CL network
The CL-power today is a collection of Internet forums based on Usenet technology, which also has several web portals and via RSS - web feed are accessible. In terms of content, the CL-Netz is committed to grassroots journalism and concepts of the left counter-public . A volunteer editorial team sifts through incoming press releases , reports and contributions from users as well as from the media and makes them available according to departments .
history
At the beginning of the 1990s, the network was the first significant infrastructure in Germany for computer networking of peace, human rights and environmental groups and organizations in German-speaking countries and thus preceded the spread of the Internet by several years. It arose from text-based, mostly privately operated mailbox systems into which you could dial directly with a modem via a telephone connection. Many of the mailbox systems use the “Zerberus” software and also took part in the Z-Netz , which made it possible to connect the mailbox systems to a common network. Technically, the CL-Netz was an "overlay network" of the Z-Netz, that is, it consisted of a few boards (corresponding to today's newsgroups ) that were transported on the Z-Netz nodes. The first systems included Bionic from Bielefeld, founded in 1987 , LINKS from Munich (this resulted in LINK-M ) and OLN from Hanover, founded in 1988 .
The CL network was created in 1991 from the merger of the two networks Compost and LinkSysteme , from which the artificial word ComLink , abbreviated CL (later interpreted as computer network link systems ) was formed. The merger was necessary in order to be able to guarantee organizational connection to the international networks. The CL network became the German-speaking partner of the international Association for Progressive Communications (APC) with networks in the USA, Latin America, Australia, Scandinavia, the Soviet Union and other regions.
The CL network was most widespread around 1996. At that time, it was accessible via more than 200 dial-up systems in German-speaking countries and in some other countries (Turkey, Italy, the Balkans).
Because of its success, right-wing extremist groups such as the NPD , especially the Young National Democrats , tried to infiltrate the CL network.
In 2007 the CL-Netz celebrated its 20th anniversary with a congress entitled “Who Owns the Internet?”, For which a conference proceedings were published in 2008.
At the end of the 1990s, the CL-Netz lost its position in favor of platforms such as indymedia or politik-digital due to a long-standing rejection of the more open, but also more uncontrollable and from the point of view of the time cost-intensive access technology "Internet" (or " web browser ") . The number of classic mailbox systems that can be dialed by modem decreased to less than a dozen between 2000 and 2005. In 2012 there was still such a system. The CL network with its forums can now be used via websites.
On January 15, 2015, it was announced that the CL network would be switched off. The possibility of submitting new articles should no longer be offered as planned at the end of March 2015, while contributions made up to that point will remain accessible via the website in the sense of an archive. The decision was justified on the basis of the "political benefits" that had been removed up to that point and that were no longer in proportion to the time and cost required. Nowadays, political networking is accomplished in other ways.
Technology and international networking
When it was founded, the CL network was based almost exclusively on individual, networked mailbox systems that worked according to the ZConnect standard and exchanged private and public messages according to the store-and-forward principle. International networking began in 1990 via the “Association for progressive communications” using this inexpensive technology, which was also used in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, in Latin America and the African continent.
As early as 1988, e-mails and news could be used and received across networks. In August 1989 news from a civil rights group from the GDR reached the network. The international peace movement began to use the network early on. In 1991, during the coup in Moscow, there was a regular communication link to the partner network "GlasNet" via decentralized mailbox systems in Belarus, Estonia and Finland (see also: END Convention ).
Content
In addition to the possibility of exchanging e-mails, the participants were able to exchange messages long before the spread of the Internet via public forums, which at the time were called boards in the CL network . Many politically active organizations, groups and individuals saw the new possibilities of electronic communication as an advantage for their work. However, the systems of the CL network also had to deal with the skepticism of this target group towards modern technology.
From 1989 onwards, Amnesty International's (ai) “urgent actions” were distributed via the CL network. Since the German section of ai had reservations about IT , a volunteer had to retype the texts, which had already been electronically saved at ai, from paper. The direct exchange of data only succeeded after a few years.
During the civil war in the former Yugoslavia , the CL / EUROPA / BALKAN section featured daily news in German, Serbo-Croatian or English, written by peace groups in Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana from the “ZAMIR” network (Serbo-Croatian: za mir = for peace ). This network connected many thousands of people with one another and also enabled communication between the various parts of the former Yugoslavia between which telephone connections had been cut. The Dutch peace activist Wam Kat wrote his daily “Zagreb Diary” and thus created an early forerunner of today's blogs .
The CL-Netz, which, like the Z-Netz, was organized on a grassroots basis, offered relief for people with disabilities from the start, as the forums were text-based. Since 1990 there have been separate forums, from 1992 separate seminars for the hearing impaired and deaf, for the visually impaired and the blind. Wheelchair users were among the first to use the CL network.
Another focus was the documentation of right-wing extremist and xenophobic incidents. The right-wing extremist scene therefore observed the CL network very closely and tried at times to copy it with its own mailboxes ( Thule network ).
Since the CL-Netz was founded by journalists and many of the employees worked as a journalist, it was important to separate information and opinion . For each “board” there was a corresponding “discussion board”. In fact, this interruption of the discussion thread irritated the users; the process could not be consistently carried out despite various technical auxiliary constructions.
The CL network was organized on a grassroots basis. All those involved worked largely on a voluntary basis. As with many other mailbox networks, long strategic discussions about orientation, openness and financing took place at the coordination level of the CL network.
Due to the loose networking, members of the major parties or their youth organizations worked in the CL network as well as members of environmental or human rights initiatives. Since members of various left-wing splinter groups also read and wrote, the CL network was targeted by the protection of the constitution.
literature
- Who Owns the Internet? 20 years of networking, Munich 2008 (free download, PDF)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Source: doew.at ( Memento from August 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Who Owns the Internet? ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Munich 2008.
- ↑ Sabine Ellersick in D8wwNz6lJ2B@sabine.nadeshda.org, also available via cl-netz.de ( memento of the original from February 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ 20 years of complete works ( Memento of December 24, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), text by Rena Tangens and padeluun , with a description of the creation of CL and the ZAMIR network
- ↑ Rena Tangens and padeluun, see above
- ↑ ‚In order to realize an electronic networking of“ left ”political groups and organizations, the association“ Kommunikation und Neue Medien e. V. ”was founded to finance and organize a mailbox operation that initially started with ten mailboxes. In order to connect to the international network organization "Association for Progressive Communication" (APC), the association "ComLink e. V. ". This gave rise to the so-called CL network, which bears the name “Computer Network Link Systems”. (…) Source: Baden-Württemberg Constitutional Protection Report 1999
