This week, the Internet puts its power on display, of both the light and dark variety. On Wednesday, popular sites staged a black-out to protest two anti-piracy bills which resulted in over a dozen politicians pulling their support, leaving the future of SOPA and PIPA looking bleak. Senator Ron Wyden wrote a grateful "letter to the Internet" for "showing that the Internet is not just a platform for ideas, commerce, and expression, but also for political action that will defend those principles."
The next day, though, the Internet showed its darker side. The sites of the bills' supporters -- including RIAA and MPAA -- were blacked out by force, when Anonymous attacked them, along with the sites of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the U.S. Copyright Office, and Universal Music, in retaliation for the criminal indictment of file-sharing site Megaupload. The sites were down for less than 12 hours, but this builds on what can only be called political thuggery by these particular advocates. This has included punishing companies that were pushing for SOPA by posting private information about their executives and their families, and Photoshopping a 25-year-old aide for the House Judiciary Committee into a pornographic photo. Not your usual tried and trued political lobbying.
In fighting for the rights of the Internet 'to be free,' Wednesday's black-out protesters are to Anonymous what Martin Luther King, Jr. was to Malcolm X. Or for comic book geeks, as Professor Xavier is to Magneto. Wednesday resulted in millions of names signed to a Google petition, countless calls and emails to politicians, and a mass political awareness campaign. Thursday's takedowns were simply a brute show of force.
Says Molly Wood of CNet:
If the SOPA/PIPA protests were the Web's moment of inspiring, non-violent, hand-holding civil disobedience, #OpMegaUpload feels like the unsettling wave of car-burning hooligans that sweep in and incite the riot portion of the play. The result is always riot gear, tear gas, arrests, injury, and a sea of knee-jerk policies, laws, and reactions that address the destructive actions of a few, and not the good intentions of the many...
[A]n attack this big on this many government sites will effectively erase those good Internet vibrations that were rattling around Capitol Hill this week and harden the perspective of legislators and law enforcement who want to believe that the Web community is made up of wild, law-breaking pirates. That, ultimately, may help strengthen the business--and the emotional--case for the pro-SOPA, pro-PIPA lobby. Did the feds just get the last lulz?
via Anonymous goes nuclear; everybody loses? | Molly Rants - CNET News.
Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones waded into one of Anonymous's chatrooms to ask one of the participants if he was worried about erasing the goodwill toward the Internet built up this week. "Sending email to the FBI or big companies won't have any effect here, they will not listen," he responded. "We had to use something more powerful. They cannot ignore us now."
Actually, I'm fairly certain the Internet already had everyone's attention this week.
