You won't find many references to Tommaso Tozzi in international media art sources. You won't find him in Wikipedia (yet), nor in MIT-Press books or Ars Electronica catalogues. Nevertheless, this Italian artist and theorist is the inventor of one of the key online protest tools. Ten years ago he conceived and realized the first »netstrike« (network strike) on the Internet. It took place during the international protest against the French atomic test at the Mururoa Atoll in Polynesia.

This dramatic and insane event generated large opposition all over the world, partly owing to the new opportunities made available by the Internet, including its real-time communication possibilities. During this protest Internet activists had access to many new tools, such as video streaming - as was demonstrated by a Greenpeace action in which a video was distributed widely within a very short space of time - and the way a huge number of petitions could be posted as chain letters on mailing lists and sent to private citizens as well. In the late summer of 1995, Tozzi spoke publicly in a couple of online forums hosted by the Italian local and national network (BBS) about the potential of chain letters as a medium of protest. He tried to go a step further than this complicated, indirect (or in some nations even unlawful) method of distribution, with the aim of establishing a practice that would produce some visible effects. At the same time he was concerned with developing something that was ethical and deliberate, to avoid the danger of »knee-jerk« reactions as seen in the »digital spray« applied in the many »homepage defacement« cases or the damage caused by »digital software hammers« used to break into systems to destroy the enemy's data. He wanted nevertheless to establish online public protest as a inalienable right of the digital citizen, just as the public strike had been for decades in the real world. In October 1995 Tozzi attended the international »Metaforum II – No Borders« meeting in Budapest. He was invited to give a lecture about »Fluctuant interfaces and the right to communicate« ¹ with particular regard to his action group, »Strano« and its political activity in Florence, against the background of the peculiarities of the general situation in Italy. After listing the ethical principles of the telematic medium, he talked about potential strategies for »protests on the Net«, one of them being a specific »virtual strike«.

This was based on the idea that »to boycott a server for a limited period of time, it is sufficient to organize a large group of people and ask them to flood the server by accessing it all at the same time. The boycott should be advertised, made public, and justified.« The first netstrike was publicly announced on many mailing lists and by various media (radio, newspapers, etc.) starting on December 14. It took place on December 21 (Tozzi's birthday, as it happens), and scheduled to take place from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. (French time). A report posted later on the Nettime mailing list ² stated that during this hour almost all of the websites indicated as »targets« (mostly French government websites and the Nuclear Energy Agency) were not accessible due to the massive participation of people from all over the world who continuously reloaded the respective web pages. After this success, two of the declared goals were clearly reached: »The existence of a world-wide movement able to counteract world-wide injustice« and »the capacity to develop such a movement in a short time«. Tozzi and his Strano Network colleagues also assumed that »it could be possible (in future) to construct software oriented to the specific goal of putting on an >electronic demonstration<« via a web server.

The netstrikes slowly became popular and in mid-February 1996 Tozzi promoted another one to support the Chiapas rebellion ³ against the Mexican government. The action was organized by the »Italian Coordination of the Committees Supporting the Zapatista«, and was intended to show leftist national solidarity with the Zapatistas. The netstrike started to be considered as a tool and attracted lots of interest from people who wanted to organize their own. Due to the rising demand, after a couple of months, in spring 1996, Tozzi and the Strano Network collective published »Net strike, no copyright, ecc.« (AAA Edizioni), a 145-page book about counter-information and the underground perspective of human and social aspects on the Internet. The first chapter was called »Net strike starter«. It was a long and detailed explanation of how to organize a netstrike, with theorical premises, hints and advice gleaned from their practical experience.

In the following years some netstrikes were organized by a few political collectives and individuals, mostly Italian. Only two years later (in 1998) Ricardo Dominguez triggered a netstrike to support the still ongoing struggle in Chiapas. Media attention was much greater than before, owing to the newly born dot.com economy. So everybody credited Dominguez as the inventor. But that is another story...

P.S. In 2001 the Netstrike.it website was even seized, after a pathetic article in a glossy Italian magazine warned about the allegedly high legal risks of joining a netstrike. But a massive online mobilization was quickly started, and a dozen mirror websites suddenly appeared. The website was quickly reopened.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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