'Anonymous' and online, the new way to protest against all that's unjust?

(AFP PHOTO / SCANPIX SWEDEN / FREDRIK PERSSON)

Users from across the globe have come together to stand up to "oppressive corporations" that are fighting to restrict their freedoms. But you won't find these finger-waving protesters out in the streets delivering their message 'en-masse;' today, protesters are using their fingers (and keyboards) to hit corporations online.

From behind a computer screen users have been causing chaos every day for anti-piracy organizations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America), the UK's BPI (The British Phonographic Industry) and AIPLEX (an anti-piracy software solutions company) in response to the companies' "attacks against the popular torrent and file sharing site, the Piratebay (www.thepiratebay.org)."

Users from the popular 4chan message boards are said to be the ring leaders behind the DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks - or as they like to call it "Operation Payback" - but users from all over the web helped to cause website outages on the companies' websites on September 17, 18, 19 and 20.

"No lawyer, no injunction and no police force can stop these kind of attacks from happening and those carrying them out love the sense of power, the sense of payback they provide," wrote BitTorrent and file sharing blog Torrentfreak on September 19.

"How do you stop the collective man power of an entire Internet community?" asked security researcher PandaLabs. "You can seize equipment, hunt down the originators of the attack, but this is a group who has prided themselves in remaining anonymous, and have done so very well through the power of the Internet. This is the future of cyber protests."

http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/4chan-users-organize-ddos-against-mpaa/
http://torrentfreak.com/4chan-to-ddos-riaa-next-is-this-the-protest-of-the-future-100919/