanmohan Rao(1999), Bringing the Net to the Masses: cybercafes in Latin America
• Connected for development-Information Kiosks & Sustainability - UN ICT TaskForce Series 4
• ITU 'Global Indicators Workshop on Community Access to ICTs' di Mexico City, 16-19 November 2004
• Here's to the Techies Who Lunch, New York Times, August 27, 1994
• report on Yahoo's best cafes, 2004.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Internet cafés

• Cybercafes at the Open Directory Project
• World of Internet Cafes

Corey Vidal (born December 7, 1986) is a Canadian online video content provider and digital media consultant. His YouTube videos have been seen over 62 million times, and he has over 200 videos, as of May 2012. He is ranked as one of Canada's "Most Viewed" Partners^[1] and "Most Subscribed"^[2] users of all time, and ranks in the top 300 YouTube channels worldwide.^[3] He is also Canada's "#2 Most Subscribed Guru".^[4] His YouTube channel profile has been viewed over 7 million times. In December 2007, Vidal was one of the first Canadians to join the YouTube Partnership Program.^[5] Vidal has over 200,000 subscribers.

YouTube career[link]

Vidal began on YouTube in mid-2006 by posting hip hop dance videos inspired by American dance reality television show So You Think You Can Dance.^[6] His popularity stemmed from the success of one of his first videos, How To Dance: "1, 2 Step" by Ciara ft. Missy Elliot (uploaded to YouTube on September 3, 2006), where he teaches dance steps to R&B singer Ciara's music video 1, 2 Step. This video is the #1 Most Viewed (All Time) and #1 Top Favorited (All Time) video for a Canadian in the "Howto & Style" category.^[7] It currently has over 6 million views.

Following his How To Dance series, Vidal branched into other types of videos.^[8] His channel career spans dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, beatboxing, acting in short films (including a major short film production by Niagara College), solving Rubik's Cubes, video blogging, and collaborating with other YouTubers. Microsoft Canada has contributed to one of Corey's videos,^[5] and MTV Europe contacted him to produce an exclusive video to appear in their televised series MTV's Best.Show.Ever in 2007.^[5] In December 2008, Corey produced a 4-part a cappella Christmas e-card for California-based consulting firm Barbary Coast Consulting.^[9] In May 2009, Vidal released a 33-part interactive choose-your-own-adventure-style video as part of a collaboration with Blendtec,^[8] the company behind Will It Blend?. He is working on a 14-part television commercial project with Moosebutter and NBC Universal.^{[citation needed]}

Vidal first gained national Canadian media attention in the summer of 2008 when he was announced as the host^[10] of the 888 YouTube Gathering that took place August 8, 2008 in Toronto, Canada.^[11][12] Corey hosted a one-hour show featuring many of YouTube's most popular "cewebrities",^[13] including KevJumba, HappySlip, Dave Days, Charles Trippy, Shay Carl, Philip DeFranco, and more.

A daily vlog channel was launched on January 1, 2011 called ApprenticeEh. It was a play on the Canadian saying "Eh", the main channel being ApprenticeA. As of May 2012 the ApprenticeEh channel has over 2,000,000 video views.

[edit] Star Wars (John Williams Is The Man) A Cappella Tribute

A notable success is his most popular video, a Star Wars a cappella tribute to John Williams - a video of Vidal lip-syncing to a song written in 1999 and recorded in 2002 by a cappella comedy troupe Moosebutter.^[14] The video was featured on YouTube Canada's homepage on November 3, 2008, and then again on the Worldwide homepage three days later. It appeared on the homepage of MSN.com, and was featured by MSN Videos and StupidVideos.com. As of March 2011, the video has been viewed over 15 million times since its upload on October 27, 2008. The video quickly became Canada's #1 Top Rated (All Time) and #1 Top Favorited (All Time) Entertainment video, and now has many other All Time Honors both in Canada and Worldwide. It is also ranked as one of YouTube's Top 100 Rated videos of All Time.^[15]

On December 7, 2008 the video was nominated for a 35th Annual People's Choice Awards on CBS as "Favorite User Generated Video" of 2008.^[16] It faced competition in its category from other viral videos such as Barack Roll, Fred Goes Swimming, Where the Hell is Matt? (2008), and Wassup 2008. Vidal attended the red carpet event in Los Angeles on January 7, 2009.^[8]

Copyright disputes[link]

Vidal is known on YouTube for his multiple Digital Millennium Copyright Act disputes between the content in his videos and copyrighted works owned by major studios and labels. To date, Vidal has fought and won every claim made against his videos.

[edit] 4 Minutes

The first claim came from Warner Music Group in April 2008 over the use of Madonna's song 4 Minutes in one of his hip hop dance videos. The video was removed from YouTube by Warner a month after it being uploaded, having received over 200,000 views. Vidal fought Warner with an official DMCA counter-claim, filed through YouTube's copyright system.^[8]

Two weeks after his claim was made, Madonna herself uploaded a video to her official YouTube channel titled Madonna's Message To YouTube saying "So all you people out there who are making videos to my single 4 Minutes, keep up the good work. Nice job, nice one, OK. But you got to clean up after yourself, alright?"^[5]

Vidal forwarded this video to YouTube's copyright department as well as Warner Music Group's legal team, and on May 9, 2008 his video was restored in full, with no penalties held against his account. Ironically, after a falling-out between YouTube and Warner Music Group in early 2009,^[17] Warner pulled down every video on YouTube that contained any of their material. This included a complete purging of Madonna's YouTube account and all her videos, including the official music video to 4 Minutes as well as Madonna's message to YouTube. However, because Vidal's claim had legally won in 2008, they were unable to remove his video. It currently has over 4 million views.

[edit] John Williams/Star Wars A Cappella Tribute

In mid-January 2009, Vidal's Star Wars A Cappella video was removed from YouTube due to a DMCA copyright infringement claim by Warner Music Group.^[18] His entire account and all of his videos were suspended, then returned three days later, however the a cappella video remained banned and unviewable. For over a month, the official video was unavailable on YouTube, but copies were spread around the Internet by other uploaders on YouTube and other media sites. On February 24, 2009 the original video returned after Vidal fought Warner's claim, citing the video as being protected under fair use. The video was restored with its original views, ratings, and comments.

Awards and nominations[link]

See also[link]

• List of YouTube celebrities
• User-generated content
• Viral video

References[link]

External links[link]

• Corey Vidal's YouTube Home Page
• Public Statistics of Corey Vidal's videos