Art.Net - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Art.Net is a non-profit web-based artist collective

Artist collective

An artist collective is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims...

of more than 450 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

s, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

s, musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

s, painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

s, sculptor

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

s, animator

Animator

An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...

s, hacker artists, and other creative people from around the world, aimed at helping artists share their works on the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

. Also known as Art on the Net, the site was established in June, 1994 with a manifesto and statement of purpose as an Internet art

Internet art

Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...

project site and online art gallery.

Artist

Artist

s create and maintain studio web spaces on the site and gallery pages where they show their works and share information about themselves. Artists are also encouraged to collaborate and to help each other promote and improve their art. They can learn how to curate

Curate

A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish. In this sense "curate" correctly means a parish priest but in English-speaking countries a curate is an assistant to the parish priest...

and show their art work via the web. Several member artists also teach art in their studio spaces located on Art.Net. Art.Net is open to new artists and new areas. New artists are invited to join and submit their work for display. The site provides and supports a variety of online art resources.

Art.Net is owned and operated by the member artists, and has been active in defending free speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

on the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...

(ACLU), Art.Net has been involved in many court cases defending freedom of speech on the Internet. In each case, members were asked to testify in court about how laws censoring content on the Internet prevented the sharing of art due to fear of prosecution. There have been four such cases, in four different states. Each was successful in bringing injunctions against laws, preventing their enforcement. This happened during the time that each state was trying to create local Communications Decency Act

Communications Decency Act

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was the first notable attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act.The Act was...

(CDA) laws for their local states.

The website does not censor the artists or their works posted on the site; artists are requested to share their art in a non-commercial way. Artists retain all rights to their works shown on Art.Net. The site typically receives more than 65,000 page views per day from more than 14,000 unique visitors. It has won several awards.

Protector of the arts and artists

In the autumn of 1994, Art.Net suffered its first site break-in by the well known
black hat and cracker

Black hat

A black hat is the villain or bad guy, especially in a western movie in which such a character would stereotypically wear a black hat in contrast to the hero's white hat, especially in black and white movies....

, Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick

Kevin David Mitnick is a computer security consultant, author, and hacker. In the late 20th century, he was convicted of various computer- and communications-related crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was the most-wanted computer criminal in the United States.-Personal life:Mitnick grew up in...

. This break-in was the beginning of Mitnick's downfall. Art.Net's webmaster requested the help of a master hacker

Hacker (computer security)

In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...

, Tsutomu Shimomura

Tsutomu Shimomura

is a Japanese scientist and computer security expert based in the United States, who became an instant celebrity when he, together with computer journalist John Markoff, tracked down and helped the FBI arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick....

, to deal with the cracker. The break-in was discovered "while in process" and Art.Net immediately responded by turning off all Internet services except for web access via httpd.

In the fall of 1995, Art.Net executed one of the first known reversed Web
"Denial of Service" (aka DOS) attacks

Denial-of-service attack

A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...

. A porn site had linked to one image of an Art.Net member artist's art on Art.Net without the artist's permission. When the artist noticed that the file was being accessed more than usual (several thousand times a day), she reported the strange event to the Art.Net site webmaster. The art image file was moved to another filename and by way of the Apache webserver

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...

running on Art.Net, accesses to the original file name were redirected back to the offending website's sendmail port. The offending machine went down in a few minutes due to the overload of sendmail connections to their site. A few days later the offending link to the art was removed from the porn site.

Selected historical milestones

June, 1994 - established.

February, 1996 - joined in the Black World Wide Web protest

Black World Wide Web protest

On February 1, 1996, U.S. Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, a telecommunications reform bill containing the Communications Decency Act. Timed to coincide with President Bill Clinton's signing of the bill on February 8, 1996, a large number of web sites had their background color turned to...

from February 8 until February 24 to protest the signing of the telecommunications bill that included the CDA by Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996 as part of the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign

Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign

The Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign is an online advocacy campaign for intellectual freedom on the Internet, orchestrated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation . Web site owners are encouraged to place images of blue ribbons on their sites and link to EFF's campaign...

. Art.Net continued showing the Blue Ribbon on site entrance page to show support of freedom of speech on the Internet.

June, 1996 - new link submission form
was added on the site.

March, 1997 - joined in the lawsuit ALA
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....

v. Pataki as a plaintiff to challenge New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

's Internet censorship law. Art.Net
was placed in jeopardy to help defend freedom of speech on the Internet by joining this case. If it had lost, there would have been a strong chance that the site must shut down because of censorship laws. Represented by the ACLU, the case was won for the plaintiffs Art.Net and many others, and a preliminary injunction against New York's censorship law, preserving freedom of speech on the Internet, was issued.

June, 1998 - joined in the lawsuit ACLU v. Johnson as a plaintiff to challenge New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

's online censorship law. This was
an important case because even though the ACLU won, the case was appealed by New Mexico. The appeals court upheld the ruling, so now this case is a federal precedent, supporting the freedom of speech on the Internet for all U.S. citizens.

June 1999 - joined as a plaintiff in Cyberspace v. Engler, with the ACLU, challenging Michigan's cyber-censorship law, citing the US Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

's commerce clause

Commerce Clause

The Commerce Clause is an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution . The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Courts and commentators have tended to...

and free speech rights. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, again upholding the right of free speech on the Internet.

March 2002 - in the article, Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?,
the Internet is shown to deserve the same high level of free speech protection afforded to books and other printed matter. Art.Net is shown as an example of why self-rating is burdensome, unwieldy, and costly for websites to implement.

Protector of the arts and artists

Selected historical milestones

See also