A Brief Internet Skirmish

A major issue going on these days which you have (hopefully) heard about are the controversial bills SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). If passed these bills would essentially allow the US Government to take down any site suspected of hosting pirated content without due process. Sure it sounds nice, but the bills are worded so poorly that it means they could take down such major sites such as Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; furthermore they could use it as a way to censor any website saying things they dislike.

This week the subject took a...war-like turn.

Part 1: Wikipedia (and at least 7000 other sites) blacked out or otherwise advertised the dangers of SOPA passing, in an attempt to spread the word to more common internet browsers. This was, ironically, called an "abuse of power" by those who support the bill. The thing is: It worked.
- http://www.thestar.com/iphone/news/world/article/1117925--sopa-protest-works-key
A huge amount of people called their representatives and encouraged to pull their support, and a very good number did.
- http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/

Part 2: The FBI raided and shut down Megaupload, a popular file-sharing website, and charged the founders with criminal copyright infringement. Now I'll be the first to say that Megaupload isn't exactly the bastian of human morality, and that there was a lot of pirated stuff on there, it was still a mostly-legitimate business that was shut down with very little due process. But regardless of the site's intentions, the timing of this shutdown is very suspicious indeed. Which leads to...

Part 3: Anonymous goes batshit.
- http://www.periscopepost.com/2012/01/megaupload-shut-down-anonymous-targets-government-and-entertainment-websites-in-revenge/
Oh Anonymous, those famous hacktivists with their Guy Fawkes masks and their Borg-like demeanor. It should be pointed out that there have been many times where they did a lot of good, and their demand for free speech and justice does outweigh all of the suspicious stuff that they do, but this rebuttal, which came hours after Megaupload's death, is being compared to the second shot in "the first cyber war". I wouldn't go that far, but it looks like things are going to be very interesting in the next few weeks as SOPA and PIPA make the rounds...

Wait, let's just make that SOPA making the rounds.
- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/reid-shelves-protect-ip-act-in-response-to-recent-events.ars