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Copyright © 2002
The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
The
Thing fights to stay online |
Matthew Mirapaul NYT
Saturday, December 28, 2002 |
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NEW YORK In a 1950s horror movie the Thing
was a creature that killed before it was killed. Now in a real-life
drama playing on a computer screen near you, the Thing is an
Internet service provider that is having trouble staying alive. Some
might find this tale equally terrifying. The Thing provides Internet
connections for dozens of New York artists and arts organizations,
and its liberal attitude allows its clients to exhibit online works
that other providers might immediately unplug. As a result the Thing
is struggling to survive online. Its own Internet-connection
provider is planning to disconnect the Thing over problems created
by the Thing's clients. While it may live on, its crisis illustrates
how difficult it can be for Internet artists to find a platform from
which they can push the medium's boundaries.
Wolfgang
Staehle, the Thing's founder and executive director, said the
high-bandwidth pipeline connecting the Thing to the Internet would
be severed on Feb. 28 because its customers had repeatedly violated
the pipeline provider's policies. While the exact abuses are not
known, they probably involve the improper use of corporate
trademarks and generating needless traffic on other sites.
If
Staehle is unable to establish a new pipeline, the 100 Web sites and
200 individual customers, mostly artists, that rely on the Thing for
Internet service could lose their cyberspace homes. In a telephone
interview from the Thing's office in New York City, Staehle said,
"It's not fair that 300 of our clients will suffer from this and I
might be out of business." The Thing's pipeline is currently
supplied by Verio Inc. of Englewood, Colorado, which declines to
comment on its troubles with the Thing. Staehle said that he had not
received official word from Verio, but that the company's lawyers
told the Thing that the service would be cut off because of the
violations.
For some digital artists, these are perilous
times. With the Internet's rise have come increased concerns about
everything from online privacy to digital piracy. Naturally artists
are addressing these matters in Internet-based works. So an online
project about copyright violations inevitably violates some
copyrights, and a work that warns how a computer could be spying on
you could very well be spying on you.
Most Internet service
providers yank such works offline whenever legal challenges are
raised, so open-minded providers like the Thing become an important
alternative. But as Alex Galloway, a New York artist, said, "There
really are no true alternative Internet service providers because
connectivity is still controlled by the telecommunication
companies."
Staehle has learned this the hard way. The
project that overheated Verio's circuits was probably a Web site
created by an online group of political activists called the Yes
Men. The site, at dow-chemical.com, resembled Dow Chemical's
real site, at dow.com. But the contents were phony news releases and
speeches that ridiculed Dow officials for being more interested in
profits than in making reparations for a lethal gas leak at a Union
Carbide plant now owned by Dow in Bhopal, India, in 1984.
The
hoax's supporters said it was a parody. But Dow's lawyers contacted
Verio to complain that the site infringed on its trademarks, among
other sins. Initially it seemed to be just another fracas over
corporate logos and other forms of intellectual property on the
Internet.
What happened next stunned Staehle. The Yes Men
project had been put online by RTMark.com, a politically
active arts group that uses the Web as its base and gets its
Internet service from the Thing. After Dow complained about the fake
Web site, Staehle said, Verio alerted the Thing, where a technician
said he was not authorized to act. Within hours Verio cut off access
to RTMark.com, as well as to all the Thing's Internet
customers. These included innocent victims like Artforum magazine
and the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City. Starting
mid-evening on Dec. 4, the Thing was offline for 16
hours.
Ted Byfield, a Thing board member who teaches a course
at the Parsons School of Design on the social effects of technology,
would not call Verio's action censorship. Instead he said, "They hit
the panic button."
Staehle soon discovered that his virtual
supermarket might be permanently closed, too. When he called Verio
to ask why his entire network had been unplugged instead of the sole
offending site, he said, a Verio lawyer told him that the Thing had
violated its policies repeatedly and that its contract would be
terminated. Verio had shut down part of the Thing once before. In
1999 the online toy retailer eToys.com asked a California
court to stop an online arts group from using its longtime Web
address etoy.com. The Electronic Disturbance Theater, a Thing
client, staged a virtual protest by overloading the retailer's site
with traffic during the holiday season. Verio blocked access to one
of the Thing's computers until the protest site's owners agreed to
take it offline.
These two episodes may give Verio enough
cause to bump the Thing from the Internet. If so, Verio would appear
to be a surprising censor. In January the company earned praise from
Internet-rights supporters when it refused to grant a request by the
Motion Picture Association of America to shut down a Web site
containing DVD-copying software.
Staehle said he had no
knowledge of the Yes Men site. "I am not in the business of policing
my clients," he said. "I am just a carrier."
Although some
Thing customers pursue a radical political agenda, most do not. Even
RTMark.com was included in the Internet-art section of the
2000 Whitney Biennial exhibition. One might assume that museums and
other cultural organizations could provide a safe haven for
challenging works. But they are just as susceptible to legal threats
and technical restrictions. For instance, in May the New Museum of
Contemporary Art in New York was forced to remove a
surveillance-theme artwork from the Internet after its service
provider said it violated its policies.
Staehle said he was
considering several plans that would keep the Thing alive. While he
is confident that he will find another pipeline provider, he said,
he is worried that customers will abandon the Thing during the
transition, financially ruining it.
Copyright © 2002
The International Herald Tribune
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