Neural is a printed magazine established in 1993 dealing with new media art, electronic music and hacktivism. It was founded by Alessandro Ludovico and Minus Habens Records label owner Ivan Iusco in Bari (Italy). In its first issue (distributed in November 1993) there was the only translation in Italian of the William Gibson’s Agrippa (a book of the dead) book.[1]

The first topics covered were: cyberpunk (both as a literally and political movement), electronic music, networks and BBS, virtual reality, media, science fiction and UFO. The magazine’s mission was to be a magazine of ideas, becoming a node in a larger network of digital culture publishers. The magazine was also committed to give its topics a proper visual frame: focusing on graphic design and how it could have expressed the electronic culture in a sort of printed ‘interface’, exploiting at the same time the “sensorial” possibilities of the printed page. So, for example the page numbering was strictly in binary numbers for 3 years, then decimal figures were added aside. There was a department with stereogram pictures and the centerfold hosted a few optical art artworks. The graphic design included a fixed space in every article for contact and links, being inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog experiments.[1]

RTMark (derived from "Registered Trademark") is an activist collective that subverts the "Corporate Shield" protecting US corporations.

RTMark is itself a registered corporation which brings together activists who plan projects with donors who fund them. It thus operates outside the laws governing human individuals, and benefits from the much looser laws governing corporation. [1]

What does ®TMark do?

®TMark receives project ideas from internet users, then lists them (here). Each listed project has its own discussion list (linked from the project). When a project requires a bit of funding to be accomplished, sometimes investors will step up to the plate and offer their help. Even more often, people will offer non-financial help or feedback.

How is ®TMark defined, in legal terms?

®TMark is a brokerage that benefits from «limited liability» just like any other corporation; using this principle, ®TMark supports the sabotage (informative alteration) of corporate products, from dolls and children's learning tools to electronic action games, by channelling funds from investors to workers for specific projects grouped into "mutual funds."

So ®TMark is just a corporation?

®TMark is indeed just a corporation, and benefits from corporate protections, but unlike other corporations, its ‹bottom line› is to improve culture, rather than its own pocketbook; it seeks cultural profit, not financial. [2]

etoy.CORPORATION, an art group registered as a Swiss corporation, has been using internationally standardized (physical, virtual, legal and technical) containers to construct a global corporate sculpture since 1994. This "corporate sculpture" serves no purpose other than art - that is, the reflection of contemporary culture and its critical interaction with it.[1]

etoy.CORPORATION is art and invests all resources in the production of art beyond traditional dimensions. The aim is to take the resources, tools and legal framework of our time to create a corporate sculpture - a shareholder company registered in Zug/Switzerland that has no other purpose than cultural value. The privately held company etoy.CORPORATION SA issues etoy.SHARES (more information) to compensate its artists, investors, collectors and supporters. etoy.VENTURE association was founded 1994 and is registered in Zurich. This non-profit organization operates etoy.TANK-PLANTS in various cities, takes care of etoy.SOCIAL-ACTIVITIES, runs etoy.DAY-CARE and establishes MISSION ETERNITY - a digital cult of the dead. [2]

In the years 1999 to 2001, there was also a brand and domain name conflict with the American company eToys Inc., which became the largest online toy retailer during the boom years and reached a peak market value of around 10 billion US dollars. The fight for the rights to etoy.IDENTITY went down in history as a "TOYWAR" and is now part of textbooks. More than 400 international media have reported (from the New York Times and CNN, Art in America, to the Wall Street Journal). The group etoy has rejected very high financial offers of the counterparty precisely because the defense and preservation of the abstract identity container (TRADE MARK) in the case of etoy is much more important than the identity of the individual agents.[1]

From julianoliver.com:

Julian Oliver is a New Zealander, Critical Engineer and artist based in Berlin. His work and lectures have been presented at many museums, galleries, international electronic-art events and conferences, including the Tate Modern, Transmediale, the Chaos Computer Congress, Ars Electronica, FILE and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Julian has received several awards, most notably the distinguished Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2011 for the project Newstweek (with Daniil Vasiliev). He is the co-author of the Critical Engineering Manifesto and co-founder of Crypto Party in Berlin, who’s shared studio Weise7 hosted the first three crypto-parties worldwide. He is also the co-founder of BLACKLIST, a screening and panel series focused on the primary existential threats of our time.

Radical Networks is a conference that celebrates the free and open Internet, with hands-on workshops, speakers, and a gallery exhibiting artworks centered around radio and networking technology. It fosters critical discussion on contemporary issues that include surveillance, the spread of misinformation, ownership of personal data, and the increasing opacity of “The Cloud”.

Radical Networks is also an arts festival that considers networking technology as an artistic medium, featuring works that run the gamut from ethical hacks to creative experiments to live performances. [1]

From Hackers of Resistance:

The Hackers of Resistance (HORs) is a queer transfeminist hacker collective of artists, activists, researchers, cyborgs, witches, and technologists, of color. Co-conspirators, we build tools to defend our community, educate people to be secure, to demand and make ourselves heard, to fight back and hack tools of oppression. H0Rh0use is 0ur imm3rsive mUltim3dia heisT.

From Ada Gender New Media & Technology:

Hackers of Resistance (HORs) is a hyperreal-multimedia-installation-performance-video-game reimagining feminist activism. It’s immersive theater, video installation, and game design—but mostly, it’s a universe. A power fantasy of the oppressed, we subvert traditionally-white-American-centered dystopian narratives by placing WoC hackers as superheroes willing to risk it all for solidarity (our vision of utopia). Our stylized hyperreality uses shimmery-neon aesthetics, socially-aware comedy, and DIY charm to address serious concerns like the fate of minorities in the hands of the current administration. Some of the projects the HORs are developing and tinkering with are cybersecurity labs, anti-facial recognition, counter-surveillance, social engineering, bio-hacking, dildo-hacking, and DIWO 3D printable abortion kits in collaboration with our incarcerated sister organization Marias Clandestinas.

From transparencygrenade.com:

Equipped with a tiny computer, microphone and powerful wireless antenna, the Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio at the site and securely and anonymously streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. User names, hostnames, IP addresses, unencrypted email fragments, web pages, images and voice extracted from this data and then presented on an online, public map, shown at the location of the detonation.

The volatility of information in networked, digital contexts frames a precedent for clamouring (and often unrealistic) attempts to contain it. This increasingly influences how we use networks and think about the right to information itself; today we see the fear of the leak actively exploited by law makers to afford organisations greater opacity and thus control..

This anxiety, this 'network insecurity', impacts not just upon the freedom of speech but the felt instinct to speak at all. It would now seem letting public know what's going on inside a publicly funded organisation is somehow to do 'wrong' -Bradley Manning a sacrificial lamb to that effect..

Meanwhile, civil servants and publicly-owned companies continue to make decisions behind guarded doors that impact the lives of many, often leaving us feeling powerless to effect change, both in and out of a democratic context.

The Transparency Grenade seeks to capture these important tensions in an iconic, hand-held package while simultaneously opening up a conversation about just how much implicit trust we place in network infrastructure; infrastructure that reaches ever more deeply into our lives.