| 1999
December
1999
"Free Software
For A Free World" - Campaign against excessive
software patenting proposals in the European Union. The campaign was
started by FITUG [DE] and found seven supporting groups in AT and DE.
November
1999
Letter of protest
with VIBE user group against
the renewed ENFOPOL surveillance proposals, this time being imposed
on a national level.
October 1999
Organizing
the first Big Brother
Awards Austria in collaboration with ARGE Daten, Public Netbase, VIBE
User Group and Indigo:Inc. 1000 people attending, live cybercast, advanced
techno party till 6:00 a.m, special guest Simon Davies, enormous media
coverage including BBC World Service. We were sure that, we would do it
again and so it came.
August 1999
Technical coordination
of one of the biggest Linux
Installation Parties ever in Europe. A crowd of 800 people brought
150 machines [from antique 386s to Psions and even sun sparcs]. The installation
work was done by 80 volunteers from the Order of Saint Penguin. The event
was hosted by ORF ON and Siemens.
July 1999
Open Letter
to the members of the Justice Committee in the Austrian Parliament [in
cooperation with euroCAUCE, VIBE user group and others] containing amendments
to an Austrian Telecom Law called "Fernabsatzgesetz" being revised. Our
main proposal - a
ban on unsolicited commercial e-mail - was accepted unanimously by
all five parties and put into law thereafter.
June 1999
Prior to the
European parliament elections quintessenz
helped the conservative party [OEVP] to use their own spam forms onsite
in a useful way, as this practice obviously violated Austrian data protection
laws. A simple script fed OEVP-owned e-mail addresses into their own forms,
OEVP staff and organisations were thus urged via mail to vote for their
own party. Unfortunately the conservative mail-server went down after having
sent and received 12.000 mails during one night.
May 1999
Stop
ENFOPOL-Campaigns in cooperation with Fronteras Electronicas Espana
and other European civil rights groups. After having passed European Parliament
under dubious circumstances ENFOPOL was stalled last minute by the EU-Minister's
Council.
April 1999
quintessenz
was represented on the
panel on surveillance systems at the Computer Freedom, Privacy and
the Global Internet Conference [CFP 99]. Our main issue was of course the
ENFOPOL surveillance plan.
March 1999
Supporting
the GILC-Campaign against Australian
Government Internet Censorship. |
