[cafe-sd] [Fwd: [Fwd: [Hackmeeting] [hackerartnews] The first netstrike took place ten years ago]]

[xavi]

Me parece que no os habrá llegado bien...

Recibido de la lista del hackit italiano. Que por cierto se realizará esta semana no la otra, a Napoli, aunque desafortunadamente no podré ir :-(



***

(from Springerin http://www.springerin.at/en/ )


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The first netstrike took place ten years ago




Alessandro Ludovico






You won't find many references to Tommaso Tozzi in international media art 
sources. You won't find him in Wikipedia (yet), nor in MIT-Press books or 
Ars Electronica catalogues. Nevertheless, this Italian artist and theorist 
is the inventor of one of the key online protest tools. Ten years ago he 
conceived and realized the first »netstrike« (network strike) on the 
Internet. It took place during the international protest against the French 
atomic test at the Mururoa Atoll in Polynesia.

This dramatic and insane event generated large opposition all over the 
world, partly owing to the new opportunities made available by the 
Internet, including its real-time communication possibilities. During this 
protest Internet activists had access to many new tools, such as video 
streaming - as was demonstrated by a Greenpeace action in which a video was 
distributed widely within a very short space of time - and the way a huge 
number of petitions could be posted as chain letters on mailing lists and 
sent to private citizens as well. In the late summer of 1995, Tozzi spoke 
publicly in a couple of online forums hosted by the Italian local and 
national network (BBS) about the potential of chain letters as a medium of 
protest. He tried to go a step further than this complicated, indirect (or 
in some nations even unlawful) method of distribution, with the aim of 
establishing a practice that would produce some visible effects. At the 
same time he was concerned with developing something that was ethical and 
deliberate, to avoid the danger of »knee-jerk« reactions as seen in the 
»digital spray« applied in the many »homepage defacement« cases or the 
damage caused by »digital software hammers« used to break into systems to 
destroy the enemy's data. He wanted nevertheless to establish online public 
protest as a inalienable right of the digital citizen, just as the public 
strike had been for decades in the real world. In October 1995 Tozzi 
attended the international »Metaforum II – No Borders« meeting in Budapest. 
He was invited to give a lecture about »Fluctuant interfaces and the right 
to communicate« [<http://www.springerin.at/dyn/#fussnoten>1] with 
particular regard to his action group, »Strano« and its political activity 
in Florence, against the background of the peculiarities of the general 
situation in Italy. After listing the ethical principles of the telematic 
medium, he talked about potential strategies for »protests on the Net«, one 
of them being a specific »virtual strike«.

This was based on the idea that »to boycott a server for a limited period 
of time, it is sufficient to organize a large group of people and ask them 
to flood the server by accessing it all at the same time. The boycott 
should be advertised, made public, and justified.« The first netstrike was 
publicly announced on many mailing lists and by various media (radio, 
newspapers, etc.) starting on December 14. It took place on December 21 
(Tozzi's birthday, as it happens), and scheduled to take place from 6:00 to 
7:00 p.m. (French time). A report posted later on the Nettime mailing list 
[<http://www.springerin.at/dyn/#fussnoten>2] stated that during this hour 
almost all of the websites indicated as »targets« (mostly French government 
websites and the Nuclear Energy Agency) were not accessible due to the 
massive participation of people from all over the world who continuously 
reloaded the respective web pages. After this success, two of the declared 
goals were clearly reached: »The existence of a world-wide movement able to 
counteract world-wide injustice« and »the capacity to develop such a 
movement in a short time«. Tozzi and his Strano Network colleagues also 
assumed that »it could be possible (in future) to construct software 
oriented to the specific goal of putting on an >electronic demonstration<« 
via a web server.

The netstrikes slowly became popular and in mid-February 1996 Tozzi 
promoted another one to support the Chiapas rebellion 
[<http://www.springerin.at/dyn/#fussnoten>3] against the Mexican 
government. The action was organized by the »Italian Coordination of the 
Committees Supporting the Zapatista«, and was intended to show leftist 
national solidarity with the Zapatistas. The netstrike started to be 
considered as a tool and attracted lots of interest from people who wanted 
to organize their own. Due to the rising demand, after a couple of months, 
in spring 1996, Tozzi and the Strano Network collective published »Net 
strike, no copyright, ecc.« (AAA Edizioni), a 145-page book about 
counter-information and the underground perspective of human and social 
aspects on the Internet. The first chapter was called »Net strike starter«. 
It was a long and detailed explanation of how to organize a netstrike, with 
theorical premises, hints and advice gleaned from their practical experience.

In the following years some netstrikes were organized by a few political 
collectives and individuals, mostly Italian. Only two years later (in 1998) 
Ricardo Dominguez triggered a netstrike to support the still ongoing 
struggle in Chiapas. Media attention was much greater than before, owing to 
the newly born dot.com economy. So everybody credited Dominguez as the 
inventor. But that is another story...

P.S. In 2001 the Netstrike.it website was even seized, after a pathetic 
article in a glossy Italian magazine warned about the allegedly high legal 
risks of joining a netstrike. But a massive online mobilization was quickly 
started, and a dozen mirror websites suddenly appeared. The website was 
quickly reopened.







Translation: Timothy Jones



1 
<http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9511/msg00014.html>http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9511/msg00014.html 

2 http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9601/msg00000.html
3
<http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9602/msg00018.html>http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9602/msg00018.html 






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