Some originally thought that congress was postponing their hearing of the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) bill until after the first of the year, but more recent news points to Dec 21 as the day they will continue their discussion on the bill. This is one of two bills that would give the government and corporations far more control of the Internet than they need. I hope neither of the bills pass.
Now that I've established that I'm opposed to the bills, let's talk about the latest threat from the hacker group "Anonymous" which has threatened Congress in regard to SOPA. They have claimed that Congress "will pay" if they pass the bill.
Usually this means that they will do something minor to a website and make huge claims about what they actually accomplished. Anonymous has been a lot of bark and no bite for quite some time. Half of me wants to think that this is some government conspiracy meant to instill fear in the populous in regard to online "hackers". By that I mean that Anonymous is actually agents of the government used as a fear tactic on the average citizen.
The existence of Anonymous adds fuel to the fire when it comes to censoring the Internet. So whether it's the government in disguise or actual anonymous citizens, it is detrimental to freedom on the internet.
Anonymous closely resembles what it claims to be opposed to. They are trying to dictate Internet law themselves. They are not the solution to the problem. They only add to it. I'm not claiming that they are the government in disguise, because there's no proof of that. However, their actions and threats are only adding support to position that they are trying to "fight".
For more information check out http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/111216/anonymous-hackers-sopa-vote-congress?fullpage=
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