The Fall of 1998 Turned up the Volume
On September 11, 1998 Special Counsel Kenneth Star submitted his final report to the U.S. Congress. The OIC had already leaked grand jury information to the media and the anticipation of the report being filed had been growing for weeks. It was announced that the Starr report would be posted on the web for public downloads as soon as possible and three websites were originally designated to be hosting the report:
On Friday September 11, 1998 the report was available for downloads. Traffic soared on the House of Representatives servers, which had over 3 million hits an hour, up from the average of about 60,000 hits per hour. The server could not handle the traffic and the technology team at the U.S. House of Representatives made arrangement for Yahoo to provide downloads of the report. Within minutes of the Yahoo posting, copies had been retrieved by a large number of television networks, newspapers, local TV and radio stations, ISPs, individuals, and others, many of whom immediately put copies on their own web servers. Most of the press announced the location of their local copies, both on the Internet and in print and broadcast media. By 1:45 P.M. on September 11th EST Yahoo had posted the report and listed over 30 sites from which the report was downloadable including:
CNN.com, one of the first websites to post Ken Starr's report on the World Wide Web, made it available to Internet users at 2:45 p.m. (ET) on Friday, September 11, 1998. The CNN Web sites reached a daily traffic record of 34.26 million page impressions that day.
Numerous other sites around the world were starting to pick up the report and offer it as a download. Several sites posted the message: "Some of the language in these documents is sexually explicit." There were Internet blackouts on some websites during the late morning of September 11th including MSNBC and CNN. There were over 400,000 hits per minute being reported by CNN mid-day PST (a record). The U.S. Government sites were blacked out most of the morning. According to an estimate by NetRatings, Starr-related material constituted about 20% of all Internet traffic on Friday the 11th. Also on the 12th it was clear that entries at the news sites were growing at a far faster rate than in the search engines. It would seem that news organizations had indeed fully embraced the World Wide Web.
AT&T and Sprint reported Internet usage was up 15% by 3:00 P.M. on the 11th according to "Cyberspace's Coming of Age Bittersweet for Net Faithful" and article by Greg Miller, LA Times Staff Writer. Alexa Internet, provider of the free Web navigation service Alexa, amassed statistics on September 11, 1998, on the number of users that accessed the Kenneth Starr report online. Based on Alexa's user base sample more than 15% or one out of seven Internet users viewed the Starr report on September 11, 1998. Matrix Information and Directory Services (MIDS), the Internet's oldest and most experienced independent analyst group, reported that the increase in traffic on the Internet due to the release of the Starr report did not caused a significant slowdown to the Internet at large.
On September 21, 1998 InterVU delivered over 300,000 video streams for CNN.COM of live coverage of President Clinton's Grand Jury Testimony. The total figure reflects Internet viewer demand met by InterVU over a four-hour period beginning at 9:00 a.m. EDT on September 21st. InterVU also reported that the number of simultaneous video streams it delivered to CNN.COM viewer peaked at over 18,000 during the 11 a.m. hour (EDT). CNN reported receiving approximately 20,000 simultaneous requests for video during the same time period. Several news websites were providing video on demand of a recording of the testimony including ABCNEWS, CNN, FoxNews, and NPR.
The search website AltaVista rolled out an experimental search feature for the video of the Clinton testimony (http://video.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avsearch). To search users began by typing a word or phrase into the search box above or by viewing a list of all available clips.
Internet users could also get a copy of President Clinton's Grand Jury Testimony on DVD for just two cents. This DVD included all four hours of President Clinton's testimony, plus, 99 of the independent counsel's questions are broken down into DVD chapters for fast and easy access. The searchable video was offered by Netflix.com.
Web21 announced on September 24, 1998 that President Clinton was at the top of the 100hot Stars chart of the most mentioned celebrities on the Internet. Monica Lewinsky moved up to number eight after the release of the Kenneth Starr Report. Web21 reported that while all websites with full coverage of the Starr Report showed increases in visitors, the most popular sites were the major news providers with MSNBC and CNN as the top two major online news services to benefit from the boom in Internet traffic.
Also in September 1998 World Gaming Services' online Sportsbook began accepting real-money wagers via the Internet on the outcome of U.S. President Bill Clinton's term in office. World Gaming (domiciled in Antigua) was extending its online wagering services beyond the realm of sporting events to include the most intriguing political question of moment: what will become of President Clinton? The World Gaming Sportsbook (http://www.worldsportsbook.net ) in partnership with Players Only Sportsbook (http://www.playersonly.com) was accepting wagers on the following three possibilities: will President Clinton resign? Finish out his term? Or be impeached?