the electrohippie collective's

The Iraq sit-in help page



Introduction

The theory behind the cyber-sit-in is that thousands of ordinary Internet users can 'picket' as site. They do this by making repeated connections to the server – equivalent to continually pressing the 'reload' button on your web browser – in order to tie up the server with more requests than it can handle.

the electrohippies tools work in two ways. One form is a computer program that people run on their computer at home. The other is a web page that people access with their browsers. Either way, both tools perform this same basic function – making repeated requests to the target sites.

The reason that, for this action, we have picked the official web sites of George W. Bush and Tony Blair is because these two sites will be used to provide 'official' justifications for military action in Iraq. In our view, and the parlance of bush and Blair, these are legitimate targets because they will be used to spread misinformation and half-truths about the action in Iraq.



Using the Web-based Tool

To begin with you are asked to select the connection type. This isn't critical, but if you get it wrong you'll either run out of bandwidth (slowing the reloading rate) or you'll not use as much bandwidth in the action as you have avaiulable.

For most people, you will either select the '56K dialup modem' option (for people who use a fast modem on an ordinary phone line) or the 'cable modem/DSL' option (for those who have broadband). Those who are using old, slow modems should pick the 'less than 56K' option. However, if you are working on a system that has a 'leased line' connection – such as a university, company or cyber cafe – then chose the last option.

When you start the web tool your are first asked to confirm your participation in the online action. This is just so people can't accidentally 'stray' into the action, e.g. via a saearch engine. If you press 'Cancel', the page closes automatically. If you press 'OK', you'll see a window like the one below.





What this is is a series of 'frames', each one holding a copy of a web page on either The Whitehouse or 10 Downing Street websites. The pages in these frames are reloaded at regulr intervals automatically. The rate at which the frames are reload is roughly 20 seconds divided by the number of frames – i.e. no matter how many frames you have, an individual frame is reloaded every 20 seconds.

In the top-right of the window there are some controls – these are shown below:





The 'progress' window tells you how many frames have been reloaded ('reloads'), and which web site is being reloaded in the current frame.

The 'Close' button closes the window, and stops the action tool. Use this when you want to exit the action page.

Finally, the links below open up new pages at the e'hippies Iraq action site, and at this help page.

To be most effective you must leave the action window open for as long as possible. This will depend on your own circumstances – e.g. if you have to pay for every minute that you're online. But if possible leave the action page window up and running for at least an hour, and if possible use the tool more than once a day. If you can do it for longer, or more than one or two hours a day, even better!




Using the Java tool

The Java tool page is quite detailed on how to run the tool. Much of what is said in relation to how the web tools works is also the same for the Java tool. However, you may experience problems where you are using a verison of Windows we haven't tried it out on (WinXP, Win2K, WinNT).

In general, our advice is that if you want a computer that's also good for cyberactivism, and costs much less to install, use Linux.



More...

If you'd like to learn more about online actions, then read the following information produced for other actions by the electrohippie collective: