Really annoyed about something? Want to get your message across, but you don't own a newspaper, radio or television station? You can always buy a can of spray paint and find a local wall.
That sounds simplistic, but the ability of people excluded from media ownership to get across their views is extremely important to the progressive movement. Spray painting, chalk-ups and posters have defied hostile governments, from democratic regimes to military dictatorships.
The emergence of the internet in the past few years represents an extension of existing geography. In the next few years an increasing proportion of information consumption will take place in cyberspace.
What is the equivalent of graffiti on the walls of cyberspace? At present there are quite a few. The simplest method is to place a message on a bulletin board anonymously. Alternatively you could launch a web site without providing any obvious indications of who you are. If you know how to do it, you can also break in to someone else's space and post a message.
In the past the issue has not been a significant one. Today, however, there are many attempts to block out any such messages.
There is an argument that people shouldn't be able to post anonymous information on the internet. Regardless of issues of honesty, responsibility and similar things, there is a simple fact: the ability of people to release information anonymously, including leaking government and corporate information (such as whistleblowers), plays an important part in the flow of information within capitalist society.
Attempts to block anonymous postings include attacks on sites which allow this information to appear. One of the growing areas here is criticism (anonymous and otherwise) of corporate and government policy.
Part of the opposition to this takes place under the guise of the fight against cybersquatting. Originally cybersquatting referred to individuals who registered a known brand (such as Coca Cola) and then asked the company for money in exchange for the name. Because these names were supposed to have no inherent value, any such trade was considered a form of blackmail.
Now the issue moves on, and anyone using the name of a company in their web site is accused of cybersquatting. For example, if a group of workers get together and launch a site called companyXsux.com, and publish criticisms of the employment practices of company X, they may get a letter threatening them with legal action for stealing the company name.
At present this is very hard to police. But as technology improves, it will become much easier to police all activity over the internet.
Another recent trend is for companies to use their firewalls (the devices that block unwanted internet traffic including hackers) to block sites that contain criticisms of the company. (On a larger scale, with the assistance of US corporations, the Chinese government uses its control of access to the internet to block sites critical of Chinese government policy.)
If we have seen anything in the internet it has been its flexibility. In response to these controls a new service has emerged which provides users within companies the ability to get to these sites, by disguising the destination of the web surfer and encoding the content downloaded from the site. One I recently came across is safeWeb (www.safeweb.com).
And so the battle continues. Companies police their workforce. Workers, software writers and free service providers work their way around this. Combined with the recent move of unions to organise internet workers, the class struggle shows its face in cyberspace.
BY GREG HARRIS (<gregharris_greenleft@hotmail.com>)