Anonymous Released Personal Information Of Media Heads

As many of you know, we are not supporters of the bill working its way through Congress known as the Stop Online Piracy Act. Regular listeners to our podcast are well aware of our views, but it seems that the “hacktivist” group Anonymous has taken their fight directing to the people that are currently behind the bill. They have released personal information about the heads of major media companies and encourage people to call, email, and fax these people.

While Anonymous hasn’t officially called on people to threaten or cause bodily harm to these people, some people have made threats against the heads of such companies like Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, and Sumner M. Redstone, who controls Viacom and the CBS Corporation, according to The New York Times.

The project started by Anon called “Operation Hiroshima” began on Jan. 1, when “the group dropped a trove of documents on Web sites that facilitate anonymous publishing, like Pastebin.com and Scribd.com.” Many of these sites were used in protest movements like Occupy Wall Street.The released documents contained contact information from companies like NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment to the Walt Disney Company.

One of the fortunate things to come out of this, unlike the attack on Sony last year, they have not released personal information like home addresses and where their children would go to school. While no one wants the bill that has quickly become dubbed the bill to institute “The Great Firewall of America”, we should use threats of children or family as a way to gain support. As Albert Einstein once said, “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

Unlike the companies that have billions to support or fight against the legislation, the people that it truly hurts don’t have the money to fight but they have taken to the last bastion of freedom to proclaim their dissatisfaction against the bill: the internet. However, with the broadly worded legislation in the bill it would be easy for the government to shut down any type of opposition voice.

Many technological companies have been spending millions to fight legislation that would give the government greater control over what we can search and see online. Google and Yahoo are claiming that greater government control would stifle growth and lead to censorship. In the end, everyone needs to take a stand against greater government control and remember what country we are supposed to be living in. When was the last time a government run program worked out for everyone involved?