Internet resistance

Because the internet is now a world-wide phenomenon, it has come to be seen by some groups as a tool for performing resistant, politically motivated acts. The aims of this article are to briefly outline the history of using the internet as a tool and technique for resistance, point the reader to key examples of this phenomenon, and list a substantial bibliography of internet sites and scholarly work for further reading. Differences in naming and terminology (internet resistance vs. internet terrorism; hacktivism vs. hacking, for example) will also be discussed.

ee also

Electronic Civil DisobedienceInternet VigilantisimE-democracy

The Internet as a Site of Resistance

What makes the internet especially conducive to carrying out the aims of a resistant group? As technology grows and our dependence on it increases, the internet not only reveals itself as a web of connection between geographically diverse constituents, but as a tense fiber that holds a community together, much like a cable that supports a bridge. As scholar Diana Taylor found in her involvement with an online-protest targeting the visiting professorship of ex-president of the Banco Central of Argentina Domingo Cavallo to the NYU Stern School of Business in 2003, even the threat of crashing or simply slowing down the school's website prompted investigation by the secret service and pleas from the university's administrators to curtail the protest by dumping the protesters' messages intended for the business school's dean into an outside box. [Taylor, Diana. "Virtual Disturbance." The Drama Review 47, 2 (T178), Summer 2003. p. 140-141.] From this example we see that resistant tactics dispersed by means of the internet also can threaten to disrupt the use of the internet itself, which is in itself a means of protest.

Kinds of internet resistance

Online Protest can take many forms. Recently, bloggers supporting the people of Burma (Mayanmar) refrained from blogging an agreed day to instead post "Free Burma" banners on their sites in order to increase awareness of the political situation in this part of the world. But online protest can have more of a "direct action" feel. In a well-known example, the Electronic Disturbance Theatre [See the site "Electronic Civil Disobedience" for links to the work of Electronic Disturbance Theatre: http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html [http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html] ] joined forces with the Zapatista movement to create the Zapatista Tribal Port Scan (ZTPS), a software program designed to mount an attack on any website (such are the Mexican Military) by sending thousands of messages through ports open to the cyber network. Because an online protest can include thousands or hundreds of thousands of participants, the protest will be repeatedly inscribed on the system log. Protesters feel that the fact that this protest is enacted in a publicly accessible space increases its importance, as the internet lends a place of free exchange while the everyday reality of the protester may be markedly different. [Lane, Jill. "Digital Zapatistas." The Drama Review 47, 2 (T178), Summer 2003. p. 129-139.]

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