VIENNA, AUSTRIA, 1997 MAR 25 (NB) -- By Sylvia Dennis. Anyone attempting to access the Internet, other than via CompuServe, in Austria between 1500 and 1700 hours local time today was in for shock, as Austrian Internet service providers (ISPs) banded together to stage the country's first electronic walkout.
Between these times, which equated to 0900 and 1100 hours US Eastern standard time, users of Austrian ISPs were met either with a busy tone or a ringing tone, as the ISPs protested moves by the Austrian government to censor the Internet.
The row started late last week when police raided VIPnet, a Vienna based ISP, and impounded computers, amid allegations that the hardware had been used to upload child pornography on to the Internet. Other ISPs, perhaps worried by the implications of such heavy handed actions, worked together for a general switching off of Internet facilities in Austria this afternoon.
Newsbytes notes that VIPnet raid was not a local incident, but stems from a complaint filed by a German Internet user in March of last year, which was subsequently passed along to the Austrian police. It is alleged that a subscriber to VIPnet used the ISP's access points to upload child porn to a site outside of Austria.
According to the Internet service provider's association (ISPA) of Austria, even though VIPnet was only the common carrier in a standard Internet transmission, police marched in and pulled the plugs on VIPnet's computers, without first shutting them down.
"This shockingly incompetent procedure of the authorities should be of concern to all Austrian computer users," ISPA officials said in a statement, adding that the act of pulling the plugs on VIPnet's computer systems may have damaged their hardware.
ISPA also claims that, by impounding VIPnet's computer systems, the police have pushed the ISP to the brink of financial ruin.
This technique, that of impounding computers without warning, only to release them much later without any charges being made, is one that is used widely by German police, Newsbytes notes.
The technique is alleged to have caused some German businesses to go out of business, without the police having to press charges or go through the courts. This is the first time that Austrian police have used the same tactic, Newsbytes notes.
The Austrian police's kneejerk reaction to the user's complaint was not entirely unexpected, Newsbytes notes, since the writing was on the wall when, 18 months ago, CompuServe Deutschland was apparently forced into blocking access to some of the more raunchy and sexually explicit areas of the Internet/Usenet, when German officials "requested" the online service to remove access, or face possible closure.
At the time, the move drew considerable criticism from online industry watchers, with CompuServe subsequently admitting that the global blocking of certain Usenet groups was taken as a protective measure.
Austria, meanwhile, has a puritanical attitude towards matters of a sexual nature, as clearly illustrated back in August, 1994, when an accountant's addiction to premium rate telephone sex lines landed him with a six-year prison sentence.
The man, identified in the Austrian court only as Alan F, was discovered making phone calls to an Austrian premium rate sex line service. When an investigation was undertaken by his employers, phone bills totalling more than 50,000 Austrian Schillings ($5,000) came to light which related to calls he had apparently made to such services.
Although the sexline scandal subsequently uncovered a $1.6 million fraud within the company, the man was jailed for six years for his sexline addiction fraud alone.
As a result of the VIPnet incident last week, the Austrian ISPA is offering the Austrian police free computer training and unlimited access to the Internet.