DURHAM -- Hacktivism was born at the moment techies became political and activists became wired.

if you go Hacktivism: An Interdisciplinary Roundtable * 7 p.m., Thursday * John Hope Franklin Center, Room 240, Duke University, Durham * Free, open to the public. The Hacktivism Web site is: http://www.duke.edu/web/isis/hacktivisim/speakerinfo.html For directions to John Hope Franklin Center: http://www.duke.edu/web/jhfcenter/about/map.html

Hacktivism is when antiwar messages are slapped up on unassuming Web sites, protests are organized in cyberspace, and when watchdogs of big business put their findings online.

And it will be the topic of an academic roundtable discussion at Duke University on Thursday.

The war in Iraq has given rise to online protests -- both pro- and antiwar -- flooding the Internet, pushing hacktivism to the forefront.

"It's an interesting time," said Kenneth Rogerson, research director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism, one of the panel's organizers. "We're hearing a lot about information warfare and cyber warfare. Hacktivism is part of the tools for these kinds of things. These are questions that should come up given the times."

A four-member panel will cover topics such as the legal ramifications of hacktivism and give examples of how it is being used around the world.

Andrew Bichlbaum, an out-of-work teacher in New York, will speak on behalf of the Yes Men, a band of anti-World Trade Organization protesters whose Web site (http://www.gatt.org/ looks just official enough to get them public-speaking invitations. "We've gone around impersonating the WTO at various conferences," Bichlbaum said.

The Yes Men's goal was to undermine the WTO by taking their tenets of trade liberalization to absurd extremes, at one point suggesting from a podium that eating babies would be a good way to control the global population. Finally, at an accountant's convention last May, they announced the WTO would disband.

"We're hacking into the political system," Bichlbaum said. "Hacking doesn't have to be all technology."

Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, said that the United States has a history of making legal changes through civil disobedience. Her presentation will be about the implications of hacktivism on intellectual property law.

Staff writer Christina Dyrness can be reached at 829-4649 or mailto:cdyrness@newsobserver.com

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