Skull, Bones, Black March

A campaign begins against censorship on the Internet, attacks on file sharing, raids on trackers, arrests of network activists

Black March begins, a month of spontaneous struggle against the invasion of the Network of lawyers with handcuffs, detectives with clubs and mega-corporations with their unbearable desire for sales. The black and cheerful month of the struggle of the natural ocean of the Internet against attempts to drive it into pipes and close it with bars begins.

Black March begins, a month of spontaneous struggle against the invasion of the Network of lawyers with handcuffs, detectives with clubs and mega-corporations with their unbearable desire for sales. The black and cheerful month of the struggle of the natural ocean of the Internet against attempts to drive it into pipes and close it with bars begins.

"Black March", as is customary in the latest worldwide fashion, has no single center, no leader, no central committee. This campaign was proclaimed by anonymous network resistance figures with an unclear location, an incomprehensible IP and an unknown native language. No one knows who they are and where they come from, and it doesn't matter. Maybe they're Swedish freaks hanging out at Pirate's Cove, or maybe they're Polynesian natives surfing the Net with spears in their hands. Throughout January and February, they campaigned, and their black poster with an orange stripe and a white anonymous mask was distributed on websites, blogs and social networks. Anonymous, as he was supposed to, smiled a devilish smile. And the manifesto was short. It is easier to quote than to paraphrase.

“March is the month when mega-corporations sum up the economic results of the quarter. The only way to harm them is to deprive them of their profits. They do not understand any other language. Therefore, do not buy a single song in March. Don't download any music, it doesn't matter if it's legal or not. Do not buy movie tickets or download movies from the web. Don't buy DVDs from stores. Don't buy video games. Don't buy books and magazines. All this you can buy in April, after the general network failure in March will make a hole in the budget of media corporations and show business ... We will not tolerate media corporations lobbying for legislation that censors the Internet!

SOPA & PIPA are already in the coffin, but now the impudent aunt ACTA has got out. She intends to rummage through laptop hard drives and flash drives in search of illegally downloaded music, movies and books. Do you want the customs officer at Sheremetyevo to climb into your laptop, which is an extension of your brain, with a rubber-gloved hand? If not, then join the Black March!

Do you want fear to become the main feeling on the Internet? Fear of downloading a file, fear that Big Brother's eyes are staring at the back of your head, fear that your IP is under a hood? Millions of citizens, enslaved by media corporations in countries like America or Germany, already live in this fear today. If you don’t want this fear to spread around the world, then join the Black March.

A call not to buy or download for a whole month - this call is absolutely, hopelessly and insanely unrealistic. People can no longer do without shopping and the day, the real and virtual world consume every minute like clockwork. Buying and downloading, taking and downloading, grabbing and chewing is the instinct of the “golden billion”, accustomed to enjoying life in the global mega mall. Even Lola Voronina, general secretary of the Pirate International, expressed support for the black march with a shaky doubt in her voice, because this beautiful girl, wearing transparent tights with skulls and bones, is not at all sure that she has the iron will of an ascetic who can last a month without new songs. Still, this call to give up purchases and downloads of any kind for a month is good, as well as any unrealistic demand for freedom, goodness, purity, intelligence, levitation and the abolition of gravity.

The Pirate Party of Russia, led to inevitable victory by Pasha Rassudov, a man with a black beard and, as a rule, in yellow shoes, splashed his own cheerful colors into the black March. Black March in Russian is “social DDoS of public authorities”. Pirates are invited to send requests and demands of various kinds to the president, the State Duma and the government, for example: on what basis is the tax on pigs levied on the Mikhalkov fund? Why is the cultural heritage of the Soviet era, created with taxpayers' money, not transferred to the public domain? The point here is not even the questions themselves, the point is the number of people dancing with scimitars in their hands, yelling about rum and a chest, firing into the sky from rusty pistols, rattling old bones, flying on FireFox junks and climbing to board the state power of pirates. “Remember: one pirate, one vote! Ten thousand pirates - 10,000 votes! Ten thousand pirates sending 100 requests to the government is a million requests that government sites must process and respond to!