Vaticano.org: The First Internet Coup

«And I just realized that nothing is what it seems»

Madonna

2000 is the year of Jubilee. Since 1300, for the Catholic Church, Jubilee is a period of grace connected with the remission of sins. A period a little bit longer than one year that starts with the Pope opening the Saint Door of the Vatican and ends with its closure.

The night of the 10th December 1998 begins the action that will go down in history as The First Internet Coup. Over 24 hours, a commando takes posses of the official online organ of information of the Vatican State, or the Holy See. The commando buys the domain name "Vaticano.org" hosted by a Canadian server, where a huge website esthetically identical to the official one (Vatican.va) has already been created.

An editorial network is formed and works 24-7 with precise instructions: copy as many texts and images as possible from the official website, modify them slightly and publish them in the spoof one. Traps must be all over but without being easily recognizable: the online occupation of the Vatican State shall go on as long as possible. The "retouch" of the holy texts involves dozens of people all over Europe.

The biggest part of visitors doesn't know that the Vatican, being legally a state, owns its own national domain name extension ".va", and therefore digits the more familiar ".org" one. Like the Pope, 0100101110101101.ORG has decided to open the Holy doors of the Net to pilgrims from the whole world: from the moment in which Vaticano.org is opened, a huge stream of visitors pours into the fake website.

The search engines start crawling the contents of the mirror. Unaware visitors spend dozens of hours reading modified texts, images and listening to "retouched" music pieces. In the trap texts one can find anything: "heretic" proclamations, invented words, unpardonable errors and songs by teeny-bopper-bands. «Quite a big stir - writes Sofia Basso, journalist of Il Nuovo - was caused by the declaration in favor of abortion, free sex and drug legalization, all added between the lines of papal encyclicals, accurately quoted». Nobody suspects. The domain name and the "graphical context" guarantee the authority of the contents.

From the website is also possible to address letters to all the members of the ecclesiastic system, Pope included. The editorial team, that counts also an expert in theology, works full time trying to answer all the mail: «They face the biggest theological questions, - tells Mateusz Birkut, 0100101110101101.ORG spokesman - retouching the Church opinion on topical issues and hijacking pilgrims in the most remote places. The Pope absolves any sinner via email: it's a Free Spirit Jubilee».

The website continues its escalation in the biggest search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Altavista (the Net's very Hit Parade), reaching soon the Top Ten of the first page of request with keywords like "Vatican", "Holy See", "Osservatore Romano" (the official Vaticano newspaper), "Giovanni Paolo", "religion", "Pope" and "encyclical".

Cells of the commando have the work to keep the press, relations with the Vatican and legal issues under control. «The Vatican itself - reports the press agency Zenit - has been taken by surprise by the developments. The office responsible for the Vatican's media affairs registered the name www.vatican.va in 1996, even though it had no plans to launch its own site at the time. Archbishop John Foley, the head of the media office, says: «I thought that by registering the name www.vatican.va we had every angle covered. But, unfortunately, that is not the case». Franco, member of the commando, comments: «The more they relay on media, the more they are vulnerable».

The company that created the official website of the Holy See tries in any way to put an end to the Coup, avoiding making the issue public. The spoof website resides officially in Canada, so the Holy See decides to buy a server there in order to avoid an international process. The attempt, even if clever, fails.

The Holy See decides therefore to publish in the official website a warning that informs the visitors of the silent Coup, but by now it's too late. Over one year the spoof website has reached more than 4 million hits: «We have stolen the most precious thing in the economy of information: audience! - comments Birkut - In one year of Silent Coup we stole to the Vatican State 200.000 visitors and 50.000 hours of audience».

With the Internet Coup digital forgery is born: a one-year radical performance and the Net will never be the same. Probably the first spoof website, Vaticano.org is nowadays an Internet legend, an action that created a new kind of approach that will lately evolve in dozens of similar actions, such as Zack Exley's www.gwbush.com and RTMark's www.gatt.org.

«For my generation - says Birkut - media have always been there. I have grown in front of a TV screen and I live in the Internet. My desire to manipulate them is more than natural, it's an instinct of self-preservation. The Internet Coup is a spectacle for the Netizens, a hit performance for the masses, online for a year, every day and every night, this is Media Rock 'n' Roll!»