Virtual sit-in

An online demonstration or a virtual sit-in is a political action form the internet age. By repeatedly calling a particular website by numerous computers and within a specified period, a blockade of the server is intended via the Web address is the question. In a technical success the corresponding site is inaccessible or only slowed down available.

Online demonstrations have the character of a blockade or a Sit -ins. They are addressed as conventional demonstrations against the policies of states, corporations, organizations, etc. They draw the agent Internet and aimed at crippling the website by accessing numerous demonstrators.

Technically, online demonstrations, a certain type of DDoS attacks. For online demonstrations, however, be no other computers without permission - for example in the form of a bot network - operated. In order to gain a technical success, therefore, a large number of participants is required.

History

The first documented action in the framework of this concept took place on 21 December 1995. The group Strano Network organized a Virtual Sit-In on different sides of the French government to protest against the nuclear tests on Mururoa Atoll Pacific. Internet users were encouraged to access these pages for an hour again. This had little effect because the Internet had not yet had the popularity of today and was therefore recorded with little response and participation. Three years later, on 29 January 1998, there was the next direct action on the internet. An hour were blocked by Mexican financial institutions different pages. An Anonymous Digital Coalition had called with the aim to raise awareness in the province of Chiapas to the war between the Mexican army and the EZLN.

The Electronic Disturbance Theater ( EDT) by Ricardo Dominguez had then developed the Zapatista FloodNet tool, a now legendary script that automates time and again invited the attacked websites in order to " flood " the server in question to. In December 1999 EDT was involved in the so-called toywar, etoy a week-long power battle between the toy company eToys and the artist group. The EDT is now regarded as a pioneer of the electronic resistance. Dominguez provides online demonstrations in the tradition of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, calling it "electronic civil disobedience ".

Online demos in Germany

The first online demonstration in Germany took place on June 29, 2000 at 9:15 p.m. to 22:00 clock. As part of the Active Link project, the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, the Internet activist Alvar Freude organized an online protest against the legislation and liability rules regarding hyperlinks. Occasion were mass warnings of the lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth because of links to other websites. The online demo should be the starting point for the creation of an online demonstration platform. The platform continues today as ODEM.org, but took no longer the demonstration format of an online demonstration. Joy spearheaded involved later in the campaigns against the closures of foreign Internet sites in North Rhine -Westphalia and against the Access Impediment Act and the establishment of the Working Group against Internet blocking and censorship, and thus led the objectives of the first online demo by other means on. He did not see virtual sit -ins as a form of protest as legitimate then to when it comes to an online theme and other forms of protest or are difficult to implement.

It is often erroneously as first -line demonstration of an action initiatives Libertad! and no one is illegal under the anti-racist Deportation.Class campaign, which criticized the participation of airlines in state deportations through various forms of action referred to. The organizations called for, on the day of Lufthansa's shareholders' meeting, which was held on 20 June 2001 in Cologne, to block the website of Lufthansa for two hours. The demonstration was registered with the clerk's office in Cologne. When meeting gave to the initiators ' www.lufthansa.com ".

Even before its launch, the demonstration had its first success. The online demo was picked up by many German print and internet media and also had worldwide media attention. In the reporting was also informed about their concerns and raised questions as to the deportation business of Lufthansa. About 13,000 people eventually participating in the online demonstration against Lufthansa. To use it also came a protest software whose source code has now been published. The group's Web site was within the two-hour blockade of a ten-minute world unreachable and difficult or impossible to be called in the rest of time.

Lufthansa placed after the demonstration complaint. During the investigation it came in October 2001 to house searches and seizures in numerous private and business premises of Libertad. In the early summer of 2005 took place at the District Court Frankfurt am Main, a trial of the domain owner of " www.libertad.de " coercion and incitement to crime instead. The accused was acquitted in May 2006 on appeal by the Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The court has found in the court's opinion that an online demonstration "neither the element of violence, nor the threat of appreciable harm " fulfilled.

During the trial of Libertad! was called as a solidarity action to an online demonstration against the expansion of Frankfurt airport on the website of the airport operator Fraport.

Terms of Use

Only in Germany, it came so far to criminal proceedings against online demonstrations. The Frankfurt prosecutor interpreted the online demo against Lufthansa as coercion of Lufthansa customers as well as the Lufthansa itself after a two-day process, the Court considers that followed. Coercion is given both for the use of force and because of the threat of appreciable harm. The verdict was controversial among lawyers. Quite a few see online demonstrations by the fundamental right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly covered. The judgment of the District Court Frankfurt 2005 revision was filed in July. The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main said in May 2006, the initiators of the online demo free and stated that an online demonstration "neither the element of violence, nor the threat of appreciable harm " leg hold ( document number: 1 Ss 319/ 05).

Meanwhile there is the question of whether online demonstrations represent a meeting in the constitutional sense, even a statement from the Federal Government: In reply to a so-called inquiry by the Group of ' The Left ' notes the federal government that " virtual meetings for lack of physicality " no meetings within the meaning of Article 8 of the Basic Law are. Thus, the initiators of this " online demonstrations " not rely on meeting basic right.