Press release, 19 October 2002

Satanism, Paedophilia, Cyber Inquisition and Cultural Terrorism in the amazing story of
The File That Wouldn't Leave
You won't believe it!

 

The 4th March 2002, 0100101110101101.ORG is forced to immediately erase from its server the file containing Luther Blissett's book "Lasciate che i bimbi" ("Let The Children. Paedophilia as a pretext for a witch hunt").

The server hosts the (un)complete archive of the Luther Blissett Project 1994-2000 (http://www.LutherBlissett.net). The imposition comes from the international Internet provider PSInet, with the threat of cutting 0100101110101101.ORG's connectivity. The excuse is that the content of the book is "illegal and defamatory and relating to paedophilia". The named book analyses instead how the creation of emergencies becomes a way to establish more restrictive laws and censorship, both in the real world and on the Internet. The book comes to the conclusion that the paedophilia phenomenon has been amplified and magnified resulting in a repressive crusade towards all individual liberties.

The File That Wouldn't Leave is the story of one of the case of subtle censorship obtained trough the serves Net Abuse Policies, that allows to impose the removal from a website of any material considered defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophile or simply inconvenient. The pyramid-like Internet connectivity system allows any server, by simply sending an email message, to start a chain reaction of removing requests that, threatening to cut the connectivity, starts from the upper level server downwards, to reach any single website that hosts the named material. Whereas no server is supposed to verify the truth of the accusation, any server has the right of imposing the removal to the lower ones.

The File That Wouldn't Leave shows how censorship develops and where it can lead.

 

Commissioned by Kingdom Of Piracy
First presented at Ars Electronica 2002