<nettime> Re: netstrike.it censored by italian police

[jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org>]

NETSTRIKE.IT CENSORED!!!

Today, august 10th 2001, Genoa magistrature, according to an order of
attorney Francesca Nanni seized the web site http://www.ecn.org/netstrike,
which is also known as http://www.netstrike.it/.  The seizure was
motivated according to law "615 quinques" referring to presumed
computer-related crimes connected with the publishing of the web site.

Netstrike.it is only an informative site on the netstrike practice, which
is a "telematic street parade", consisting in repeated requests to an
online service, like viewing a web page with a browser, which often has
the effect of slowing the response time, when the site is accessed by many
concurrent users.

A netstrike is  much alike the practice of continuously crossing a street
on pedestrian crossings, which causes slowdown of motor veichle traffic.
An online protest practice which has been used for many years by network
activists to denounce violation of human and civil rights by multinational
enterprises, local governments and supernational institutions.

A protest practice which is absolutely legal and has been successfully
used by activista all over the world to express their dissent versus
liberticide or criminal actions and had the effect of focusing pubblic
concern over themes with great social importance like death penality and
nuclear tests, information censorship and antisocial politics on part of
governments and institutions.

The seized site was hosted on www.ecn.org web server, operated by Isole
nella Rete, who provides internet services for about 500 subjects,
including 'centri sociali', magazines, radios and associations from
italian and european antagonist left wing.

As Isole Nella Rete, we consider that this action has no pratical utility
for the magistrate that ordered it, since all information that were
acquired were already in the public domain, as all the site contents has
been there for many months, and considering that usually police censorship
on the net, have the opposite effect from what is desired - removal of
dissident or critic contents - and usually produces the exponential
multiplication of these contents with mirroring of sites that have been
censored, and the veicolation of this information into newsgroups chat
rooms and mailing-lists.

In fact already after a few hours the site is viewable again and a mirror
package is downloadable from these mirror sites:

  - http://italy.indymedia.org/netstrike.it
  - http://italy.indymedia.org/netstrike.tgz
  - http://italy.indymedia.org/netstrike.zip
  - http://www.contrast.org/netstrike
  - http://www.contrast.org/netstrike/netstrike.tgz
  - http://www.contrast.org/netstrike/netstrike.zip
  - http://dyne.org/netstrike
  - http://dyne.org/netstrike.tgz
  - http://dyne.org/netstrike.zip

The only reason we can imagine for this action from Genoa magistrature is
that this futile censorship operation is an intimidating act and a
political provocation, that fits in the climate of repression that is
reigning today in our country versus freedom of information and opinion
and is enforced by limiting the right to criticise, to travel and
comunicate.

A climate of criminalization of any request for change, proposed by civil
society and, in particular, the judicial fury towards non institutional
left wing groups, with the purpose of silencing every indipendent voice,
or anyone expressing political and social dissent - as it happened in
Genoa, with the assault to the Independent Media Center.

In front of all this our only possible answer is:
"You will never close our mouths!"

Ass.Isole nella Rete
http://www.ecn.org
inr@ecn.org

-- 
jrml ..//korova.dyne.org
6EEE 4FB2 2555 7ACD 8496  AB99 E2A2 93B4 6C62 4800

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net