Indy Media London Collective Website closes...

[Treacle Toes]

Time to move on: IMC London signing off

Published: October 13, 2012 14:22 by IMC London | Share
Tagged as: directmedia goodbye hyperactive imc imclondon indymedia london openpublishing
Neighbourhoods: london
Published by group:

Indymedia London
The Indymedia London collective has taken a decision to close.
Collectively we have racked up almost 100 years of involvement with the Indymedia project; from the beginnings of Indymedia in 1999 and the launch of Indymedia UK in 2000 as a manual website and evolution to a content management site, to the creation of local indymedia groups in 2003, and then the launch of the current IMC London website in 2008.
So it is with a sad heart that we bring this latest chapter to an end. Firstly thanks to all the people, friends and comrades who have participated in the project with us over the years, as users, as members of the london collective (over 50 people) and other imc collectives, or as supporters behind the scenes. All of us wish to continue working in a similar terrain and view what comes next as a development from the work that’s already been done. However for us, this Indymedia project is for many reasons no longer the one which we think is tactically useful to put our energy into. There are still many features of the project that we believe to be important and essential, but others which are less so. Below we set out some thoughts on both of these, and some of the challenges and limitations of the Indymedia project over the years.
On a practical note, the open publishing newswire of this website is now closed and the content will be archived, along with selected london related content from the previous different Indymedia UK websites. User logons for the website will no longer work. Our public email lists and wiki pages will also be closed and kept as archives.
We will add to the London Indymedia archive some further reflections and evaluations generated through more than a decade of practice, debate and argument. We also think the function of the London events calendar has been an important one and are interested in thinking about ways of retaining this function in one way or other.
If you wish to contact us or send any feedback on the rest of this farewell message please email us at imc-london-contact@lists.indymedia.org
See you on the streets!
IMC London
xXx

http://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128

 

[Hocus Eye.]

RIP Indymedia.

It is through their site that I found a link to Urban75.

 

[DrRingDing]

Boo and hiss.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

I hope that the international activities of Indymedia are not closing down. They have been most useful in publicising what has been happening in the battle between ordinary people and the agents of capitalism that call themselves governments. Perhaps there have been changes in the use of individual publishing of news via smartphones, but Indymedia surely has a role in putting together the broad and narrow casts on their websites.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

They were a daily read back in the day but the whole media landscape is radically different now, you don't need a tiny group of people providing you content anymore...

 

[andrewdroid]

Was going to post this but got beaten to it
I know how much unappreciated hard work goes into admining and moderating an IMC site and would like to say thanks to all involved you are champions.
It is now unfortunately a common occurrence Austria IMC is closed and Germany is thinking about it. but things move on and the new generation of activists dont wanna put time into projects like that which is a shame as no one will archive facebook twitter and all the rest of the stuff concerning the present dissent.
As they say see you on the streets

 

[BigTom]

Back in 99 indymedia was vital but now between free blogs, twitter and facebook they've been superseded imo. Shame to see it go but I think Twitter is better news aggregator and wordpress at least is better CMS.
What is lost is the anonymity of indymedia, but network23 does that job now, using wordpress.

Still sad to see the London collective shut down though.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

What's also lost is going to actions/protests and seeing camera people with IMC logos providing alternative coverage. Today far too many people think good social media is simply typing stuff up or RTing someone...

 

[ska invita]

I think theres a lot wrong with the way the internet is heading.....havent got time to say more right now

well done all involved anyway

 

[BigTom]

What's also lost is going to actions/protests and seeing camera people with IMC logos providing alternative coverage. Today far too many people think good social media is simply typing stuff up or RTing someone...

Yes that's true, but presumably the people who did this with IMC will continue in a different guise, and hopefully others will come into their place as well. The means for journalism have become so much cheaper and readily available than they were 10-15 years ago and this should open up more space for proper alternative coverage.
Having said that I'm trying to think of people/groups and it's ones like Reel News and Undercurrents who I associate with indymedia anyway.
There's a lot of bloggers who are great for alternative analysis of events, but not so much for reportage. Hadn't thought about that tbf.

 

[editor]

There's been loads of great collectives and concerns who have done great work over the years but I guess changing times and technologies has made them less useful or relevant.

 

[Zoltan K.]

http://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128

Rumor has it that London IMC was run by a RCMP dude with connections in high places, who wrote software for the Tories for six figure sums. It was found out and so RCMP dude ran away. Of course this is total speculation with only a body of circumstantial evidence to support it. I know the Tory stuff is true, it's harder to pin the RCMP thing coz he attended a College where RCMP ran writing courses, and coincidentally at the same time wrote something mostly nicked off Chomsky and posted it to ainfos. Still its fekin weird that a top London digital agency with connections to the Ruling Class would import and employ someone who wrote of armed struggle against global corporatism in glowing heroic terms and in his own name.

RCMP dude also wrote Corporate Spyware a kind of on line focus group ware where Corporations could "drill down" through the data, and Hyperactive the CMS 3 IM sites currently use. When Hyperactive was first launched it was collecting IP data into its data base for the London G20 protests.

Obviously just an error, and coincidence and nothing to see here, so "time to move on"

 

[Hocus Eye.]

UK Indymedia may close down, and if that really happens that will be a sad day. However Indymedia is international. It exists in many countries and enables people to get an international picture of what is being done to us. I first found out about Indymedia from a label on a video of the Seattle protests. I then got on the website and followed that up via the UK Indymedia site. I hope that the people involved with holding Indymedia don't give up. It is a channel for people to publish news of political protest and activities. It acts as a resource, holding the history of these events. This is different to the way Twitter works which is always reporting the new but not recording the past. Twitter doesn't show the context of events.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Irish Indymedia, which was a much better site than its UK cousins, was once by miles the biggest left wing site in the country but is now on life support and has been for quite a while. That particular model is dying everywhere.

 

[ska invita]

Rumor has it that London IMC was run by a RCMP dude with connections in high places, who wrote software for the Tories for six figure sums

RCMP? google says Royal Canadian Mounted Police

 

[DJWrongspeed]

Equally clueless, what's RCMP ?

 

[Arlarse]

There's been loads of great collectives and concerns who have done great work over the years but I guess changing times and technologies has made them less useful or relevant.

I understand what you're saying about newer forms of communication but I don't think that the network of indymedia, the IMC's or whatever you want to call them should be abandoned just now. People were talking about the death of bulletin boards not too long ago, and yet. I see that google took a major wobble yesterday to the point that trading was closed. Nothing is set in concrete and we need to remain flexible and have all our options open...

 

[free spirit]

sad day.

I loved the concept of indymedia, and respected the work that many put into it over the years, and their live reporting of much of the anti-neoliberal globalisation protests around the world was incredible at times.

It's pretty sad that this generation of protestors has chosen to abandon the indymedia format in favour of total reliance on facebook, twitter and the corporate media.

I remember up at the G8 protest campsite the priority we gave to ensuring the indymedia tent was kept powered, even supplying it with a sat truck for guaranteed internet connection, as we say the indymedia reporting as a key part of our defence against police aggression. It was also great to see so many people from around the world using the facilities most of the time to keep the indymedia site updated with live reports.

 

[ska invita]

I understand what you're saying about newer forms of communication but I don't think that the network of indymedia, the IMC's or whatever you want to call them should be abandoned just now. People were talking about the death of bulletin boards not too long ago, and yet. I see that google took a major wobble yesterday to the point that trading was closed. Nothing is set in concrete and we need to remain flexible and have all our options open...

thing is they put in a lot of work and can see how many visits they're getting. The domain is staying up, so no reason why no one could pick it up again in the future...

I would be curious to see some stats on visits for Indymedia UK and London........

 

[ska invita]

It's pretty sad that this generation of protestors has chosen to abandon the indymedia format in favour of total reliance on facebook, twitter and the corporate media.

and its not just protestors who have made this shift - the whole open source mood of the internet is starting to feel like a memory. Maybe like Arlarse says, a few stock crashes might make things better! Facebook has got to have its comeuppance once day in that respect

 

[free spirit]

oh, hold on, is this just london IMC?

tbh I always thought that independent local collectives was likely to result in dilution of the project, not enough people to run both local and national IMC, and the content on both the national and the local IMCs suffering as a result.

I don't know much of the internal politics, but I hope the national IMC survives and maybe could even integrate some local feeds within the main site or something.

The northern IMC is also looking for help / threatening to shut down...

 

[ska invita]

yeah just london - UK is as normal. There was some politics wasnt there between the UK crew and others? I heard the rumours but make a point of forgetting them quickly

 

[ska invita]

FWIW the London website was/is one of the best looking websites I think

 

[ska invita]

I don't know much of the internal politics, but I hope the national IMC survives and maybe could even integrate some local feeds within the main site or something.

that sort of used to happen. I think the UK site could do with a spruce up and that would help a lot

 

[Zoltan K.]

RCMP? google says Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Yeah, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It's a conjecture that IM globally has been the target of a campaign to disrupt it and close it down, some of the same names turn up in a lot of these splits, Oceania, San Fransisco, Belgium, Germany. A lot of IM sites have been closed down by this crew.

It always seems to take a similar form with usually a "majority" liberal (i.e. the softies) being split from a more hard core minority, a divide and rule tactic out of Machiavelli or a Ruling Class tactic. A bit like the way Black Bloc tactics are criticised, it's a way to divide movements. These "divisions" exist, the nefarious know how to exploit them and turn them into splits as I say it's conjecture, but the way in which the UK collectives were split has the hallmarks of a classic divide and rule op. The plausible deniability is that groups on the left are always splitting and fighting amongst themselves, but having observed this at close hand it looks like "social engineering" ruling class style to me.

The authorities got really scared when the original site Portland got more hits than CNN during the WTO protests in 1999, So in a way you'd expect some form of response from the ruling class, so twitter and facebook is one response, both heavily funded by CIA . The main problem with investigating that kind of operation is that they have at their core the idea of Plausible Deniability.

Whatever went on the dude that made this site and won awards for it.

'http:// www.headlondon.com/our-work/webcameron'

Also made this site

'http://london.indymedia.org/'

He's also on record lying about his involvement with the tories, he tried to deny his
own responsibility with a seemingly plausible reason, i.e. the Nuremberg excuse, i.e. I was only following orders, but it turns out the dude is one of the folk giving the orders.

He's abandoned the users of the CMS he created. The Hyperactive project site was being spammed, now it can't be accessed.

 

[ska invita]

Im open minded to your post Zoltan. The amount of infiltration that goes on is shocking.

As i said I thought it was a brilliantly designed website London Indy, so hmmm well yeah...

He's abandoned the users of the CMS he created. The Hyperactive project site was being spammed, now it can't be accessed.

i didnt understand either of these sentences though...

relates to this i guess

RCMP dude also wrote Corporate Spyware a kind of on line focus group ware where Corporations could "drill down" through the data, and Hyperactive the CMS 3 IM sites currently use. When Hyperactive was first launched it was collecting IP data into its data base for the London G20 protests.

Obviously just an error, and coincidence and nothing to see here, so "time to move on"

are you saying London Indymedia site was collecting IP addresses? What is Hyperactive exactly

 

[Zoltan K.]

Im open minded to your post Zoltan. The amount of infiltration that goes on is shocking.

As i said I thought it was a brilliantly designed website London Indy, so hmmm well yeah...


i didnt understand either of these sentences though...

relates to this i guess

are you saying London Indymedia site was collecting IP addresses? What is Hyperactive exactly

Hyperactive is a CMS (content management system). Its built on Ruby on Rails, distributed via git. If you go to the London site and scroll to the bottom there's a link to the Hyperactive project site, which I can't access anymore. Basically the way these sites work is that user content is stored in a data base. The developer of Hyperactive added a rails module called "rail stats", It stored user agent data including IP addresses into the data base. The reason I say it was storing IP addresses is because it said so on the Hyperactive dev site in the blurb about how fab Hyperactive was, it said that the London IM Hyperactive site had had >500,000 "unique hits" a day during the London G20 demos. The uniqueness of each hit could only come from IP addresses stored in the rail stats table of the Hyperactive database. Some steps were taken to stop this happening (what should have happened is that the rail stats module should have been removed, it wasn't), but it was easy to revert and not configure the server properly, so that it could store IPs again.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/06/480350.html?c=on#c269733

It could be done remotely via a "ssh" script, you need server access to do it, but anyone could download the code and set up an IM site and collect IP addresses with the code as reverted above. Not terribly secure.

Yes brilliantly designed as a data mine, I mean what fields do you need for an anonymous news site? The Hyperactive data base definition is about 400 lines of code, it includes things like telephone numbers, the lat/lon of actions and a way of correlating posters to "groups" and actions, of course you don't have to fill in all those fields, but the database is overkill for what's required. All you actually need to store is -The title of the post, an abstract of the post, The content of the post (including vids or pics)- the name of the poster, (plus maybe an e-mail or website), the time posted, plus some space in the database for the comments, there is absolutely no need to store IPs or user agent info in the database. The arguments made about "improvements" were all to do with form over content. Surely it's the content that matters? dunno. All I'm saying is there is a significant smell of fish around the whole IM bust up, not enough to "prove" anything, it is extremely difficult to prove that this dude is a Pisces working for SCALE or whatever, but it's enough that he made webcameron isn't it?

 

[flickerx]

Irish Indymedia, which was a much better site than its UK cousins, was once by miles the biggest left wing site in the country but is now on life support and has been for quite a while.

So true. Indymedia Ireland is shit now, and nobody uses it to publish content, or publicise (pre or post) actions. The comment threads are full of trolls - but also the editorial collective tend to hide anything that doesnt conform to a very narrow left view of what they see as "news", which means your comments on sites like the Irish Times are way more likely to remain up there. Its a disaster and could do with a hiatus or an influx of fresh blood of organisers to try to something new, anything with it. If that doesnt happen it might be time to switch off that life support.

 

[Zoltan K.]

Here's a snip of the Hyperactive data base that defines the rail stats table - line 295 is the User's IP - the rest is User Agent Data

root / db / schema.rb @ 3c4b8fb25a8fcffbc67133cb0a8f40c85e1bd15b

View | Annotate | Download (17 KB)
1# This file is auto-generated from the current state of the database. Instead of editing this file,
2# please use the migrations feature of Active Record to incrementally modify your database, and
3# then regenerate this schema definition.
4#
5# Note that this schema.rb definition is the authoritative source for your database schema. If you need
6# to create the application database on another system, you should be using db:schema:load, not running
7# all the migrations from scratch. The latter is a flawed and unsustainable approach (the more migrations
8# you'll amass, the slower it'll run and the greater likelihood for issues).
9#
10# It's strongly recommended to check this file into your version control system.
11
12ActiveRecord::Schema.defineversion => 20110209082754) do

13
<snip>

294 create_table "rail_stats", :force => true do |t|

295 t.string "remote_ip"

296 t.string "country"

297 t.string "language"

298 t.string "domain"

299 t.string "subdomain"

300 t.string "referer"

301 t.string "resource"

302 t.string "user_agent"

303 t.string "platform"

304 t.string "browser"

305 t.string "version"

306 t.date "created_on"

307 t.string "screen_size"

308 t.string "colors"

309 t.string "java"

310 t.string "java_enabled"

311 t.string "flash"

312 end

313

314 add_index "rail_stats", ["subdomain"], :name => "index_rail_stats_on_subdomain"

<snip>

470

471

end

And here's the code that stored the info in the data base It was this code that was changed to stop UA data being stored, and the code that can be reverted to make it happen again. This was the state of the code during the 2009 G20 demos

module PathTracker
public

def track_path
begin
referer = params['referer'] # env['HTTP_REFERER']
req_uri = params['doc'] # env['REQUEST_URI']

req_uri = request.env['HTTP_REFERER'] if req_uri.nil?

req_uri = get_doc_url(req_uri)

size = params['size']
colors = params['colors']
java = params['java']
je = params['je']
flash = params['flash']

env = request.env.nil? ? {'HTTP_USER_AGENT' => nil, 'HTTP_REFERER' => nil,
'REMOTE_ADDR' => nil, 'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE' => nil, 'REQUEST_URI' => nil} : request.env
br = parse_user_agent(env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])
subdomain = detect_subdomain
domain = get_urls_host(referer)

sniff_keywords(domain, subdomain, referer);

remote_ip = env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] || env['REMOTE_ADDR']

if remote_ip == "127.0.0.1"
country_name = "LOCALHOST"
else
country = Iptoc.find_by_ip_address(remote_ip)
unless country == nil
country_name = country.country_name
else
country_name = "UNKNOWN"
end
end

RailStat.create("remote_ip" => remote_ip,
"country" => country_name,
"language" => determine_lang(env['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']),
"domain" => domain,
"subdomain" => subdomain,
"referer" => referer,
"resource" => req_uri,
"user_agent" => env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],
"platform" => br['platform'],
"browser" => br['browser'],
"version" => br['version'],
"screen_size" => size,
"colors" => colors,
"java" => java,
"java_enabled" => je,
"flash" => flash)
rescue Exception => e
RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.error("Error on path track #{e.backtrace.join('\n')}" )
end
""
end

This is what can be stored permanently on disk using the above code
The IP and other info has been changed for security reasons)

"173" "62.218.127.120" "UNITED KINGDOM" "en-us" "hyp.eco.net" "hyp" " http://hyp.eco.net/groups" "/groups/tossersngroup" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; rv:2.2) Gecko/20100104 Firefox/3.0" "Macintosh" "Firefox" "3.0" "2011-04-02" "1240" "24" "1" "1" "1"

And here's the code that allowed the Hyperactive developers to boast of the 500,000 unique hits

def RailStat.count_hits(*params)

query = "select"
where = ""

if params.include?unique)
query << " count(distinct remote_ip)"
else
query << " count(*)"
end

<snip>
end

It returns a 'unique' =>count of "distinct remote_ip" s from the rail stats table i.e. it sums them to give the "unique hits" stats.

' http://web.archive.org/web/20091122...at.org/projects/hyperactive/wiki/MainFeatures '

Quote
It was used during the G20 meeting in London this past April 2009, serving pages to about 500,000 unique visitors a day.

 

[Zoltan K.]

There's also a campaign wherever this story appears to spread the disinfo that IM is "dead", a thing of the past, "time to move on" etc. Careful what you wish for.