Category Archives: Hacktivism

8 BiT VoMiT’s 1° Birthday Party!

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1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY \ CYBERFEMINIST BLAST \  9TH OF MARCH in Berlin!

8 BiT VoMiT is a series of New Media art and music events founded by Graphic designer, DJ and artist Olya Lev­is­tova and Social Media and Pro­mo­tion enthu­si­ast Tanja Korobka. It has been cre­ated by Lon­don Chip Swarm with a mis­sion to grow chip­tune scene.

Lose your­self in explo­sive elec­tronic beats brought to you by Mind­pi­rates, 8bit Vomit, Chip swarm and DIY Church with a gath­er­ing of DJs and live acts from all over Europe. Dance your heart away and free your soul in a mix of indus­trial, noisy and loud sounds with visu­als by NZNZ, Gab­ifront, and Wario.

Meet the crea­tures of tomor­row to have a night of future fun with: COMPANY FUCK (AU / DE), MIDI MAN, Del_F64.0 & Zus­tand D. (DE), BEN BUTLER AND MOUSEPAD, SANTISIMA VIRGEN MARIA, DR. NEXUS and EYE, DJ OLIO (EE), DJ MICHAEL ANISER (noisekölln/epitaph). VIDEOGAMEZONE BY Qubodup (Joyride­labs).

Free mix­tapes, can­dyfloss, deco, and more. Sup­ported by http://www.sexclusivitaeten.de/ and MINd­PI­rates

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The Pirate Bay Leaves Sweden

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The Pirate Bay will no longer be hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party, due to mount­ing legal pres­sure from a domes­tic anti-piracy group rep­re­sent­ing the enter­tain­ment indus­try. Accord­ing to Tor­rent­F­reak, the file-sharing site will now be hosted with sup­port from the pirate par­ties in Nor­way and Spain, where it may find more favor­able legal environments.

In Octo­ber, the Pirate Bay relo­cated its oper­a­tions to the cloud as part of an effort to evade police raids and the loca­tion of its head­quar­ters remains unknown, though it has con­tin­ued to use web host­ing ser­vices pro­vided by the Swedish Pirate Party. Ear­lier this month, how­ever, the Pirate Party was threat­ened with a law­suit from Sweden’s Rights Alliance, which rep­re­sents the movie and music indus­tries. The Rights Alliance gave the pirates until Feb­ru­ary 26th to cut ties with the Pirate Bay, forc­ing the site to come up with a backup plan.

Ear­lier today, the Pirate Bay finally cut ties with its Swedish allies, and shifted its web host­ing ser­vices to Nor­way and Spain. “TPB did of course have lots of backup tran­sit lined up for ages. This is how­ever the first time we are going to show two at the same time,” The Pirate Bay’s Winona told Tor­rent­F­reak. “It will be inter­est­ing to see who is now blamed for host­ing TPB. In the end, maybe the anti-interneterians will under­stand that they can’t win a fight when they have the peo­ple against them.”

The organization’s choice of relo­ca­tion was likely informed by legal prece­dent in each coun­try. In 2010, enter­tain­ment indus­try groups failed to force a Nor­we­gian ISP to block the Pirate Bay, while Span­ish courts have thus far been reluc­tant to take action against file-sharing sites, on the grounds that link­ing to other plat­forms is not a valid basis for copy­right liability.


Watch TPB AFK

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It’s the day before the trial starts. Fredrik packs a com­puter into a rusty old Volvo. Along with his Pirate Bay co-founders, he faces $13 mil­lion in dam­age claims to Hol­ly­wood in a copy­right infringe­ment case.

Fredrik is on his way to install a new com­puter in the secret server hall. This is where the world’s largest file shar­ing site is hidden.

When the hacker prodigy Got­tfrid, the inter­net activist Peter and the net­work nerd Fredrik are found guilty, they are con­fronted with the real­ity of life offline – away from keyboard.

But deep down in dark data cen­tres, clan­des­tine com­put­ers qui­etly con­tinue to dupli­cate files.


TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard, Worldwide Premiere On Friday 8th

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Two years in the mak­ing, TPB AFK is a doc­u­men­tary about three com­puter addicts who rev­o­lu­tion­ized the world of media dis­tri­b­u­tion with their hobby home­page. How did Tiamo, a beer crazy hard­ware fanatic, Brokep a tree hug­ging eco activist and Anakata, a para­noid cyber lib­er­tar­ian, get the White House to threaten the Swedish gov­ern­ment with trade sanc­tions? TPB AFK explores what Hollywood’s most hated pirates go through on a per­sonal level.

It’s the day before the trial starts. Fredrik packs a com­puter into a rusty old Volvo. Along with his Pirate Bay co-founders, he faces $13 mil­lion in dam­age claims to Hol­ly­wood in a copy­right infringe­ment case. Fredrik is on his way to install a new com­puter in the secret server hall. This is where the world’s largest file shar­ing site is hidden.

When the hacker prodigy Got­tfrid, the inter­net activist Peter and the net­work nerd Fredrik are found guilty, they are con­fronted with the real­ity of life offline – away from key­board. But deep down in dark data cen­tres, clan­des­tine com­put­ers qui­etly con­tinue to dupli­cate files.

‘As much as I am cel­e­brat­ing the upcom­ing release of the film, it is a time of mixed emo­tions for me. When I started film­ing this project in 2008 I had no idea the launch of the film would sync with my main char­ac­ters’ prison sen­tences. They gave me access to their pri­vate lives but won’t be able to share the pre­miere with me.

Anakata is cur­rently serv­ing his prison sen­tence and Peter and Fredrik are wanted. The trial against TPB is proof that the issue around copy­right has not been solved. I hope their story will re-spark the con­ver­sa­tion around civil rights in the dig­i­tal age – beyond the so called Con­tent indus­tries. Let’s work together to find fair solu­tions to both keep the inter­net open while pro­tect­ing everyone’s rights in the dig­i­tal age.’

Please join us for the world pre­miere on Fri­day 8th and share the film as much as you can!


Camover: Anti-Surveillance Real Life Gaming

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Ger­man dis­si­dents are tak­ing gam­i­fi­ca­tion and apply­ing it to activism in order to protest the rise of sur­veil­lance tech­nol­ogy in the coun­try. Camover 2013 is a com­pe­ti­tion unfold­ing across the coun­try, in which teams attempt to destroy as many CCTV cam­eras as pos­si­ble. Bonus scores are given to the teams that dis­play the most cre­ativ­ity in destruc­tion. In the video invi­ta­tion below you can see ski-masked “play­ers”  tear­ing the cam­eras down with ropes, smash­ing them out with ham­mers, and black­ing them out with bil­low­ing clouds of spray paint. Teams are encour­aged to upload their con­quests to the Camover web­site.

Tthe Ger­man debate about the use of sur­veil­lance in pub­lic spaces has come to the fore in recent years. While CCTV cam­eras have been in use in the coun­try since the mid–1960s, last year’s Bonn bomb scare and a pub­lic mid­day mur­der in bustling Alexan­der­platz lead the country’s Inte­rior Min­is­ter to call for bring­ing the cam­eras out of the train sta­tions and onto the street. The Min­istry claims they have been shown to reduce crime by as much as 20 per­cent, although not all reports on the cam­eras’ effec­tive­ness as a deter­rent have been favorable.

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The moral and legal con­cerns asso­ci­ated with the will­ful destruc­tion of prop­erty in the real-world make this much more than a “game,” and the cre­ators admit that it’s a seri­ous mat­ter. Camover’s anony­mous founder: “although we call it a game, we are quite seri­ous about it: our aim is to destroy as many cam­eras as pos­si­ble and to have an influ­ence on video sur­veil­lance in our cities.”

Camover ends on Feb­ru­ary 16th, three days before the start of the Euro­pean Police Con­gress.


Help Stop Extradition For Richard O’Dwyer

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Richard O’Dwyer is a 24 year old British stu­dent at Sheffield Hal­lam Uni­ver­sity in the UK. He is fac­ing extra­di­tion to the USA and up to ten years in prison, for cre­at­ing a web­site – TVShack.net – which linked (sim­i­lar to a search-engine) to places to watch TV and movies online.

O’Dwyer is not a US cit­i­zen, he’s lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US. Amer­ica is try­ing to pros­e­cute a UK cit­i­zen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil.

The inter­net as a whole must not tol­er­ate cen­sor­ship in response to mere alle­ga­tions of copy­right infringe­ment. As cit­i­zens we must stand up for our rights online.

When oper­at­ing his site, Richard O’Dwyer always did his best to play by the rules: on the few occa­sions he received requests to remove con­tent from copy­right hold­ers, he com­plied. His site hosted links, not copy­righted con­tent, and these were sub­mit­ted by users.

Copy­right is an impor­tant insti­tu­tion, serv­ing a ben­e­fi­cial moral and eco­nomic pur­pose. But that does not mean that copy­right can or should be unlim­ited. It does not mean that we should aban­don time-honoured moral and legal prin­ci­ples to allow end­less encroach­ments on our civil lib­er­ties in the inter­ests of the moguls of Hollywood.

Richard O’Dwyer is the human face of the bat­tle between the con­tent indus­try and the inter­ests of the gen­eral pub­lic. Ear­lier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the pub­lic won its first big vic­tory. This could be our second.

This is why I am peti­tion­ing the UK’s Home Sec­re­tary Theresa May to stop the extra­di­tion of Richard O’Dwyer. I hope you will join me.

- Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder


Pirate Bay Moves to The Cloud, Becomes Police-Proof

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Pop­u­lar file-sharing site The Pirate Bay bills itself as “the world’s most resilient” site of its kind. As a top facil­i­ta­tor of down­load­ing around the planet, The Pirate Bay has, since its incep­tion in 2003, taken pains to con­ceal the loca­tion of its servers from the authorities.

Now, accord­ing to TorrentFreak.com, TPB has headed for “the cloud” — all its servers will now be vir­tu­ally hosted, with­out the need for any per­sist­ing phys­i­cal server locations.

“Mov­ing to the cloud lets [The Pirate Bay] move from coun­try to coun­try, cross­ing bor­ders seam­lessly with­out down­time. All the servers don’t even have to be hosted with the same provider, or even on the same con­ti­nent,” The Pirate Bay told Tor­rent­F­reak. “If the police decide to raid us again there are no servers to take,” the site said, explain­ing that host­ing con­tent vir­tu­ally leaves lit­tle to be taken in a raid.

The Pirate Bay was raided once before in 2006 in Swe­den (where the site orig­i­nates from). Police took all the site’s servers at the time, but it was still back online and more pop­u­lar than ever within three days. Accord­ing to Tor­rent Freak, the site’s move to the cloud may have been prompted by rumors that another police raid was immi­nent in Swe­den. The pow­er­ful Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica (MPAA) have long pres­sured author­i­ties to crack­down on the site, which, since mov­ing to the cloud, boasts the epi­thet “the galaxy’s most resilient bit tor­rent site.”

For Pirate Bay users the move to the cloud doesn’t change much though. If any­thing, they will notice sig­nif­i­cantly less downtime.


WE ARE LEGION: The Story of the Hacktivists

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Fox News calls them ter­ror­ists, but when they’re really only out to take down child porn sites, white suprema­cists, and Sci­en­tol­o­gists it’s hard to see them that way. Anony­mous has been the fly in the oint­ment for plenty of pos­si­bly evil groups for the past 10 or so years. But who are they? Where did they come from? What are they really out there for?

Brian Knap­pen­berger set out to answer some of these ques­tions, and even gets a few of the mem­bers of the noto­ri­ously secre­tive activist group to talk on screen. Through inter­views with peo­ple who have worked with them in the past and even a few cur­rent mem­bers. I kind of wish that Knap­pen­berger had been able to get more inter­views with mem­bers of the groups that were in Anony­mous’ cross-hairs, but I guess it’s pretty hard to get time with peo­ple who know that they’re in the wrong.

We Are Legion does more, though, than tell us the story of this par­tic­u­lar hack­tivist group and its tar­gets. It shows us how activism is still alive and well and, best of all, that it still works. It needs to be gone about in dif­fer­ent ways from the past, but it’s still viable and there are still mil­lions of peo­ple who are will­ing to be a part of the move­ment. Against all odds, this movie is one really emo­tional doc­u­men­tary if only because it shows the true power of num­bers that you never knew were there.

You can “watch” the film here.


Hackitat: Political Hacking, World Wide

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This film will crash land in the mid­dle of the con­flict cur­rently tak­ing place between those who want to keep tech­nol­ogy and the Inter­net free and those who want to con­trol it.

Around the world there is a net­work of hack­er­spaces that explore, hack and cre­ate new ways of express­ing them­selves with tech­nol­ogy. Hack­er­spaces that by some are seen as a threat to our dig­i­tal society.

What is it that dri­ves these peo­ple? What are their pur­pose and their rea­sons for what they do? How do they live their lives? These are some of the ques­tions we will seek to answer with this movie as we meet hack­ers and visit their hackerspaces.

On the 28th of Novem­ber 2009 Malmö’s hack­er­space Forskn­ingsavdel­nin­gen was raided by masked riot police.Armed with batons and pep­per spay they stormed the social cen­ter where the hack­er­space housed. Among the police­men were peo­ple spe­cial­iz­ing in IT.

One of the peo­ple detained was a hacker named mackt. With a back­ground in the Pirate Bay, for him the raid was yet another proof of society’s mis­trust and lack of under­stand­ing of hacker culture.

After the inci­dent he wanted to do some­thing about the dis­torted image of hack­ers. He con­tacted the film col­lec­tive RåFILM in Malmö and the idea was born to make a doc­u­men­tary that explains the polit­i­cal aspects of hacker cul­ture beyond the sim­pli­fi­ca­tions and preconceptions.

The film will take them out on a long trip to the famous and infa­mous hack­ers and activists around the world, hack­ers that express them­selves artis­ti­cally and polit­i­cally through tech­nol­ogy. What are their moti­va­tions? What are the pol­i­tics and activism hacker cul­ture has shaped out? How does this impact our world? The film will fea­ture unique encoun­ters with peo­ple that usu­ally elude the pub­lic. It will crash land in the mid­dle of the con­flict cur­rently tak­ing place between those who want to keep the tech­nol­ogy and the Inter­net free and those who want to con­trol it.

The film col­lec­tive RåFILM has been work­ing with com­mu­nity based films, polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries and exper­i­men­tal shorts for over 12 years. They always spread their films free on the web and work to bring films into the pub­lic space.