[Nettime-bold] NO PROTEST NO PROFIT

[snafu <snafu@kyuzz.org>]

Revised version. This is the good one.

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NO PROTEST NO PROFIT
First International Competition of Net.Protest
<<<CALL FOR ENTRIES>>>


Following the recent cases of the Roman Civic Network censorships - 
the Luther Blissett's book "Let the little children..." and
Francesca da Rimini's interview - The Thing Rome and 0100101110101101.ORG
launch the First International Competition of Net.Protest. 

All the e-mails of protest sent to the City Council of Rome at the
following addresses:

Mariella Gramaglia
mailto:m.gramaglia@comune.roma.it
Mauro Biddau
mailto:m.biddau@comune.roma.it
Claudia De Paolis
mailto:cored@comune.roma.it

will be evaluated by an extraordinary international panel composed by
Natalie Bookchin (faculty member at California Institute of the Arts, Los
Angeles), Steve Dietz (Director, New Media Initiatives 
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis), Matthew Fuller (artist and writer,
London), Ricardo Dominguez (artist and Senior Editor of The Thing, New
York).


The Jury have fixed the following criteria of evaluation for the messages
of protest:

Text-only messages are evaluated on the following basis:

a) the coherence with the reasons of the anti-censorship protest.
b) the level of emotional charge.
c) the capacity to sublimate the emotional charge into an artistic form
of writing.


Therefore, messages will be economically estimated in this way:

Argumentative: 0.50 dollars
Scandalized: 1 dollar
Aggressive: 2 dollars
Ironic/Sarcastic: 3 dollars
Paranoid: 4 dollars
Seductive: 5 dollars
Erotic: 6 dollars
Poetic: 7 dollars
Surreal: 8 dollars
Mytho-poetic: 9 dollars
Other: to be estimated
Original Ascii drawings get an extra bonus of 7 dollars.


Attached images, animations, movies and sounds will be evaluated on the
following criteria:

a) Level of coherence or "resonance" with the subject and the
body of the text. 
b) Capacity to drive the imagination of the censors in an uncensored
world.

The value of each of the attachments is fixed between 1 and 5 dollars. A
maximum of 3 attachments per protest email will be evaluated. 

Attached scripts, applets and software will be evaluated on the following
criteria:

a) Conceptual interest of the anti-censorship interface .
b) Formal interest of dynamic anti-censorship pages.

  
Proprietary softwares are excluded from the competition. The value of
original scripts, applets and softwares is estimated between 10 and 100
dollars and will be proportional to the complexity of the code.


WARNING: Any message of protest should not be heavier than 1.5 Mb. This
is NOT an e-mail bombing campaign, but a net.art competition. Each
competitor can apply with only one message. The Thing Rome and
0100101110101101.ORG declines any responsibility for derogatory or
offensive messages, which will be excluded from the competition.

The Deadline for all the Net.Protest is fixed for the 30 of 
October.

All of the messages (including the ones already sent) should be
sent in BCC to 
mailto:PROTEST=PROFIT@0100101110101101.ORG

Info:
The thing Rome: 

Marco Deseriis
mailto:snafu@kyuzz.org
Giuseppe Marano mailto:subjesus@libero.it 


At the end of the competition the Jury will make a total estimation of the e-mails and will establish a final price, as a result of the addition of all the messages. This final price will fix the value of the net.artwork "NO PROTEST NO PROFIT".

On the basis of this estimation, The Thing Rome will make an economical offer to the City of Rome, in order to buy the Inboxes and the Outboxes of Mariella Gramaglia, Mauro Biddau and Claudia De Paolis, in the period included between the 2nd and the 30th of October. An important cultural institution, still covered, will buy the right to use the artwork, for a major exhibition. The exhibition will be considered by no means a collective event, whose success will be divided amongst all the participants.


The money that will come from the exhibition will be re-invested in the next protest. The authors (shareholders) of the artwork, will have the power to decide in which kind of protest to re-invest their money. The power of decision of each author will be proportional to the contribution (the economical value of the protest message) that each of them produced.

In this way, at any new PROTEST, the PROFIT of the protesters will increase, demonstrating that the only way to increase your capital is to fight for it. 

PROTEST! INVEST!


The Thing Rome
http://www.ecn.org/thingnet

0100101110101101.ORG 
http://www.0100101110101101.ORG
 

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Censorship's history:

2 October 2000:

Following the umpteenth denunciation by Father Fortunato di Noto, the priest President of the "Rainbow Association" , whose mission is to hunt pedophiles and satanists on the Internet (he is also known for taking on those pernicious cartoon characters Sailor Moon and the Simpsons), the vicedirector general of the City of Rome, Mariella Gramaglia, decides to obscure the pages of AvanaNet, an historical group of the Roman telematic scene, threatening to denounce it "in civil and criminal courts to have offended the honor of the City of Rome".

The crime that the group committed is to host on its site a book, distributed in all the Italian bookshops called  "Let the little children...", signed with the pseudonym Luther Blissett. 

"Let the little children..." is in fact a counter enquiry on pedophilia and satanism that in 1997 sought to make some clarity in the ubiquitous media hysteria and focused on the risk of a new level of limitations of civil liberties. In the text there isn't the slightest exaltation of any form of violence against minors or adults but, being a serious enquiry, the book contains many citations from clinical studies that take into considerations sexual experiences between minors and adults. In particular the citations quoted by Father Fortunato di Noto has been extracted from a book of psychology "Child and Sex", published by Little Brown and Company, publishing house that is part of the multinational group Time Warner. 

2 October
Namir, an istitutional magazine of culture and philosophy is shut down because of the publication of a provoking letter entitled "i'm a pedophile", written by a deep handicapped man. 

4 October
The group of The Thing Roma realises that an HTML document on their site containing an interview by Ricardo Dominguez with Francesca da Rimini, alias doll yoko, (originally published on The Thing New York in 1996), had been removed. A letter of explanation from Mauro Biddau, member of the Vice Direction General of the City of Roma and webmaster of Rete Civica was received by The Thing on the same day. In this letter Biddau admitted to having removed two images from the HTML document (but in fact he had removed the entire document) because "they were not in line with the rules of agreement between the City of Rome and non-profit associations for the development of the Roman Civic Network". But in reality this accord limits associations to not using the net to transmit material which might be offensive to anyone.

The images in question - that you can see together with the interview (in Italian) at http://www.thing.net/~dollyoko/censored/dollyoko.html (or a slightly different version in English at http://sysx.org/gashgirl/dolliv/doleview.htm) - have been used in "dollspace" , a well known work of internet art, financed by the New Media Fund of the Australia Council, winner of two international prizes, exhibited in numerous festivals and acquired by the University of Westminster. 

Furthermore, the GIF animations in question had been created from original etchings by an artist using a Dutch printing press in 1789, one of the first illustrations of the political/literary works of the Marquis de Sade. Other images from this often reproduced series, also capable of provoking "scandal" and "offence", even if they were created 200 years ago, can be found at 
http://www.opkamer.nl/amea/members/sade.htm

9 October
The Thing Rome re-publish in solidarity with Avana the Luther Blissett's book. The documents are immediately obscured. The City of Rome sends a formal letter to The Thing Rome holding that what is pubblished is "damaging and could be considered offensive for reasons of shamefulness, the communal morals and good social behaviour."  The Thing Rome moves the entire site on http://www.ecn.org/thingnet


9 October
The City of Rome publish on Romacivica a fake Deal between the City and the Associations, which give an unlimited right to the City to obscure the pages of the association at any moment, without any public discussion. The "New Deal" have never been seen or signed by any of the associations which animate the Roman Civic Network.  

11 October
Another association, called The Observatory for the Rights of Communication re-publish on Romacivica in solidarity with Avana the Luther Blissett's book. The documents are immediately obscured.

... continues