Look, I appreciate the sentiment, but a website compromise spree is only going to give the lawmakers more ammunition with which to create more legislation designed to oppress in the name of protecting us from the bad guys.

Speaking as a parent of two kids, temper tantrums never work.

As far as I can tell, they're not telling anyone to deface sites - they are saying that you should black out your sites, and encourage others to do the same.

Wikipedia was/is considering doing something similar.

I may have misread the statement. I read the statement, addressed in part to "Hacktivists", reading:

> Replace the front page of every website we can with a simple, clear protest page.

Given past operating procedure, that seems like a call to action to deface every site you can get access to. If it's not, then I rescind my original comment.

I think the point is to generate more of a self-sposored focus of passive resistance; they're not the people threatening to pull sites offline in response to an anonymous report of a copyright violation. In fact, they really don't have the power to pull sites offline; neither does the USDOJ, but in the balance of things, only the latter has the power to cause real financial damage.

A random thought popped into my head around defacing sites. Rather than defacing the front pages of every website they can, they should change the 404 pages to say something like 'Content censored by SOPA legislation'.

Every time someone comes across an out of date link, or makes a typo they will think that they have been denied their request due to SOPA :)

The actual article makes no references to hacking or defacing websites. It explicitly references outreach and legal protest. The poster of this link clearly has an axe to grind, and based on the number of kneejerk responses he was successful.

Yes they did:

"Replace the front page of every website we can with a simple, clear protest page."

It's sort of ambiguous, but the sentence "Encourage friends, businesses, organizations, social media to take a stand along side us in the same way" implies voluntary cooperation. Without anything more explicit, it seems like they're talking about people voluntarily replacing their own front pages.

It's unfortunate how many of the comments in this thread are based on the title of the HN link to this article and not the actual article.

> The House Judiciary Committee is reconvening on the 21st of December. In short, we were lied to.

I think Anonymous is mistaken. The house judiciary committee's website indicates that the scheduled Dec 21st markup has actually been postponed [1].

[1] http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/mark_12152011.html

I would really rather Anonymous just stay out of this. Kind of taints the purity of the Anti-SOPA campaign and its never good to be associated with criminals, especially the ones who expose active duty undercover cops who have dedicated their lives to protect us. Just saying.

If google would make an anti-SOPA doodle for their homepage, that would be awesome, and effective too.

I am not sure whether vandals are any better than censors, but I'd rather we got rid of both of them.

I think there's enough information present to get a sense of the Tao between the two... vandals are, if not a complete straw man, at least an over-hyped source of genuine danger.

Personally, I'd take vandalism, and having to white-wash my storefront any day, over a government forcing my payment processors to shut me down by fiat. Frankly it's hard to imagine someone I'd sympathize with who wouldn't feel the same way; but if you're that person, now's the time to air reason on the side of order; a few weeks from now the cause will definitely be lost.

As the not-so-old adage goes, what is the difference between ordinary crooks and government crooks? At least you can call the cops on the ordinary crooks. So in that sense, yes, Anonymous is less likely to damage me or my property in way that is unrecoverable.

However, in the long run I don't think web vandalism is a pragmatic solution to the SOPA mess. Right now we have the opportunity to potentially defeat SOPA through legal, peaceful advocacy. Let's seize that opportunity and exploit it to the fullest before anyone considers engaging in criminal acts as part of an anti-SOPA campaign.

To speak your mind on SOPA, to disassociate yourself from those who endorse it, and to attempt to persuade your representatives are all well within your First Amendment rights. To damage or destroy the property of others toward the same goals is certainly not protected speech and I'd say a great deal of soul-searching would be required before one could justify going that far.

If SOPA's proponents fight dirty, why can't the opposition? I'm speaking pragmatically here. Unfortunately, institutions are amoral to the core, and respond best to power. Affecting change is not as easy as maintaining the moral high ground and repeating your position. People may need to feel the consequences of their actions.

There must be a way to use the public's fear as a way to carry this message. Why can't we fund commercials for each state that list the bill's supporters as trying to censor the Internet? Alternately, why not blackout some of the more important routers in protest? I hate that I'm suggesting we break things temporarily to get people's attention, but, what else is new, right?

The problem is marketing: how do we make people care?

I think we should break things. If I ran any US-facing websites I was the beneficiary of, I'd break them in a heartbeat. But it's not really the answer. The US congress is full of what appear (on youtube) to be cockroaches. They're not sycophants or nice guys who started well but somehow ended up favoring the deportation and torture of civilians, censorship of the internet, and negating your property rights in favor of multinationals that want to frack your pasture. You really should deal with the vermin the way Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, and now Syrians have dealt with theirs; we wouldn't be having this stupid conversation if the aliens that ran your country weren't a bunch of unrepentant nazis.

So now you pried my opinion outta me ;)

...and everything looks like a nail.

The proposed "OpBlackOut front page kit" for those who dont feel like downloading it --

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/115/anonymousq.png

I think this is very ill-conceived. If they want every website they can deface on the internet to get defaced, this will not prove anything.

Moreover, I would like to ask a question ... aren't only FOREIGN sites affected by SOPA's provisions for revoking DNS and cash flows? What exactly is a foreign site?

Aren't domestic sites already being seized and no one really cares?

Or am I mistaken?

I believe that this is the case. There are already provisions in place to deal with sites within the juridiction of the DoJ. The primary affect of the bill is to give powers to those 'injured' parties seeking recourse against those sites thought to be distributing copyrighted material. The bill ( from my reading, I could be mistaken ) grants no new power to deal with domestic sites beyond amending the definition used in conjunction with already existing laws. Specifically section 2319 of title 18 of U.S. Code.

This link seems to expire so hopefully linking to the google item will work...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...

If I may update Freud…

Anonymous seeks to deny the state the power to censor websites, not because Anonymous wants to do away with website censorship, but because they want to monopolize it.

I really don't like SOPA, but I also don't like being on the same side as these children. If they don't get their own way, they throw a tantrum by DoSing certain portions of the Internets.

I tend to agree.

Using a DDoS campaign to protest web censorship is just a bit more irony than I can handle.

No where in the article was there a call for a DDoS campaign. They're saying to be active in the protest of SOPA by putting it on your website and by encouraging other to do so as well: "Encourage friends, businesses, organizations, social media to take a stand along side us in the same way. Use/distribute the OpBlackOut material we’ve provided for this purpose, or make your own (but please try to be concise and indict SOPA specifically so the message is clear, unanimous and omnipresent)"

Yeah, reading it again I see the .zip file for download. I think the message would be more accessible if they had an example site that didn't didn't require one to download and unzip stuff onto your local drive. (hmm...)

Mmm...short of making a judgment on this, I think as the forces of order and chaos get pushed into closer-range conflict by the ideologues on either side, there are bound to be more violent confrontations until the matter's settled one way or another. Having it settled in favor of chaos would be to basically retain the status quo. Settling in favor of order would be an entirely different internet. Our impact in this, individually is limited. I'm not backing Anonymous by posting this, but I do think at some point we need to pick a side and support not just the logical, but also to some extent the emotional arguments that go along with it.