<nettime> vote action

[Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>]

{piggyback on}
just recently there has been one of the first larger e-votes in the
history of net.politics. even if non-profit the company who ran it,
was overwhelmed by the requests. only those with access to the proper
tools (speak voting-bots) had a good chance to get their own id-number
and later the right to put a candidate into the seat.
in the future (speak next election), the decision if you
can vote or can't will depend very much on a number of other
'technical' circumstances. like, having an internet connection at all,
or a social security number, or at least an intact media immunity system,
like perceptional spam filters etc.  voting in times of interactivity,
is something much nearer to gaming, the demographics of consumer
studies, or the gambling at wall street. Pepsi or Coke? Vote now!
in the meanwhile let's switch over to:

http://www.cnn.com/video/burden/2000/10/24/show.rm80.ram

For american patriotic governmentalists the humour ends
where the game gets real. applying e-bay to the voting
system, and merging e-commerce and the emerging e-voting
industry puts e-democracy where it is now: to the brink of
hypercapitalism. democracy for crazy people is a world-wide
health product and comes in a package with the toxic drug itself:
free market and a smile of jimmy carter. even the chinese,
the serbs and soon the north-koreans have to accept the dollar-democracy.
as a european you might be able to buy hitler's 'mein kampf'
from US based e-book-shops, but now US feds want to sue some
austrians for a business plan which targets on the unalienatable
right to vote. what is to be exposed is the double moral of a
multi-billion election industry. at the one side, an online street
theater which left the art-tank to do 'serious' business, at the
other, a political theatre which left the area of real-politics to
get engaged into perception management. Enter the Broadband
SuperHighway! (no matter if you enter from the right or left)
In Europe many kinds of bribaries are historically part of political
culture and don't even have to be called lobbyism. it's just
"friendship" between powerful men. like Kohl and Jelzin, or Kohl
and some nameless rich guys. but the people in germany are eager
to forgive him - the charts for Kohl are already going up, thanks
to a perverse media logic which gives the greatest rewards to the
greatest sinner. an interesting side issue was that one of the first
measures to stop the activist-entrepreneurs from vote-auction was to
force the domain-name administrator to take their adress off the net.
This is the ICANN way of control, from the whois database to
the individual, if we can't erase the content, you might still
take away my domain name or adress under which people 'know' my
site. but this strategy is short-sighted of course.
the future is now. politics enter the stock market and vice versa.
so, let's bet, how many people actually vote in the USA? and how
many people have a car, a fridge, or a computer? don't forget to
use the message board first! public intellectuals and media theorists first.
{piggyback off}

from: net_CALLBOY <play@ubermorgen.com>
subject: for y/eyes! press:: vote-auction.com
ccontent-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

[...]


  + CHECK OUT the press.section:

  http://www.vote-auction.com/news.htm

  CNN, wirednews, WIRED, USA Today, ABC, NBC, FOX, Slate,
  Washington Post, Industry Standard, AP, CNET, Telepolis,
  Spiegel Online, Slashdot, ...


  various serious legal cases/ prosecutions ::

  :: board of elections chicago
  :: california secretary of state
  :: board of election nebraska
  :: texas attorney general
  :: tech crime unit arizona,

  ...heavy duty stuff! see some docs under::
  http://www.vote-auction.com/legal/index.htm

  the domain voteauction.com has been deactivated on
  orders of some local judge in chicago/illinois;
  sooo much fun and pressure there!
  read more in our attached press.release or under::
  http://www.vote-auction.com/pr.htm


  our holding-company is specialized on high-risk ventures!

  ::.. we invest into / they invest into ..::

  ubermorgen.com, etoy.com, SILVER SERVER, rtmark.com,
  skim.com, uptoart.com, etxtreme.org, voortekk.com,
  rosa.com, dplanet.org, msn.de, micromusic.net, and many more..


  for ubermorgen.com and the etoy.HOLDING::

  :: lizvlx [CEO ubermorgen.com]

  :: etoy.HANS /net_CALLBOY [CEO vote-auction.com]
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  "if you don't get help from us, please get help somewhere!"
  http://www.ubermorgen.com :: shock marketing :: software dev.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .




  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  --------------------------------------------------------

  Vote-auction.com back online

  --------------------------------------------------------

  Berlin, October 22, 2000

  Below you find the latest press release by Vote-auction.com
  [formerly voteauction.com]. We have included the most relevant
  information on the latest developments of the site and the
  people and users behind it.

  You can also find this press release at
  http://www.vote-auction.com/pr.htm

  For any further information feel free to contact
  pr@vote-auction.com or in urgent cases call +49-175-2066954.

  -------------------------------------------------------


  [V] Voteauction.com is dead, long live Vote-auction.com

  The "Leader of the Election Industry", vote-auction.com
  has regained access to the web via its new domain

  http://www.vote-auction.com

  During the past week, diverse rumours and hear-say has
  been passed concerning the website which explores the
  high-risk consumer markets of the American election
  industry.

  The site's original domain had been ordered shut down
  by a local American court in the U.S. state of Illinois
  earlier this week. But whilst American authorities took
  their time and tax payers' money to legally pursue almost
  everybody related to the existence of the website, the
  owners of the site worked on a re-design and strategy
  paper for version 2.0 of the project.


  [V] Sue 'em 'til they drop...

  The legal authorities of Chicago, Illinois, made every
  effort to get the site out of service during the last
  2 weeks. Amongst the original creator of the project,
  James Baumgartner, and the owner of the domain, Hans
  Bernhard, they also found it in the public's interest
  to sue:

  . domainbank.com: Domainbank inc., is the registry where
    the original domain "voteauction.com" is registered.
    It is defendant in named Chicago legal case.

  . silverserver.at: Both SILVER SERVER's president as
    well as of one of the top technical staff are also named
    defendants in the Chicago legal case. SILVER SERVER is
    vote-auction.com's internet access provider.


  [V] (Il)legal Battle?

  It remains open for discussion how it should be possible
  that a dns (domain name service) or an access provider
  could ever be responsible for contents accessible via
  domains they are providing routing services for.
  Vote-auction.com sees this as illegal practice in total
  violation of standards set by ICANN.

  We can only interpret domainbank's and SILVER SERVER's
  name on the list of defendants as a indirect means of
  repression to force vote-auction.com to go offline.

  Concerning domainbank inc., this strategy seemed to
  work out for Chicago prosecutors: Because of domain-
  bank being involved in the legal case, the provider
  "politely asked" vote-auction.com to provide them
  with a USD 100,000.00 bond for potential legal costs.
  Vote-auction.com decided not to comply. Instead, we
  asked them to transfer our "voteauction.com" domain
  to another provider. This order was not fulfilled by
  domainbank, as they had at that time already made
  a "deal" with Chicago authorites "not to move the
  domain anywhere", as we were told by one of domain-
  bank's executives.

  Concerning "defendant" SILVER SERVER, we can provide
  you with a clear statement from their president:

  "SILVER SERVER clearly and fully supports vote-auction.com.
   SILVER SERVER president, o.o., is proud to be the billing
   contact for vote-auction.com. actually we received very
   interesting offers by investors to launch vote-auction.com
   in russia and japan."


  [V] Users give full support - despite potential respression

  Lots of users of Vote-auction.com have described their
  support in various emails. This is another reason why
  we decided not to wait to get back online until local U.S.
  legal authorities understand that Vote-auction.com
  works for and NOT against democracy. We will keep on
  protecting any data which has been submitted to us by
  trusting users.

  Chicago courts have a somewhat different approach to
  user rights. The court has ordered all data of users
  registered with the site to be disclosed to the
  authorities. This would then enable prosecutors in
  Chicago to sue users of vote-auction.com individually
  for so-called "voter fraud".


  [V] Where to go from here

  Vote-auction.com is ready to deliver even more services
  to the vital elections markets. We will keep on
  focusing on the American elections until mid-November
  this year. In the meantime we will also finish our
  redesign and software upgrade in order to get ready
  for upcoming elections worldwide.


  For the Vote-auction.com team:

  lizvlx
  [V]ote-auction.com


  PLEASE NOTE: If you want to access Vote-auction.com via
   web or mail, please be sure to use the correct domain:

   pr@vote-auction.com
   http://www.vote-auction.com

  We will not be able to receive messages sent to the
  old address. Thank you.


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  []                                                  []
  [] [V]ote-auction.com                               []
  []                                                  []
  [] pr@vote-auction.com                              []
  []                                                  []
  [] The Election Idustry Leader - Bringing           []
  [] Capitalism & Democracy closer together           []
  []                                                  []
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