UKIMC - Sheffield - Indymedia

New Email Lists and Wiki for UK Indymedia

UK Indymedia Features | 08-06-2011 20:25 | Indymedia | Sheffield

Two of the key tools that Indymedia activists use for communication and collaboration are email lists and wiki pages. UK Indymedia activists have made extensive use of lists hosted by the global Indymedia list server and of the global Indymedia wiki over the last decade. But at the end of May 2011 key lists were shutdown without agreement and wiki accounts deleted.

In response to this situation, new email lists have been set up for people who wish to contact the site admins or to be involved in discussions about features and moderation. There is also a new wiki site for UK Indymedia related documents. In addition there is now a new Users list for users of this site to raise matters which are not covered by the Moderation, Features or Tech lists.

Links: lists.indymedia.org.uk | wiki.indymedia.org.uk

Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair 2011

Indymedia Sheffield | 17-05-2011 14:10 | Indymedia | Other Press | Sheffield

Sheffield's second annual anarchist book fair will be held Saturday 21st May from 10:00 - 18:00 @ Bank Street Arts, 32-40 Bank Street (A much brighter venue than last year!). There will be meetings and presentations throughout the day as well as some film screenings (a new feature for this year). There is also a a social/fund raiser in the evening 8:00 til 2:00, @ the Redhouse, 168 Solly Street.

Sheffield Indymedia will be screening the LibDem Conference protest video over lunch and also hosting an open discussion, with the Mayday Collective, from 5-6pm, about what is happening with UK Indymedia. Come along and have your say about the future of the site! See also the report and audio from the 2010 Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair.

Also the Sheffield Temporary Autonomous Arts event is on now in Sheffield, till Sunday and is being held at Unit 3, Bowdon Street, S1 4JP. It should be great, see the report of last years event.

Links: Sheffield Bookfair Website

Autonomy for the UK

Sheffield Indymedia | 09-05-2011 11:53 | Indymedia | Sheffield

On 1st May 2011 the UK Indymedia Network forked into two autonomous projects, running two different websites, UK Indymedia and Be The Media. Also, a snapshot of the UK Indymedia site as it existed on the date of the the fork was created as an archive.

There was a consensus in the UK Indymedia Network that the project needed to fork, so that Indymedia members with different views could all work on developments they were happy with rather than come into constant conflict. An agreement was made in December to implement the fork on May 1st but the agreement broke down at the eleventh hour. Mayday believed that part of the agreement was that their collective was to have globally recognised Independent Media Centre status at the time of the fork. Be The Media had interpreted this differently and did not see it this way. The consensus that had been thrashed some 4 months before had now snapped and activists, being activists, took action. Be The Media started implementing the changes to the site shortly after midnight on May 1st. Mayday saw what was happening, considered the blocks to have been ignored [1] and felt that if this proceeded it would have in effect shut down the UK Newswire. After several hours of discussion and consideration they agreed they couldn't let it proceed like this and so, in the early hours of May 1st, sleepless techies migrated the entire web site to a new server, thus effecting the fork on the agreed date but not in the way originally planned.

Articles: I'm glad Indymedia UK is still here! | What's up with UK Indymedia? | Ode to IMC UK: keep it going.... | Britain's Left Defeats Itself Again | IMC UK Shut Down #IMCUKshutdown

Features: The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork | Big changes are coming to Indymedia UK | The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia

Elsewhere: SchNEWS: Indymedia: From the Rubble of Double Trouble

The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork

Mayday Indymedia | 02-05-2011 22:56 | Indymedia | Birmingham | Sheffield

On May 1st 2011, there was an attempt by BeTheMedia to disrupt the Indymedia UK site. They do not have consensus to do this, so the Mayday Collective took direct action to secure the site.

Features: Autonomy for the UK | The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia | Big changes are coming to Indymedia UK

Elsewhere: SchNEWS: Indymedia: From the Rubble of Double Trouble

The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia

Sheffield Indymedia | 29-04-2011 01:14 | Indymedia | Sheffield

UPDATE: The attempted shutdown took place, see archive.indymedia.org.uk, it was announced by IMC London and has been critiqued, but the lists don't appear to have been shutdown yet. Scotland Indymedia blocked the shutdown for 3 weeks (until they can discuss it face to face).

Some people involved with UK Indymedia have been talking about shutting down the UK IMC site for years [1], for a variety of reasons; an openly declared disillusionment with the original model of open publishing and wanting to move to pre-moderated newswires which don't allow comments on articles [2], a dislike of the political content that is carried on the UK site [3]; a desire to see the traffic, which the UK site gets, redirected to regional IMC sites [4] and perhaps other motivations. Those wanting the site shutdown have also blocked improvements being made to the UK Indymedia site [5].

However the activists who have been maintaining the UK IMC site are still committed to running a UK-wide Indymedia open newswire and are not prepared to see the UK Indymedia site shutdown. They believe that the UK Indymedia newswire provides a valuable service for articles and comments and it should be maintained. These activists are also committed to running UK Indymedia in a transparent and open manner and in the spirit of the initial Independent Media Centre. Prior to the UK Indymedia Network meeting in Bradford in December 2010 this group of IMC UK admins applied to the global New IMC process as an autonomous collective with a wish to continue running the UK Indymedia site. Clearly the UK Indymedia site isn't a New IMC, it's been going for a decade (the early IMC UK story is covered in the BeTheMedia article about the impending shutdown), the application was made to make it clear that there was a group of activists who were running and wanted to continue running, the IMC UK site, but with autonomy from the activists running the other Indymedia sites in the UK. The activists running the other Indymedia sites in the UK wanted to take the indymedia.org.uk domain away from the UK Indymedia site and point it to the BeTheMedia site (at the time it was all.indymedia.org.uk, it has subsequently been renamed).

Articles: I'm glad Indymedia UK is still here! | What's up with UK Indymedia? | Ode to IMC UK: keep it going.... | Britain's Left Defeats Itself Again | IMC UK Shut Down #IMCUKshutdown

Features: The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork

Elsewhere: SchNEWS: Indymedia: From the Rubble of Double Trouble

Gateway 303: Police Disinformation on UK Indymedia

In the wake of the outing of 4 undercover police infiltrators into the UK activist scene, SchNews, have broken a story about police posts to Indymedia. For over two years suspected police articles and comments have been tracked by filters that are triggered by matching IP addresses, the first comment tracked in this manner dates from August 2008 and the last from January 2011. The full lists of gateway 202 and 303 posts has now been published so activists can do their own analysis on the police posts. A feature article about the abuse has also been published by Birmingham Indymedia, this feature article, first started in in December 2009, has been the subject of a huge amount of internal discussion within UK Indymedia and has been one of the reasons behind the decision to fork the project. Sheffield Indymedia supports the use of anti-abuse features to track and remove disinformation from the site and long argued for the feature article exposing the state abuse to be published.

Articles: Full list of Gateway 303 and 202 posts to IMC UK | Advocating Domestic Extremism - Cops on Indymedia - An Exposé | INTER-NETCU: Government Agency Caught Infiltrating Activist Media Outlet | State infiltration and attempted disruption of activist websites | UK Police Agent Provocateurs Exposed | Nottingham Indymedia statement on recent events | IMC London Statement on the recent Schnews Article | Bristol Indymedia's position on IP logging

Other Press Coverage: SchNews: INTER-NETCU | SchNews: Gateway Gate: Straight from the Pig's Mouth | Slashdot: UK Authorities Accused of Inciting Illegal Protest

UK Indymedia to Fork on 1st May 2011

Sheffield IMC | 14-12-2010 13:23 | Indymedia | Sheffield | World

At a UK Indymedia Network meeting held in Bradford on 11th December 2010 it was agreed that the UK Indymedia project would fork into two separate projects on or before 1st May 2011 (fork in the sense of a Free Software fork). Many issues and disagreements over the years preceded this decision and it is now hoped that all involved will be able to continue to work on activists media projects without ongoing conflicts. One collective will take over the running of the www.indymedia.org.uk website, with a new name that won't include "UK" and on a new indymedia.org sub-domain, which has yet to be agreed. The other group will continue developing an aggregator site they are working on. The indymedia.org.uk domain will be used to host an archive of the web site which will no longer be updated.

This won't have much direct effect on Sheffield Indymedia, the web site will continue to run as part of the renamed UK Indymedia website. Sheffield Indymedia will remain on sheffield.indymedia.org.uk (and hopefully soon also be available on sheffield.indymedia.org) and it is our hope that the Sheffield Indymedia newswire will be syndicated to the aggregator site.

Northern Indymedia Launches

August 1st 2009 sees the official launch of Northern Indymedia by the alt-media monkeys of IMC Northern England. Having revived the dormant IMC Leeds/Bradford and merged with IMC York, the collective is officially launching their new site as a news resource for all those seeking a better world in the grim north and beyond. 9 Months of hard work are culminating in the public unveiling of the new site at Hyde Park Unity Day in Leeds, where there will be a solar powered "Be the Media" centre provided by the collective. The pitch will also include members of the Climate Camp Yorkshire neighbourhood who are helping to launch "The Great Climate Swoop" on the same day. Full coverage of all the goings on will be put up on the new site:

http://northern-indymedia.org

Hosting Indymedia Servers is Illegal?

This Monday (9 February 2009), Kent Police arrested a man in Sheffield under the Serious Crime Act 2007 in relation to the recent Indymedia server seizure. His home was raided, all computer equipment and related papers taken. He was released after eight hours. The person had neither technical, administrative nor editorial access to the Indymedia UK website. He was only associated to the project by hosting its server.

The arrest took place under Section 44-46 of the Serious Crime Act, which was passed into law on 1st October 2008 to combat serious international crime like drug trafficking, prostitution, money laundering and armed robbery. Sections 44-46 refer to “encouraging or assisting offences”.

Kent police claim that they are after the IP address of the poster of two anonymous comments to a report about a recent animal liberation court case, which included personal details of the Judge. The IP address of the poster is not stored as Indymedia does not log IP addresses. This was acknowledged by British Transport Police in 2005, after the Bristol IMC server seizure.

For the police to arrest the person who happened to sign the contract for server hosting, is sheer intimidation, in light of Indymedia’s openly stated policy of no IP logging.

With the implementation of the EU Data Retention Directive in March 2009, the UK government attempts to turn every internet service provider in the country into part of the law enforcement apparatus. This legislation will provide a legal basis to track, intimidate, harass, and arrest people who are doing valuable and necessary work for social change, for example as peace activists, campaigners for economic and social justice or against police brutality.

The present intimidation of the open publishing alternative news platform Indymedia will have serious implications for anyone running a server in the UK which allows user contributions – blogs, social networking sites, wikis. This is an attempt to close down sites that respect the privacy of their contributors, pure and simple.

CMI Brasil (pt) | donations to imc uk

World Social Forum Bamako

The first Social Forum on African soil took place in January in Bamako, Mali [Photos | Video]. Around 10,000 activists from Africa and Europe mainly discussed issues of global trade justice, migration and neo-colonialism during the four-day get-together. A large-scale demonstration marked the opening the WSF. The Youth Camp and some media activists participated with a soundsystem bus. Slight troubles were caused by clashes between Moroccan and Western Saharian nationalists at the end of the ceremony [Video].

Before this the stadium witnessed the opening talks of Malian associations, remembering the quest of WSF to tackle the poverty in the world and create solidarity among the people.

"We have to talk about why our young people dreams are all about leaving Africa, why do they want to go to Europe and prefer the risk to die?"

Migration related workshops played a major role in the WSF and several statements were published about the pressing issue.

World Social Forum 2006 opens in Bamako, Mali | World Social Forum 2006: Bamako (Mali) | Caracas (Venezuela) | Karachi (Pakistan)

Sheffield - Indymedia

New Email Lists and Wiki for UK Indymedia

Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair 2011

Autonomy for the UK

The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork

The Attempt to Shutdown UK Indymedia

Gateway 303: Police Disinformation on UK Indymedia

UK Indymedia to Fork on 1st May 2011

Northern Indymedia Launches

Hosting Indymedia Servers is Illegal?

World Social Forum Bamako

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