RTMark
Description
RTMark is as an online hub for anti-corporate artists and activists where they can publicly propose culture jamming projects and seek through RTMark both financial and or non-financial support from the public and their peers. As a registered corporation RTMark subverts the "Corporate Shield" protecting US corporations and as such operates outside the laws governing human individuals, and benefits from the much looser laws governing corporations.
The following are a short sample of some of the projects RTMark have supported
The Yes Men
The Yes Men are a group of culture jamming activists who practice what they call "identity correction" by pretending to be powerful people and spokespersons for prominent organizations such as for example The World Trade Organisation or the Dow corporation. They create and maintain fake websites such as http://gatt.org similar to ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations received on their websites to appear at conferences, symposia, and TV shows. more on - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men
Deconstructing Beck
Deconstructing Beck is an album that was produced in 1998 by an anonymous group posing as a sampling record label which to this day call themselves Illegal Art. The album is a compilation of 13 songs created completely from Beck Hansen samples, samples that were not legally approved by Beck's recording label. Illegal Art's actions set off a large scale legal battle between the two record labels and attracted world wide media attention. According to Steven Shaviro, the release of Deconstructing Beck served as a challenge to the music industry since the music artist Beck creates a majority of his music by sampling other artists' original music . more on - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructing_Beck"
The Zapatista Floodnet
The Zapatista Tactical FloodNet is a Java Applet that assists in the execution of virtual sit-ins by automatically reloading the targeted website several times every minute. Additionally, it allows for users to post statements to the site by sending them to the server log.
FloodNet was created by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre members Carmin Karasic and Brett Stalbaum. This activist group executed FloodNet in April and December 1998 on Mexican and American government sites, respectively.
The FloodNet program will only cause desired effect when thousands of users are logged in simultaneously, where all their browsers will automatically reload targeted website and cause desired effect. Desired effect being to cause so much traffic inside the server that any other user attempting to log in will not be able to view the website.
The Barbie Liberation Organization
The Barbie Liberation Organization or BLO gained notoriety in 1993 by switching the voice boxes on talking G.I. Joes and Barbie dolls. The BLO performed “surgery” on 300 dolls and then returned them to the shelves of stores, an action they refer to as “shopgiving.” This action resulted in excited girls opening their new Teen Talk Barbie to hear it say phrases such as “vengeance is mine” and little boys listening to their G.I. Joe say “the beach is the place for summer.”
Many more projects can be found at http://www.rtmark.com/history.html