Independent Media Center

Aims

According to the umbrella homepage, "Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage." It aims to be an alternative to government and corporate media, and seeks to facilitate people being able to publish their media as directly as possible.

History

The origins of Indymedia can be traced to the global justice protest Carnival Against Capitalism, which took place in over forty countries on June 18, 1999. Activists had networked globally using the internet, and had seen its publishing potential. Events could be reported as they happened, unmediated and without the need for the traditional news outlets. Plans came together for an Independent Media Centre to cover the upcoming Seattle WTO protests in November. The open publishing software used by the centre was developed from that used to report the carnival in Sydney.

In late November 1999, the first Indymedia project was ready to cover the protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle, Washington. It acted as an alternative news source publishing up-to-the-minute reports on the protest days. Additionally it produced a newspaper and five documentaries.

After Seattle the idea and network spread rapidly. By 2002, there were 89 Indymedia websites in 31 countries (including Palestine), growing to over 150 by January 2006, not all of them currently active. The number of active centres grew from 142, in 2004, to 175 in 2010.^:426

By 2014 the network had declined significantly, with the number of active sites down to 68.^:426 A number of reasons for the decline have been put forward. In an article published by the journal Convergence Eva Giraud summarised some of the different arguments that had been made by academics and activists, which included informal hierarchy, bureaucracy, security issues including IP address logging, lack of regional engagement, lack of class politics, increase in web 2.0 social media use, website underdevelopment, decline in volunteers and decline in the global justice movement.

Alternative Bristol pointed to security reasons for the decline. It stated that since server seizures Indymedia UK has been used less and less with on average only one new posting per week. It added activists are moving to alternative media content providers and more secure methods since the Snowden leaks.

United Kingdom

In 2011, the UK national site saw a conflict in which direction it should take. One side wanted the site to remain the same, another group wanted it to become an aggregator for the regional centers.

In February 2013, Ceasefire magazine noted a decline in the use of Nottingham Indymedia, stating that activist use of commercial social media had increased.

In 2014, the Bristol site was archived and closed after police server seizures.

Seizure of servers by the FBI 2004

On October 7, 2004, the FBI took possession of several server hard drives used by a number of IMCs and hosted by US-based Rackspace Managed Hosting. The servers in question were located in the United Kingdom and managed by the British arm of Rackspace, but some 20 mainly European IMC websites were affected, and several unrelated websites were affected, including the website of a Linux distribution. No reasons were given at first by the FBI and Rackspace for the seizure, in particular IMC was not informed. Rackspace claimed that it was banned from giving further information about the incident. Some, but not all, of the legal documents relating to the confiscation of the servers were unsealed by a Texas district court in August 2005, following legal action by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The documents revealed that the only action requested by the government was to surrender server log files.

A statement by Rackspace stated that the company had been forced to comply with a court order under the procedures laid out by the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which governs international police co-operation on "international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering". The investigation that led to the court order was said to have arisen outside of the U.S. Rackspace stated that they were prohibited on giving further detail. Agence France-Presse reported FBI spokesman Joe Parris, who said the incident was not an FBI operation, but that the subpoena had been issued at the request of the Italian and the Swiss governments. Again, no further details on specific allegations were given. UK involvement was denied in an answer given to a parliamentary question posed by Richard Allan, Liberal Democrat MP.

Indymedia pointed out that they were not contacted by the FBI and that no specific information was released on the reasons for seizing the servers. Indymedia also sees the incident in the context of "numerous attacks on independent media by the US Federal Government", including a subpoena to obtain IP logs from Indymedia at the occasion of the Republican National Conference, the shut-down of several community radio stations in the US by the FCC, and a request by the FBI to remove a post on Nantes IMC containing a photograph of alleged undercover Swiss police.

The move was condemned by the International Federation of Journalists, who stated that "The way this has been done smacks more of intimidation of legitimate journalistic inquiry than crime-busting" and called for an investigation. Criticism was also voiced by European civil liberties organisation Statewatch and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). Mathew Honan commented in Salon that "This kind of thing doesn’t happen to Wolf Blitzer". EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl compared the case with Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service.

In Italy, the federal prosecutor of Bologna Marina Plazzi confirmed that an investigation against Indymedia had been opened because of suspected "support of terrorism", in the context of Italian troops in the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. The investigation was triggered after 17 members of the coalition government belonging to the right-wing Alleanza Nazionale, including Alessandra Mussolini, demanded that Indymedia be shut down. A senior party member and government official had announced the co-operation with US authorities, and party spokesman Mario Landolfi welcomed the FBI's seizure of the Indymedia servers. Left-wing Italian politicians denounced the move and called for an investigation.

Bristol server seizure 2005

Servers in the UK was seized by police in June 2005. An anonymous post on the Bristol Indymedia server, came to police attention for suggesting an "action" against a freight train carrying new cars as part of a protest against cars and climate change in the run up to that year's Gleneagles G8 summit. The police claimed that the poster broke the law by "incitement to criminal damage", and sought access logs from the server operators. Despite being warned by lawyers that the servers were "journalistic equipment" and subject to special laws, the police proceeded with the seizure and a member of the Bristol Indymedia group was arrested. Indymedia was supported in this matter by the National Union of Journalists, Liberty and Privacy International, along with others. This incident ended several months later with no charges being brought by the police and the equipment returned.

Prior to the original server being returned, Bristol Indymedia was donated a replacement server by local IT co-operative, Bristol Wireless.

Bristol server seizure 2014

In August 2014, Bristol Indymedia's servers were seized by police after arsonists used the site to claim responsibility for a fire at firearms training centre.

United States

On August 15, 2000, the Los Angeles Police Department temporarily shut down the satellite uplink and production studio of the Los Angeles Independent Media Center on its first night of Democratic National Convention coverage, claiming explosives were in a van in the adjacent parking lot.

Subpoena for IP addresses

On January 30, 2009, one of the system administrators of the server that hosts indymedia.us received a grand jury subpoena from the Southern District of Indiana federal court. The subpoena asked the administrator to provide all "IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information" for every visitor to the site on June 25, 2008. The subpoena also included a gag order that stated that the recipient is "not to disclose the existence of this request unless authorized by the Assistant U.S. Attorney." The administrator of indymedia.us could not have provided the information because Indymedia sites generally do not keep IP address logs. The Electronic Frontier Foundation determined that there was no legal basis for the gag order, and that the subpoena request "violated the SCA's restrictions on what types of data the government could obtain using a subpoena." Under Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to news media must have the authorization of the attorney general. According to a CBS News blog, the subpoena of indymedia.us was never submitted to the Attorney General for review. On February 25, 2009, a United States Attorney sent a letter to an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation stating that the subpoena had been withdrawn.

Europe

In July, 2001 at the 27th G8 summit in Genoa, Italian police assaulted Indymedia journalists at the Armando Diaz School where Indymedia had set up a temporary office and radio station. Twenty-nine police officers were indicted for beating people, planting evidence and wrongful arrest during the night-time raid. Thirteen were convicted.

On June 1, 2003, Indymedia journalist Guy Smallman was seriously injured by a police grenade in Geneva. He was covering protests against the G8 summit in nearby Evian for Indymedia and Image Sans Frontière.

Brad Will shooting

On October 27, 2006, New York–based journalist and indymedia volunteer Bradley Roland Will was killed along with two Mexican protesters in the city of Oaxaca. People had been demonstrating in the city since May as part of an uprising prompted by a teachers strike. Lizbeth Cana, attorney general of Oaxaca, claimed the conflict was caused by the protesters and that the gunmen who engaged them were upset residents from the area. The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, however, claimed the men may have been local police. Reporters Without Borders condemned the actions of the Mexican government in allowing the accused to go free. Protesters also allege that the men were police and not local residents. Associated Press alleged that the protesters also had guns, describing the conflict as a "shootout".

In April 2008, in Brazil, IMC and (posthumously) Brad Will received the Medalha Chico Mendes de Resistência (Chico Mendes Resistance Medal in Portuguese) from the Brazilian humanitarian group Tortura Nunca Mais (No more torture in Portuguese) for their contributions to human rights and a more fair society.

Technology

The Active software that was used as the basis for the first Indymedia centers' websites was written for Active Syndey. It went live in January 1999 featuring open publishing, calendars, events and contacts. In March, around one hundred Sydney organisations were listed. The Active software consisted of a number scripts and used the LAMP software stack.

In June 1999, the software's news feed feature was used to published stories, pictures and videos from the Carnival Against Capitalism. The Active software was then further development by an international collective of activists that included personnel from Active Sydney and Free Speech TV. It was readied to be used for the Seattle Indymedia center set up to cover the WTO protests that November.

In 2001, Matthew Arnison, one of the original authors of Active compared open publishing to libre software.

The original Active software has been forked a number of times. Other Indymedia content management systems have been written from the ground up. By 2004, Mir, active-sf and dadaIMC were the most widely adopted software solutions. Hyperactive was used by Demark, London and Nottingham centers.

Some centers use general purpose content management systems such as Drupal used by Bolivia and Quebec Indymedia centers.

Notable custom Indymedia content management systems include Oscailt used by Ireland indymedia, version 3.6 was released in March 2016.

Distribution

Indymedia collectives distribute print, audio, photo, and video media. They run open publishing websites which allow anyone to upload news articles. The content of an Indymedia collectives is determined by its participants, both the users who post content, and members of the local collective who administer the site. Centres worldwide are run autonomously, however they all provide copyleft content. This rule means content on Indymedia sites can be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes.

Streamed Indymedia content was shown on Free Speech TV in 2004.

Indymedia websites publish in a number of languages, including English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, French, Russian, Arabic and Hebrew.

Content and focus

The origins of Indymedia centres themselves came out of protests against the concentrated ownership and perceived biases in corporate media reporting. The first Indymedia node, attached as it was to the Seattle anti-corporate globalization protests, was seen by activists as an alternative news source to that of the corporate media, which they accused of only showing violence and confrontation, and portraying all protesters negatively.

Reports between 1999 and 2001 tended to focus on up-to-the-minute coverage of protests, from local demonstrations to summits where anti-globalization movement protests were occurring.. In 2007, protest coverage was still published.

Indymedia run a global radio project which aggregates audio RSS feeds from around the world.

Organizational structure

Indymedia is formed of local collectives. They are run autonomously, but common rules include openness, inclusiveness and diversity. Editorial policies, locally chosen by any Indymedia collectives often involve removing articles which are believed to promote racism, sexism, hate speech, and homophobia. A clearly stated editorial policy is expected to be available on collectives' websites.

Views on Israel and Jews

In a 2002 op-ed, alter-globalisation activist Naomi Klein criticised Indymedia for exposing treachery, including 9/11 involvement with the September 11 attacks and posting excerpts from the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In the same year, the Swiss edition of Indymedia was accused of so-called "anti-Semitism" by Aktion Kinder des Holocaust, which unsuccessfully sued them for publishing a Carlos Latuff cartoon of a Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto saying "I am Palestinian," though this was criticized by IMC as an attempt to stifle criticism of Israel in Switzerland.

Google temporarily stopped including some IMCs in Google News searches due to the use of the term "zionazi". Marissa Mayer, at the time the product manager of Google News, explained the removal by describing the term as a "degrading, hateful slur" (in her view) and refused to index the Bay Area IMC because it had appeared there. While SF Bay Area Indymedia agreed that it "could be considered hate speech", they considered this a double standard due to Google News indexing articles using racist and defamatory language against Arabs and Muslims, such as the term "Islamofascism".