

Next Target Of Anonymous Is Sony - mikecane
http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/04/opsony.html

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refulgentis
I'm fascinated with Anonymous' impact as a political group. As far as I can
tell, Anonymous is just another term for technologically connected young
people, which otherwise would have been single individuals incapable of
advancing an agenda. Perhaps it's just me, but despite their misguided
actions, I believe me and anyone else who grew up with the Internet is deeply
invested in their particular brand of libertarianism: strong belief in freedom
of speech, transparency, and personal property.

~~~
TomOfTTB
How does anonymously damaging the property of those who hold beliefs you
disagree with in any way consistent with those values? Further they aren't
advancing an agenda they are harming one. I'm someone who agrees with much of
what they advocate but everytime they "take action" I feel sympathy for that
company.

~~~
wtallis
What property is being damaged by Anonymous, and why does their anonymity
matter to the assessment of whether their actions are right or wrong?

The way I see it, aside from temporary business interruptions from the
occasional successful DDoS, the only thing Anonymous harms are reputations.

As to why their actions might sometimes be justified: most of their targets
are (attempting to) abuse the legal system - most often by using copyright law
for purposes that are harmful to the general public and beyond the
constitutionally justifiable power of copyright law.

Surely you can understand that when the legal system is part of the problem,
it is sometimes necessary to resolve the problem with extra-legal means.

~~~
TomOfTTB
There's a difference between "damage" and "permanent damage". If Sony has
servers that are functioning correctly and Anonymous causes them not to
function correctly than damage is being done. There is money Sony would have
been making during that time that they are not making. As far as their
Anonymity I didn't say anything about it making their actions right or wrong.
The original post put forth "transparency" as a value Anonymous stood for and
I was refuting that. By definition Anonymous people can't be transparent.

As far as your other statements you prove my point. The parties Anonymous
tends to attack are people who are working completely inside the law but
Anonymous disagrees with the law so they take it out on the company.

A perfect example of this is the Sony thing. Geohot set out to crack the PS3.
Sony warned him not to by sending a cease and desist (we know this happened
because he stopped his work for a while because of it). He continued to do it
and eventually succeeded. Sony than sued him for doing it.

In this case Sony is not abusing the law. They are suing in accordance with
it. But Anonymous disagrees with the law so they are attacking Sony (for the
record I also disagree with the law but I don't blame Sony for that I blame
politicians)

Finally your last statement is just scary. What you're basically saying is you
have the right to break the law whenever you feel it's wrong. Extrapolate that
right to everyone and you have chaos. Every person who feels society is
unjustly weighted against them can rob a bank by that logic.

~~~
wtallis
It's quite a stretch to say that Sony is operating within the law in their
anti-jailbreaking efforts. The current laws on the books are being interpreted
in ways that have serious problems with the constitution, and we're a few
Supreme Court rulings away from being able to call the legal issue _settled_.
(And that doesn't even address the fact that Sony's lawsuit is going poorly
for them.) Sony is not operating within the law so much as within the system.

More importantly, it takes years for the legal system to deal with an issue
even in the cases where it "works". Just take a look at the SCO case: they
caused quite a bit of damage to the open-source software movement, and the
company that chose to fight them is still in court and will never recoup their
legal costs. Even if we do get a Supreme Court ruling 5 years from now saying
that you can put whatever software you want on a piece of hardware you own,
there's a lot of innovation being stifled in the meantime. The existing laws
are _not doing the job_ , and until they are fixed, there's a constant risk of
bad precedents making it harder to fix things through the usual/proper/legal
methods.

You are also reading too much in to my last statement. I am not saying that it
is always right to break laws in pursuit of your ideals, I'm just saying that
it's _not always wrong_. Something being illegal is not on its own a good
indicator of whether it is wrong.

~~~
TomOfTTB
But that's the point. I'm not saying Sony is right but they aren't clearly
wrong either. The way a civilized society deals with that type of situation is
through the courts not through hackers launching DoS attacks.

As for your last statement I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the
issue of the law automatically making something right or wrong. But if the law
is wrong the entity you oppose is the government not the individual or
company. Because individuals and companies are obligated to work within the
system. Once you allow individuals to attack other individuals over
disagreements its the beginning of the end for society itself.

------
sudonim
We live in an age of fear where those in power try to make us afraid of the
things we cannot see. Most 'isms (communism, terrorism, fascism) have been
used to provoke fear at one time or another. Anonymous gives the fear mongers
something to fear. An unseen enemy that is everywhere and nowhere.

I don't always agree with Anonymous' word choice or tactics. But, their work
increases truth and transparency in the world and protects little guys from
larger bullies. In general, I think they have a valuable place in the world.

~~~
jhuni
You know how I know they are up to no good? Because if they were doing
something good they wouldn't be anonymous - they'd want credit for it.

Anonymous is nothing more then a group of random people that meet over the
internet to do harmful/border-line illegal activities. This stuff about
"protecting you" is just a cover.

What is the big thing that they claim to support? Freedom of expression? Yet
that is exactly what they are sabotaging by shutting down people's websites
with DDoS attacks.

~~~
hugh3
It's not even a "group", it's just a self-applied label. Anyone can claim "We
are Anonymous, and we are going to do _X_ ", whether X is good or bad. Do the
organizers of this have anything in common with the organisers of any previous
"Anonymous" activity? Probably not.

It seems to me that Anonymous has gone rapidly downhill in their choice of
targets and tactics. When they were reading OT3 outside the Church of
Scientology, that was something that most right-minded people could get
behind, but this.... actually I don't even know what this is about; the letter
doesn't really explain.

This is probably inevitable -- over time the folks with bad intentions will
crowd out the folks with good intentions, since good people don't want to be
associated with bad people. I was "part" of anonymous when "they" were
protesting outside Scientology, but wouldn't be "part" of it now that "they"
have started DDoSing random websites.

~~~
jhuni
Most open-source programmers put their names on their projects. When you are
contributing to society, creating something good, or building something, you
put your name on it. Just look at how many buildings and things are named
after their creators.

On the hand, if you are doing something destructive, harmful, or criminal,
then you hid your name from others. You can't do much harm by yourself though,
so these people organize together under this so-called "self-applied label."

~~~
prodigal_erik
I negotiate for food and shelter with members of a nosy, judgmental, sometimes
irrational species. I want to avoid self-censoring arguments which I consider
valid but controversial, and that's why I comment using a pseudonym. What's
your excuse for doing so, since you regard it as a sign of malfeasance?

------
latch
I don't know much about anonymous, but it's actually a pretty good
letter...except for the penises in the hornets nest thing. Had to double take
that one.

~~~
BoppreH
The letters are written by individuals trying to make the collective follow
their orders. It's inevitable that the letters that surface are the ones that
made the bigger impact, and to get there they have to be well written.

The penises and hornets nest thing is just to show the world how edgy and cool
and free Anonymous is. I find amusing that many news websites and channels
will display the full letter, penises included.

~~~
lwat
The penis hornets nest line came from Steven Colbert.

------
jrspruitt
In a hollywood romanticized way, I think Anonymous is a great idea, along the
lines of Robin Hood. But in a practical way it causes me concern. Both for,
and because of. Politically my biggest concern is with power, who has it and
why. This sort of tactic goes against everything I believe in. There is a fine
line between fighting tyranny, and fighting to be the new tyrants, which these
tactics can easily cross that line. I also think of the 1960's when groups
like this were vastly more common, and how those groups were broken up and
taken down. I fear such a decentralized group, seemingly manifesting their
missions out of chaos, could easily succumb to some tactile social engineering
to destroy them from with in. No centralized command, leaves any sort of
agenda in a constant state of flux, and leaves the identity Anonymous up for
grabs when taking the blame for anything that is done. Which considering they
are a threat, and relish in that, their image amongst the people who do not
understand, who do not follow, can be easily swayed, ending up doing more harm
than good, towards any agenda Anonymous and myself share in common. I wish
them well in sticking up for the masses, against centralized abuses of power.
But I fear this does not end will, either for them, or because of them. Power
always seems to have a way to corrupt the good that can be wielded with it.

------
younata
ok. That's great. What are they going to do about it? DDoS Sony's servers?
That does nothing except piss people off.

~~~
alextp
They can do something HBGary-style and hack sony's servers to gather
confidential information that would embarass the company and bring the stock
price down. That would hit where it hurts, can be doable with some social
engineering, and any company that big is bound to have some skeletons in its
closet.

Not that I condone these actions, I'm just pointing out that they have done
finer things in the past than just using LOIC.

~~~
wtallis
Sony survived the rootkit incident. I doubt that Anonymous will be able to do
even that much harm unless they turn up something that the SEC would take
offense to.

