A virtual sit-in is a form of
electronic civil disobedience deriving its name from the
sit-in
A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
s popular during the
civil rights movement of the 1960s. The virtual sit-in attempts to recreate that same action digitally using a
distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS). During a virtual sit-in, hundreds of
activists attempt to access a target
website
A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...
simultaneously and repetitively. If performed correctly, this will cause the target website to run slowly or even collapse entirely, preventing anyone from accessing it.
Examples
On December 21, 1995, the first world Virtual sit-in, conceived b
Tommaso Tozzi was created by the Florentine grou
against the French government to protest against the nuclear tests in Mururoa and was defined as
"Netstrike"
On Thursday May 1, 1998,
Ricardo Dominguez (co-founder of
Electronic Disturbance Theater) and Stefan Wray held a virtual sit-in in which they decided to attack the
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...
(WEF). They did this to support their particular beliefs against
anti-globalization
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalization movement, is a social movement critical of economic globalization. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist ...
. With over 160,000 people who attended the virtual sit-in for reasons that they could not take to the streets of New York City protest. More than 40,000 also downloaded software which made a
DDOS
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host co ...
attack easier was also recorded.
The attack lasted all of Thursday and Friday night.
See also
*
Electronic civil disobedience
*
Hacktivism
Hacktivism (or hactivism; a portmanteau of ''hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. A form of Internet activism with roots ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Virtual Sit-In
Politics and technology
Civil disobedience
Activism by type