Abstract
This chapter aims to provide the context within which hacktivism was born and developed and to demonstrate the organic nature of this type of political expression for information-based networked societies. This introductory chapter begins by explaining how the Internet came about and how it revolutionises social relations, politics, and power conflicts. It highlights the rising importance of networks and information for contemporary societies and talks about the birth of hacktivism and its role as an inevitable hybridisation of political activism with hacking in terms of both rationales and tactics. This chapter is a crucial step in familiarising the reader with the landscape within which hacktivism was born, and it develops and creates the necessary framework for the rest of the discussion.
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Notes
- 1.
Various criteria have been used for identifying what is new in the information society, from technological and economic to occupational, spatial, and cultural. Frank Webster (3rd edn, Routledge, London 2006) 8–9.
- 2.
Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (The MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 2000) cited in Suart Biegel, Beyond Our Control?: Confronting the Limits of Our Legal System in the Age of Cyberspace (The MIT Press, London 2003) 33.
- 3.
Examples would be the management of the domain name system by the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which was responsible for setting technological standards and protocols for cyberspace.
- 4.
David Johnson and David Post, ‘Law and Borders-the Rise of Law in Cyberspace’ (1995) 48 Stanford Law Review 1367; David Post, ‘Anarchy, State and the Internet’ (1995) 3 Journal of Online Law, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=943456.
- 5.
Jack L, Goldsmith, ‘Against Cyberanarchy’ (1998) 65/4 The University of Chicago Law Review 1199.
- 6.
Lawrence Lessig, Code v.2.0 (Basic Books, New York 2006); Joel R. Reidenberg, ‘Lex Informatica: The Formulation of Information Policy Rules through Technology’ (1997) 76 Texas Law Review 533.
- 7.
Mark G.E. Kelly, The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault (Routledge, 2010) 37–38.
- 8.
Webster (n 1) 210–211.
- 9.
Michel Foucault, ‘Prison Talk’ in Colin Gordon (ed), Power/Knowledge (Harvester, Brighton 1980) 52.
- 10.
Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance (Autonomedia, New York 1993) 111–112.
- 11.
Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality (Penguin, London 1998).
- 12.
Lawrence Lessig, Code v.2.0 (Basic Books, New York 2006).
- 13.
Ibid. 24; Tim Wu, ‘When Code Isn’t Law’ (2003) 89 Virginia Law Review 103, 104–106.
- 14.
Manuel Castells, ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint’ in Manuel Castells (ed), The Network Society: A Cross Cultural Perspective (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, Cheltenham, 2004) 33.
- 15.
Tiziana Terranova, Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age (Pluto Press, London 2004) 154.
- 16.
Mathias Klang, ‘Disruptive Technology: Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy’ (DPhil Thesis, Goeteborg University 2006) 64.
- 17.
Sandor Vegh, ‘Classifying Forms of Online Activism: The Case of Cyberprotests against the World Bank’ in Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers (eds), Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice (Routledge, London 2003) 83; Alexandra W. Samuel, ‘Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation’ (DPhil Thesis, Harvard University 2004) 26–28.
- 18.
Ibid. Vegh.
- 19.
Dorothy E. Denning, ‘Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: The Internet as a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy’ in Jon Arquila and David Ronfeldt (eds), Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (RAND Corporation 2001).
- 20.
For alternative definitions, see Samuel (n 17) 1–2.
- 21.
Tim Jordan and Paul A. Taylor, Hacktivism and Cyberwars: Rebels with a Cause? (Routledge, London 2004) 5–6.
- 22.
Ibid. 10–12.
- 23.
Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York 1984).
- 24.
The five principles as articulated by Levy are ‘1) All information should be free, 2) mistrust for authority and promotion of decentralization, 3) judgement should be based on hacking skill and not physical, class or other social criteria, 4) the belief that computers can create art and beauty and 5) that they can change life for the better’ (ibid. 40–45).
- 25.
Jordan and Taylor (n 21).
- 26.
For details on the development of the hacker movement and its gradual transition from purely benign programming and ‘pranksterism’ to more criminal activities, see ibid. 9–12.
- 27.
‘[A]s these cultures [openness vs control] came into conflict, real-space law quickly took sides. Law worked ruthlessly to kill a certain kind of online community. The law made the hackers’ behavior a “crime,” and the government took aggressive steps to combat it. A few prominent and well-publicized cases were used to redefine the hackers’ “harmless behavior” into what the law would call “criminal.” The law thus erased any ambiguity about the “good” in hacking.’ Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Books, New York 1999) 194.
- 28.
Tim Jordan, Activism!: Direct Action, Hacktivism and the Future of Society (Reaktion Books, London 2002) 46, 50; Anastasia Kavada, ‘The Internet and Decentralized Architectures’, in Athina Karatzogianni (ed), Cyberconflicts and Global Politics (Routledge, London 2009) 190–191; Jeffrey S. Juris, ‘Networked Social Movements: Global Movements for Global Justice’ in Manuel Castells (ed), The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham 2004) 341.
- 29.
Alain Badiou, Metapolitics (Jason Barker tr, Verso, London 2005).
- 30.
Robert S. Jansen, ‘Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to Populism’ (2011) 29 Sociological Theory 75, 82–83.
- 31.
Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Flamingo, London 2001) 280–283; Terranova (n 15) 17.
- 32.
Terranova (n 15) 17.
- 33.
Juris (n 28) 342; The Reclaim the Streets movement in Britain has held many events, where thousands of people would organise a performance with dancers, jugglers, and other artistic events in main street arteries to protest against ecological destruction; Klein (n 31) 312–314.
- 34.
Jordan and Taylor (n 21) 82.
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Karagiannopoulos, V. (2018). Introduction: The Birth of Cyberspace and the Development of Hacktivism. In: Living With Hacktivism. Palgrave Studies in Cybercrime and Cybersecurity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71758-6_1
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