Hacktivism

From Infoshop OpenWiki

...on the Internet, the code is the law.
-- Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School professor

Hacktivism is the writing of code, or otherwise manipulating bits, to promote political ideology. Taking Lessig's message to heart, hacktivism believes that proper use of code will have leveraged effects similar to regular activism (or civil disobedience). Fewer people can write code, but code affects more people.

Terms:

• D.O.S. is a hacking term for Denial Of Service- which is basicly a virtual molitov cocktail - thousands of connections are forced upon the victim and will crash the server.

• Defaced - Having the home page hacked.

Tidbits:

• The George Bush site was "DOSED" (DOS) during the election, Defaced and crashed by hackers.

• Freenet is a prime example of translating political thought (anyone should be able to speak) into code.

[edit] See also

• Citizen lab
• Crypto-anarchism
• E-democracy
• Electronic civil disobedience
• Free Software Foundation
• Free software movement
• GNU project
• Linux
• Open Source Government
• Open source movement
• Richard Stallman

[edit] External links

• Hacktivismo a CDC group that promotes privacy and access to information as basic human rights
• Hacktivism in the Culture Jammers Encyclopedia
• Hack This Site! Hacktivist training ground
• What is Hacktivism?
• Jinx.com
• Astalavista.com