The World Wide Web and e-filing in Florida.

• Author: Waters, Robert Craig

In the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web (1) exploded onto the scene as an entirely new medium. Its potential for disseminating large quantities of information quickly and interactively had barely been tapped. More than a decade later, the Web has matured considerably but it still is evolving in ways that remain substantially unpredictable. As the Web enters its adolescence, however, trends that were unforeseeable a decade ago are readily apparent today. The biggest and most significant trend is that virtually all forms of information, entertainment, and communications are being converted rapidly into Web-based forms. Telephones based entirely on Internet protocols (2) are a viable and financially successful technology. Many cell phones now act like small computers with Internet access, and computers have built-in cell phones and other devices that access the Web wirelessly. Movies and television can be viewed on the Web. Electronic documents are commonplace and almost always found in Adobe's portable document format, which surpassed early rivals (3)--only to face new competition from an emerging Web format called XML. (4) Information essential to professionals--particularly the legal profession--can now be obtained or transmitted instantaneously without regard to distance in the paperless environment of the Internet.

For Florida's appellate practitioners, the Web's promise of transformation has brought clear successes but remains an unfinished business. An early success occurred in 1997 when the Florida Supreme Court began broadcasting all of its oral arguments live on the Web--and also via satellite and cable television, a pioneering and much imitated effort that now reaches more than three million Florida households. The use of redundant forms of transmission in addition to the Web remains common today, in part because the Web still has not fully transcended some of its own limitations. This is especially true when the data involved is voluminous. Web video transmissions, for example, require huge amounts of information to stream over the sometimes tenuous paths of the Internet. This can result in poor video quality or a complete failure of the transmission. Indeed, Web content today typically supplements--but does not completely replace--the more traditional media that gave it birth. Newspapers have lost circulation to the Web, but Web-based newspapers have not replaced their paper counterparts nor even reduced the industry's profitability.

For much the same reason, Westlaw and LexisNexis legal research databases are now available via the Web but also by the traditional connections used in the pre-Web world and on CDs. Law libraries still thrive, though there is an increasing push to put materials...