Computerized resistance after the big flood

Email Interview with Ricardo Dominguez, a pioneer of Net activism and one of the founders of the Electronic Disturbance Theater

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The Tribal Flood Network family that was programmed by the German hacker Mixter has been in the news over the last few days as one of the tools probably used in the Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) last week against the likes of Yahoo.com, Buy.com, or CNN.com. Many people think that the attacks could have been a protest against the on-going process of the commercialisation of the Internet.

Just a few weeks ago the artist group Etoy celebrated its victory against Etoys and the action taken against the toy seller was definitely a protest against the new commercial powers of the Internet. In the toywar a tool principally working similar to DDoS tools was targeted against the Etoys website, the so-called FloodNet. FloodNet was basically developed by the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) -- a group of activists "managed" by Ricardo Dominguez, Stefan Wray, Carmin Karasic and Brett Stalbaum -- during the Zapatista actions against the Mexican government. Telepolis talked with Ricardo about the differences and similarities between TFN and FloodNet, about the future of EDT (their site went offline after protests by Etoys and other online activists against the use of FloodNet in December) and Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD), and about the mix of real and virtual protests.