A virtual sit-in is a form of

electronic civil disobedience Electronic civil disobedience (ECD; also known as cyber civil disobedience or cyber disobedience) can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobedi ...

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 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 conne ...

(DDOS). During a virtual sit-in, hundreds of

activists Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

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 The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), established in 1997 by performance artist and writer Ricardo Dominguez, is an electronic company of cyber activists, critical theorists, and performance artists. History The Electronic Disturbance Theat ...

) 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.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Virtual Sit-In Politics and technology Civil disobedience Activism by type

Examples

See also

References