[New-imc] regarding indymedia.ro

[AIC 99]

Hello!

I passed on (to the indymedia-ro collective) that the issue of the
indymedia.ro domain had come up on the lists. Since i am the only person
in the collective who is subscribed to the new-imc list i am now fwding a
longer, more explanatory email about the domain situation from another
collective member.

thanks everyone
aic/tulpje


................msg for new imc..................

from joanne richardson <subsol at mi2.hr>

greetings anna, shayne, new imcers

i am another member of the indymedia-ro group and since i am not
subscribed to new-imc i am asking aic to forward this message as there are
a couple of things i would like to say in response.

(1) a long time ago i wrote a message to this list asking for advice about
the problems we were having with the neofascist group noua dreapta (the
new right) and their associated website altermedia in romania;
specifically the question was about whether we should moderate the
newswire because we were expecting them to completely hijack the space. if
i remember correctly, the replies we got were that this was too drastic a
step, that we were overestimating the danger from them, that we should
take it easy and relax, and that if we decided to moderate the newswire
before rather than after the posts we would still be beautiful but we
wouldnt really be an imc. in retrospect it seems that we were not over-
but underestimating the problem.

(2) the reply we got from noua dreapta was that imc romania had no right
to be morally outraged that our domain was stolen or hijacked, since
altermedia romania were only following the example of our "comrades" at
imc lille who had bought the altermedia france domain as an attempt to
sabotage them. when we learned about this, we planned to send a letter of
protest to imc lille to express our lack of solidarity with their action,
and to explain how it could potentially hurt other imcs through a domino
effect of retribution. since we are not yet approved as a new imc, we
decided our letter to imc lille would be more effective if it were sent
after we were part of the network. maybe as long as we are talking about
advice, it would be a good idea to talk to old imcs about the ethics of
hijacking the domains of fascist websites. but that would be a topic for
another list.

(3) part of the reason we chose not to challenge the purchase of the
domain by the neofascists was that this is not an isolated case, we have
had many unpleasant experiences with altermedia, and there already seems
to be an international feud between indymedia and altermedia, and we dont
want to be part of it. altermedia is launching one or another provocations
every couple of weeks, and since they thrive on attention, even in
negative form as a desire to have enemies to have a sense of self-worth,
we have decided the best course of action is to ignore them. the only
answer we plan to give them is an article which will appear when the
indymedia romania site is publicly launched that states clearly that we
wish to have no relation at all with altermedia, and that the indymedia.ro
domain was bought by them as an act of sabotage.

(4) a .ro domain does not come under the jurisdiction of DNS. if we wanted
to challenge the domain by appealing to the equivalent of DNS in romania,
we should prove that indymedia is a registered international organization
and that we have legal claims to the indymedia trademark or brandname as
one of the national branches.

anna, i'm guessing you came across the information from a post by
aactivist collective on the alter-ee list (he is not on the indymedia list
and has not been active in the production of the site and knows about the
situation with altermedia only second-handedly). in my opinion his message
(which has unfortunately been spread to other lists and translated for
some imc sites - i found out about it from someone from imc belgrade) is a
mischaracterization, especially the claim that there is now a confusion
for people between altermedia and indymedia romania. i'm curious which
people he means - because the imc-romania.tk is a temporary domain and
workspace which has not been publicly announced by us, we still havent
officially applied for becoming part of the network, we dont yet have the
romania.indymedia.org domain, and the site found at the .tk domain
(actually this points to the romania subdomain of rogueimc.org) is still
under construction. altermedia has also not made any public announcements
using the indymedia.ro domain. so at the moment the only people who knew
about the altermedia/indymedia situation were those on the indymedia
romania list and some people who stumbled upon the indymedia.ro domain by
accident.

j