The Unworthy Gentleman said:
Anonymous. The power of the internet that no one dares to fight. I like them, they're who people seem to turn to when someone threatens the internet. Look at the original ACTA thread, I can assure you at l person said Anonymous would sort out the problem. Whether they succeed or not is something I wish to see.
Well, the reason why I'm not sure if they can on their own, is largely because of the money involved. Let's say that they managed to do something even more effective than they did to Australia. Rather than taking down their internet for most practical purposes for an hour, they manage to pretty much immobilize the online activities of every nation on that list. Obama is getting non-stop Goatse in his private e-mail, federal coorespondance from all those nations winds up publically posted on 4chan, nearly every goverment official is getting their e-mail spam bombed, ad infinium.
None of that would stop them from passing the law, they don't need the internet to do it, and a lot of what this law does regulates physical trade as much as anything. The internet stuff is only one aspect of it (albiet a big one), and all these companies have tons of money they stand to make.
There are limits to how long Anonymous could keep everything locked down if they got that far, and in the end that level of harassment might be embarassing but is nothing compared to the fortunes at stake.
The only way I could see Anonymous winning is if it could somehow rally enough people to take IRL action against the goverment. Put the politicians in fear of their jobs if they don't stop the law, or repeal it, and that might work, of course they also might not care if they are getting big enough industry pay outs where they figure they can just retire to some cabin somewhere to live in the lap of luxury with no internet or whatever.
I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but from where I'm sitting this law seems to be so big in a corperate and monetary sense, that like similar things throughout history the only way to stop it would be armed insurrection... and by this I don't mean terrorism, I mean a literal "people storm the capitol, remove the officials, and hold a new election" type insurrection.
I could be wrong about this, as I have a tendency to overreact when I'm angry. As a group Anonymous seems a lot smarter than I am though, so I am hoping they already thought all of this through (including what I'm talking about) and had a game plan in mind before they basically declared war on the western world.
