the art of connecting all together
to collapse a site for political espression
From: Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Fight for Your Right to Live and Communicate!
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Fight for Your Right to Live and Communicate!
The butchery carried out by the fascist italian state at the
Independent Media Center of Genoa involved in producing free
information on G8 days calls for hacktivism: if you think that human
beings are not either bloody cases to be beaten or goods for global
business partecipate to the netstrike (virtual sit-in) against
www.manpower.com on August 3rd, 2001 from 3.00 p.m. GMT
Information and people want to be free!
Anonymous Digital Coalition
--
Open letter to Internet-News about the freedom of political speech in the net
The italian magazine Internet News publishes on page 14 a brief call in which correctly declares itself worried about the possible effects against the freedom caused by the newly-born "Communication Operators Registry", that is a creature of the famigerate publishing law and of an anachronistic culture that would make the Net a mainstream media's obbidient daugther.
Unfortunately, after few pages (pages 42-45), the magazine starts a well minded and covard attack against one of the most original inventions on the Net, considering the speech and political expression freedom: the netstrike (www.netstrike.it)
It is an explicit call to repression in this delicate moment when the anti-G8 protest is starting. The same G8 against which - till they will let us - we reply in political and mediatical terms with the present open letter.
Phrases like "netstrikers were often identified" and like "the invocated impossibility to have evidences for masses digital law-breaking will SOON break and with no doubt", are pretestuose, without any bases and according to our point of view such things are a bad sign (regarding the above mentioned article and the phrases in it, the Lawyer Barbara Gualtieri and Claudio Tistarelli wrote the following remarks that we report later on).
(Translator note: the translation from this point may be not totally correct due to the bad knowledge of law term by the translator) Anyway, the netstrike is a practice which has largely spread in the last six years all over the world and that is followed by many public order operators (all guilty for omissing the office act for not denouncing a law-breaking?) and by them often (look at the services' report and other documents) noticed just as not-illegal action.
Netstrike - perfect metaphore of the real demonstration concept - is a legal way of political and cultural expression. Not only us, as a group, we published a book about it ("Netstrike, no copyright, etc.", Strano Network, AAA Edizioni, 1996), but recently the Netstrike practice was described as an artistic act also by a classical art history book ("Arte e architettura dagli anni 60 ad oggi" by L. Vinca Masini, in "L'arte moderna - il secondo 900" by G. C. Argan, Edizione Sansoni per la scuola, Firenze, 2001). And so let's say sincerely that if somebody is thinking to repress it during the G8 event, this will be the sign that in the Net no more political and cultural access is allowed to people opposing the present state of things, and that it will be necessary to find other ways to express any eventual disagreement.
As far as the netstrike is a way of public representation for the political disagreement, performed by a mass of people who do not act differently than using absolutely legal communication features such as irc chat channels and surfing the web, they are making visible a social desease, a mediatic mass communication that the other part is invited to consider seriously even if the netstrike effect is simbolic and purely temporary.
As sTRANO nETWORK - communication workgroup which has invented this political practice - we've always been convinced of the necessity of being on a political and public discussion plan: this month, for instance, we are displaying our argumentations in a ShaKe publisher book and in the "Quaderni di Sociologia" magazine and during these years we've talked not only with "parts of the movement", but also with institutions and private groups at different levels always and however searching and experimenting new instruments to break down social and communication walls. And we want to go on this way without Damocle's swords on our heads nor on people which agrees with our ideals.
The Net - as Real Life does - doesn't need any more crackdown or bizarre laws against the freedom, but it needs inputs to criticate and improve the current state of things. It's becoming a matter of survival for people (in those countries where Internet is unknown) and for ideas (into the yet technologized world), the more we're going on.
Communication workgroup sTRANO nETWORK ~ http://strano.net
Legal answers by Barbara Gualtieri and Claudio Tistarelli:
On the 21st of the current month another G8 is going to have place in Genoa; subjects as globalization, poor countries slavery and politics faced to solve such problems are increasing the tension at every meeting. The problems approached are in fact so much important that anybody can even oppose them. The last ones have also been noticed for the increasing of fight between officers (protecting government chiefs and their becoming larger spaces) and demonstrants against a world-normalized system by the big western govs (even with all the contraddictions they have). In this violence explosion the aim of politicians and police on a side, and "Seattle people" on the other, was mostly directed to seek peace and non-violent manifestations. In this situation are being judged illegal some behaviours which allowed, to non-governative organizations and associations, to make sensible the public opinion and make possible certains boycott campaigns. We are talking about netstrike, the example of pacific online demonstration more famous. It consists in inviting people to partecipate to the protest by accessing on a certain date and time, the website you want to demonstrate against. Famous examples can be reported: France 1995, against the nuclear experiments about ten institutional websites were targeted; in 1996 a protest for Silvia Baraldini to be freed, the target was whitehouse.gov; and Fast, an american section of Amnesty International that obtained the freedom for a kurd tortured prisoner from the turk prisons by using the netstrike. According to Mr. Girolamo De Rada's opinion (Internet News, Tecniche Nuove, n. 7, July 2001) such behaviours should be punished as in art 617 quater, with the penalty from six months up to 4 years. Mr. De Rada maybe takes literally the law, without connecting it to what we define its ratio. The juridical object which the law tries to cover is in fact based on secretness of the communications relative to computer and/or telecommunications system. It doesn't point out to obfuscate and forbid protest forms absolutely legal and pacific which have even a limited effect in space and time. The same can be said about art. 635 bis c. p.: even in this case the law points out to repress computer criminals (and not pacifical protests); in fact the norm has solved the problem of so-called software sabotages, not punishable by article 635 c.p. for the definition of "incorporal entities" of computer data, not part of the concept of "things" of the upcalled law. This reason, and sure not for the netstrike, justifies the need for a new incriminating law. Art. 420 moreover, with the penalty of three up to eight years should point out to prevent from interruptions, even partial, of a computer system, but when done with consciousness and volountee acts the action made to damage or destroy computerized and telecommunication systems of public services. But those who choose this protest form doesn't want neither to destroy nor damage anything.
Netstrike has often been leaded to an unsuccess; this because its promoters trie to reach another goal: to recall the media and public opinion on the causes which are generating the protest. The goal is to talk about the reasons behind the protest.
At last and to close we have to underline the principle of current legacy in penal right, that obliges the judge to stay close to the strict diction of the incriminating law, without standing in interpretation for analogy, to avoid that the citizen is caught into bigger responsability than the citizen itself, for the principle in article 1 of the Penal Code would be explicitally recalled by the new incriminating law. The penalty to be applied in a situation that misses it, cannot be found using the interpretation by analogy... in the opposite case the law interpreter would become a law-maker with a strong negative mark, both on the sureness principle and on the practical influence of the penal laws involved in such interpretative operation that would be pointed out to join, with judge's help, the behaviour of the person who was active in breaking the law (or active in acting a way considered outlaw..) to a penalty that is not subject of any specific law. No penal law today claims the netstrike being outlaw;... no judge's interpretation today has explained one existant penal law as it can include the netstrike... None of the above mentioned laws could be reasonably pointed against the netstrike practice as even De Radaper would understand.
Avv. Barbara Gualtieri Dott. Claudio Tistarelli
What is a netstrike?
The Netstrike (or more properly 'digital manifestation') is a way of protest on the Net that consist of inviting a large amount of people who has an internet connection and, of course, users who has browsers to point their modems against a specific URL at a defined time and to continue to request web pages from this site continuesly, since they do "sit in" a web site till it is no more readable almost for the period the manifestation lasts.
A bandwidth squat similar to a physical protest that occupies a street till it is not accessible to others.
The basic idea is that an individual action, considered legal in the Net by every point of view, if it's made by a lot of users in the same time and on a common address can suspend an internet service.
Welcome to the art of mobilitation on the Net portal
here you can publish your digital manifestation's cohordinates and you can find technical suggestions about how to make your elettronic mobilitation. The important thing is that this manifestration is inspired by the freedom, justice and brotherhood well known principles
here you can NOT find inspirations to understand the reasons of your fighting or to find a clue about how to get your enemies. In case you didn't clear your ideas yet about similar subjects or you would like to discuss or to dig inside the ideas written in this pages, we suggest you to join the debate in the mailing-list cyber-rights
Apache warriors painted themselves of - white red yellow and black - to go to the battlefield
white to find immediately their enemies, black to hide from them until the facing time, red to put their enemies in fear and at the end the last color, yellow that should give power to solve the battle and destroy the enemy
in these pages you can learn how to paint yourselves of electrical red
For communications : info@netstrike.it
- Netstrike - how to partecipate?
- Netstrike - how to organize it?
- Legal Vademecum
- Netstrikes made till now (in italian only)
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