Nettime, maj 1999: mycket stor aktivitet (333 meddelanden), fortfarande dominerat av diskussioner om Kosovokriget och Natos bombande av Serbien. Bland annat postades Susan Sontags artikel där hon beskrev kriget som “ett schysst krig”. Andra höll inte med.

Ett annat ämne som kom upp var makten över domännamnen. Wipo rekommenderade åtgärder mot “missbruk”, för att skydda ägare av varumärken.

Geert Lovink meddelade (även på a-infos) att “Cafe Ascii” slagit upp sina dörrar i Amsterdam. År 2009 skrevs i en återblick vad det handlade om:

Internetworkspace – A free and open place with free internet access, aggregating point for all people interested in hacking together, or simply hanging around or on the net while learning Free and OSS, creating and mixing chaos for all people interested in free flow of information across any new or old medium.
/…/
Early 1999 in its first incarnation cloaked as a cafe ASCII emerged in a squatted house with big shopping windows in a ground floor on the Herengracht, in the historic center of Amsterdam, by installing Linux on few older machines and opening our door to everybody who needed free internet access, email address, general tech help or just wanted to work together with other people, engage in a collective, not sit alone at home, drink fair trade coffee, cheap bio-beer and so forth.
Our main goal at that time was to spread the word of the Free Software and Open Source {(F/OSS)} movement and provide free and open access to the internet and give our support to EVERYBODY who walked in, covering everything from setting up an email address to free education in Linux and F/OSS. All that at the time when the internet was gaining momentum for most of the common people who had interest in it, but were unable or afraid to participate and join. Microsoft with its Windows OS were gaining momentum too, so we tried to show that there’s more than just MS Windows. We tried to convince people interested in free flow of information that using software made by the biggest multi-national corporation in the world could not be a good idea. Also Hotmail was popular and we tried to recommend and help set up other more private and secure mail addresses for our visitors. That was only the beginning.