The German-language Netzdemo Wiki was started on 11 August 2008 to document the history of netstrikes, virtual sitins and online-demonstrations and to provide a platform for digital activism and online protest events. Netzdemo Wiki illuminates the contributions of various network activists worldwide and their online activities. The wiki wants to be a place for discussions about practical democracy on the world wide web on topics such as Internet censorship.

The history of netstrikes started in Italy, where in 1994 computers from more than 150 mailboxes were confiscated in nationwide coordinated raids. The crackdown of the mailbox networks in Italy indirectly triggered the netstrikes. In the winter of 1995, administrators of mailboxes, political and media activists met to find strategies for better publicizing their concerns. In 1995, the first ideas for online political activism were developed and implemented. In December 1995, the Italian hacktivist group StranoNet called for participation in the first global netstrike via emails in Italian and English.

It took a while before internet activism became a popular medium for protests in Germany. In March 2001 the anti-rassist initiatives Libertad! and Kein Mensch ist illegal started with the mobilization of an online-demonstration in connection with the deportation.class campaign against the Lufthansa deportation business. According to human rights activists, a total of 13,000 Internet users took part in the protest. Lufthansa had counted a total of 1.2 million page views and announced that the blocking of the booking system had caused economic damage.

Lufthansa and the public prosecutors saw the action as a deliberate coercion and that the call to the online-demonstration was a call to crime. The offices of Libertad! in Frankfurt were searched and computers confiscated – years of investigation followed. The first trial against one of the initiators of the first online-demonstration in Germany ended in June 2005 at the Frankfurt district court with a conviction and a fine of 900 euros. In the days leading up to the trial, the initiative Die Kellerasseln organized a campaign against the expansion plans of Frankfurt airport operator Fraport, to draw attention to this process.

The jurisdiction was rejected by the OLG Frankfurt one year later and the accused was acquitted. Online protest is not a crime!

On July 4th, 2011 a tweet from Libertad! promoted our Netzdemo Wiki:

Currently, the community is working on a new chapter on Digital Resistance about the Electronic Civil Disobedience in the times of big data and mass surveillance in the online and offline world. Feel free to make additions to this growing encyclopedia and help us to expand and supplement the information collection!