infobong.com

Through Weblogsky I've learned of a fairly frightening event in the online world. Because it found some of the content hosted on artist ISP Thing.net, Verio cut off its upstream connection to the Internet, silencing the target, activist site RTMark, as well as MoMA's P.S.1 contemporary art center and other art venues. The infraction? The Yes Men, who also did Gatt.org, created a parody site at dow.org that highlighted Dow Chemical's reluctance to make amends for the deadly chemical spill in Bhopal, India.
DMCA or no DMCA, this event demonstrates some of the troubling aspects of the political economy online. While utopians in the early nineties suggested that anyone with a Web site could get their message online. Server space and bandwidth costs are hurdles even for those on the right side of the digital divide, but now it seems that the buck stops with your backbone provider. If they or someone who can intimidate your backbone provider doesn't like what you have to say, you get taken down. The powers that be already speak loudest online; now it appears they get to pick who gets to speak at all.