 "Anonymous' June 9 protest plans underway")
Even as you’re reading this, popular hacktivist group, Anonymous is proceeding rather quickly with finalizing things for their scheduled June 9 peaceful protests against web censorship, which it plans to carry out across several cities in the country, which include Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Indore, among others on the aforementioned date. On the group’s official blog page, the June 9 schedule has been put down, along with a set of directives, which the group claims are a must and should be adhered to, during the peaceful protest. The directives, as mentioned on the blog, include:
- The protest is a Non-Violent one.
- Protesters may not use vehicles to protest as this may cause accidents, please keep vehicles out of the protest crowd.
- One shall not keep any harmful items like weapons, stones etc with oneself.
- Those who can wear the Guy Fawkes Mask. Printable version is available on the web.
- Please bring placards, banners etc that you can prepare so for the cause.
- For whom it is possible bring cameras and record events. Use your smart phone to stream it online using ustream. This will give us proof if something bad is attempted at the protest.
- IF POLICE BLOCKS THE WAY, STAY 50Mts MIN AWAY. DO NOT CONFRONT THEM.
- Fire or burning at all of any figures or material is to NOT be done.
- Please hand over anyone who causes violence to the police.
- Protest well, our future may depend on it.
June 9 plans underway..
Interestingly, the Guy Fawkes Mask written about in the directive is up for sale across eBay and Amazon. The group have also listed down the locations across several cities, wherein they plan to carry out their protests. Some locations, however according to the mention on the blog still need to be zeroed on. To view details on the location, click here.
Early this month, file-sharing websites, like ThePirateBay and some others like Vimeo were brought to their knees when all major ISPs across the nation went on a ‘torrent sites blocking spree’, in a bid to curb online piracy. A John Doe order, dated 29th of March, 2012 filed with the Madras High court by a Chennai-based firm, Copyright Labs had reportedly triggered off the entire incident and the issue at the heart of it was the release of two movies, Dhammu (Telugu) and 3 (Tamil). This move towards web censorship by the owners of the content did not go down too well with the popular hacktivist group, Anonymous and in their response to the block of the torrent sites, the group hacked the official websites of the Supreme Court and that of the All India Congress Committee, and Reliance, soon after.
Web censorship has been a topic of debate in recent times. The gravity of the issue came to light only recently when incidents of hacking in retaliation to web censorship became a frequent occurrence. With the government on one side taking an increasingly active stance in tightening the reins on the way we access content on web, groups like Anonymous are on the other side citing free speech. Although, reams of media space have already been dedicated to explaining the effects of piracy on the revenues of the industry surrounding it, the issue itself continues to grow complex with each passing day. Stay tuned to this space for information on this topic.
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