<nettime> uk mayday website police threaten hosts

["vornman@excite.com" <vornman@excite.com>]

en) UK, Alt.Media: Police threaten Mayday web hosts
>From Viviane Lerner 
Date Sat, 6 Apr 2002 08:12:45 -0500 (EST)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 ________________________________________________
      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
 ________________________________________________

Message received by Statewatch: 28.3.02:

"The MET police have been threatening to raid website hosts who
have tried to host the website for this years "May Day Festival of
Alternatives".

The content of what should be available at www.ourmayday.org.uk is
information about the 2002 "May Day Festival of Alternatives".
Running from 16th April - May 6th, the programme of events mostly
includes music performances, film screenings, and workshops on a
variety of issues and diy skill sharing, as well as ideas for
protests on 1 May itself.

The website should have 'gone live' last month, however at least 3
different website hosts who agreed to host the site have been
quickly approached by police, when the domain name
'ourmayday.org.uk' has been pointed at their servers.

MET Police have either contacted the hosts by phone or in person,
demanding to know all of the personal details of the people behind
the 'ourmayday' website. The MET Police have also told the hosts
they must remove the site (or not to host it) or be faced with a
police raid during which their web servers would be seized. The
Police have not said under what legislation they are making these
demands and threats. As a result of the police threats the
webhosts have so far declined to host the website.

Recently the website was temporarily hosted on a German website,
but soon after the whole server which also hosts many other
websites 'went down' and has not been restored. At this time it is
not known if this is connected to British police activity. Appeals
have now been made for other servers to host the website.

NB: Text on the website and on May Day leaflets says:

"This Mayday we are responding to the frequently asked question
'What are you for? What do you actually want?' We aim to show our
goals of creating a society based on solidarity, autonomy and
co-operation - in practice. We want to show that there is a future
beyond capitalism, wage-labour and the state;"

"The Festival will consist of around 10 days of community-based
events aiming at celebration, subversion and DIY liberation; and
to demonstrate the diversity of our movement, with the intention
of building long-range sustained alternatives."

"The Mayday Festival of Alternatives is inspired by a month of
dissident art/culture events in France, held last year in response
to the irrelevance and media saturation of the General Election
2001."

Planned workshops throughout the Festival of Alternatives include:

*Allotments *Wildlife garden projects *Asylum *Biodiversity and
food security *Clothes making *Desktop publishing *Feminist
History *Film Showings *Flamenco *Gender *GM monoculture *Shiatsu
*Journalism *Sweatshop labour *Nuclear issues *Climate Change
*Social Centres *Squatting *Plumbing *Tree climbing *What is
Anarchism? *Yoga

NB Recent public meetings about the Festival have been subject to
police surveillance with people attending being filmed and
photographed."
----------------------





------------------------------------------------


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net