On Tuesday, March 25th 1997, all Internet Service Providers of the entire country of Austria (which also happens to be where I'm from) will deactivate their services from 4:00pm to 6:00pm (local time) in order to protest the recent confiscation of all equipment and subsequent shutdown of a local ISP by the local police authorities.
Apparently, the ISP was held liable for one his users who maintained pornographic material on his assigned account. The outrage over the action came from the fact that the local police performed the action a year after the original charges were pressed - a delay that makes securing of supposed 'evidence' on a server not only impossible, but ridiculous.
Thus, while the actual culprit was known to the district attorney, and the ISP was NOT an accused party, their entire equipment was confiscated (even that which was not connected to any network) by the 'professionals', thus effectively putting them out of business.
This kind of 'legal' procedure is simply non-acceptable, especially when the entity that suffers the greatest harm (elimination of their only source of income), is not even an accused party.
In order to show a certain solidarity with this situation, and to demonstrate the importance of the internet to the local economy, and culture, all of Austria's ISPs have agreed to cease operation for the duration of 2 hours - thus effectively cutting Austria off from the global internet for the duration.
This is a situation, and a response, not unlike what happened in the US when the CDA was being passed by congress - except that this European country goes a LOT farther than just displaying black backgrounds on active web-sites. Austria effectively turns the net black all over Austria for the duration of the boycott... (Boycott, did someone say boycott?)
If you need further information, you can see it at:
http://www.internet.at
or read a press release (in German) and additional contact information at:
http://www.internet.at/presse.html
Please pass this along, and show your solidarity for such an action in favor of social responsibility.
Harry
P.S. See, it's not just me - standing up for what we believe in is an Austrian 'thang'. :-)