Cyberstrikes Now!

The latest tactic in computer politics is to go on strike.

By El Snatcher
Pigdog Editor

Net users in the UK are trying to organize a kingdom-wide "cyberstrike" for tomorrow (12-13-1998) to protest price gouging by British Telecom. The problem is that local calls aren't free in the UK, they cost a penny a minute, so heavy net users, such as on-line gamers, are getting bilked by the phone company. Everyone in the UK is supposed to stop using the net for a whole day. Imagine that, a whole day.

http://www.ukgn.net/cyberstrike/

UPDATE (12-14-1998) It looks like the UK cyberstrike was a total flop. The URL for the cyberstrike page is dead (don't bother), and there is now no mention of the lame affair anywhere on its parent site, which is one of those wretched Quake-clan gamer sites. Oh well.

Wait, there's more: crypto-advocate, author (of O'Reilly's Writing GNU Emacs Extensions) and crazy Lisp programmer, Bob Glickstein, is calling for pretty much every computer professional in the whole world to go on a one-day strike this coming Monday (12-14-1998) in order to protest the international "Wassenaar Agreement," which was signed on December 3rd by 33 countries, including the United States. The Wassenaar Agreement is sort of like an international ITAR regulation that restricts countries from importing and exporting cryptographic software--which it classifies as an offensive strategic weapon. Until this month, the United States was the only country to have this kind of evil policy.

http://www.zanshin.com/~bobg/