Anonymous Denies New Sony Allegations of PSN Involvement

[ReiverCorrupter]

But there's only certain people on the IRC. There has to be a group in order for there to be a consensus. If every person in the world is Anonymous then it's pointless to talk about Anonymous and Anonymous is both responsible for everything and nothing.

Now you are getting it.

Then why are we talking about Anonymous? Nothing has changed since before "Anonymous" existed. The internet is exactly the same. Oh no wait, now there's a group of people who do organized things and call themselves Anonymous. It's self defeating. Everyone was already Anonymous before. If they want to be truly Anonymous then they should never meet or talk together in the IRCs and never plan anything. The internet was anonymous already.

Even someone who doesn't own a computer is Anonymous. Kim Jong Il is Anonymous. Fascists who wish to control the internet and the freedom of information are Anonymous.

Yes

No. Kim Jong Il is Kim Jong Il. The very fact that I can name him means that he isn't Anonymous.

But the fact of the matter is that there is a group of a finite amount of the people on the internet that reach group decisions and make organized efforts to do things, and they are an organization with a name.

Yes and no, think of it as an open party, where people come in do stuff and then leave, the party keeps going on because there are people in it, but the original group either left a long time ago or dwindled to a couple of people

Do you have a self if within every seven years all of your cells have been replaced? Where is identity? Is it some metaphysical entity supervening on transitory patterns of matter and energy?

I get their whole mentality, but no: there is a difference between the group that organizes hacks on things like Sony and HBGary, and the random person surfing the net. You can call them both Anonymous, but you can't change the fact that Anonymous does have a central group of members, amorphous and anonymous though they may be individually.

Again, there is no central group of members, I think you might confusing the people who did the initial attack, with the people that hacked and stole the credit card info.

The latter may have been part of the first group, but that doesnt necessarily mean the first group is wholy responsible for the actions of the rest.

In this case responsibility fall solely on the people did the hacking, which are both anon and not anon at the same time.

I hope this wasnt too confusing.

No, it isn't confusing, it's just misguided. First off, I know that the initial attack against Sony was claimed by Anon and they then stopped, and I don't think this new attack was done by online members coordinating as such through the Anonymous channels as though they were Anonymous. Although it is more than a possibility that they have each individually participated in the Anonymous channels at one point or another.

I realize that the members of Anonymous are polythetic: they come and go, have different values and there is no membership roster. However, they are still defined by their goals because that's what determines whether someone will come onto the IRC and whether other 'members' will actually go along with it. I've heard that people come on and say "let's attack so-and-so because they suck" to which the other people online reply that Anon isn't their personal army. So when that person goes on to attack that site anyway, they obviously aren't acting via Anonymous, they're just acting anonymously. So while Anon cannot be defined as a specific set of people, it is still an organization defined by its goals, broad though they may be.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

[EDIT]: *Sigh* of course my last post only registers once I make another one.

But there's only certain people on the IRC. There has to be a group in order for there to be a consensus. If every person in the world is Anonymous then it's pointless to talk about Anonymous and Anonymous is both responsible for everything and nothing.

Now you are getting it.

Even someone who doesn't own a computer is Anonymous. Kim Jong Il is Anonymous. Fascists who wish to control the internet and the freedom of information are Anonymous.

Yes

But the fact of the matter is that there is a group of a finite amount of the people on the internet that reach group decisions and make organized efforts to do things, and they are an organization with a name.

Yes and no, think of it as an open party, where people come in do stuff and then leave, the party keeps going on because there are people in it, but the original group either left a long time ago or dwindled to a couple of people

I get their whole mentality, but no: there is a difference between the group that organizes hacks on things like Sony and HBGary, and the random person surfing the net. You can call them both Anonymous, but you can't change the fact that Anonymous does have a central group of members, amorphous and anonymous though they may be individually.

Again, there is no central group of members, I think you might confusing the people who did the initial attack, with the people that hacked and stole the credit card info.

The latter may have been part of the first group, but that doesnt necessarily mean the first group is wholy responsible for the actions of the rest.

In this case responsibility fall solely on the people did the hacking, which are both anon and not anon at the same time.

I hope this wasnt too confusing.

Hmm... the internet ate my last post. The short version is that if there's no point in talking about Anonymous, then why are people calling themselves Anonymous? Did the internet change when people started calling themselves Anonymous? Of course it did because in spite of claims that everyone is Anonymous, there is still a loosely organized group that acts as Anonymous. Sure they don't have a member roster, and the people change from day to day and action to action, but I'm afraid it's still an organization united by the goals of its members. Not everyone on the internet attacked HBGary or Sony. I appreciate their philosophy that everyone on the internet should act anonymously for the greater good, but they themselves are still an organization.

Anonymous is just what happens when a group of people get together in a certain IRC and decide to do something for a certain reason. But when a random person is just surfing for porn on the internet, they are not acting as a member of Anonymous. They might (and hopefully are for their sakes) anonymous, but they aren't Anonymous.

 

[boag]

[EDIT]: *Sigh* of course my last post only registers once I make another one.

Hmm... the internet ate my last post. The short version is that if there's no point in talking about Anonymous, then why are people calling themselves Anonymous? Did the internet change when people started calling themselves Anonymous? Of course it did because in spite of claims that everyone is Anonymous, there is still a loosely organized group that acts as Anonymous. Sure they don't have a member roster, and the people change from day to day and action to action, but I'm afraid it's still an organization united by the goals of its members. Not everyone on the internet attacked HBGary or Sony. I appreciate their philosophy that everyone on the internet should act anonymously for the greater good, but they themselves are still an organization.

Anonymous is just what happens when a group of people get together in a certain IRC and decide to do something for a certain reason. But when a random person is just surfing for porn on the internet, they are not acting as a member of Anonymous. They might (and hopefully are for their sakes) anonymous, but they aren't Anonymous.

Yes and no, let me simplify.

There are several central hub sites called chans where anonymous congregates to discuss all sorts of things and troll each other.

When the news of sony suing the dude that hacked the PS3 came out, the majority of the anon mass did not like it.

Splinter groups from the main mass congregate into a smaller group of anons and developed ways to attack the PSN.

They then distributed this information to the main group whose strenght relies solely on numbers.

Now thanks to the work of this small group, a security gap was formed, Some anons exploited that gap to hack into the PSN and take the info.

So in reality it probably was a group of anon that attacked and hacked the info, but it is not certain if they are part of the main group or not.

Does this explanation seem better?

 

[Low Key]

How exactly dose Anonymous make a "press release" anyways?
An unmarked letter to a newspaper or something? How does anyone even know when it comes from their official leaders?

AnonOps [http://anonops.net] is where operations are discussed and AnonNews [http://www.anonnews.org] is where press releases are posted. Both sites are publicly available.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

[EDIT]: *Sigh* of course my last post only registers once I make another one.

Hmm... the internet ate my last post. The short version is that if there's no point in talking about Anonymous, then why are people calling themselves Anonymous? Did the internet change when people started calling themselves Anonymous? Of course it did because in spite of claims that everyone is Anonymous, there is still a loosely organized group that acts as Anonymous. Sure they don't have a member roster, and the people change from day to day and action to action, but I'm afraid it's still an organization united by the goals of its members. Not everyone on the internet attacked HBGary or Sony. I appreciate their philosophy that everyone on the internet should act anonymously for the greater good, but they themselves are still an organization.

Anonymous is just what happens when a group of people get together in a certain IRC and decide to do something for a certain reason. But when a random person is just surfing for porn on the internet, they are not acting as a member of Anonymous. They might (and hopefully are for their sakes) anonymous, but they aren't Anonymous.

Yes and no, let me simplify.

There are several central hub sites called chans where anonymous congregates to discuss all sorts of things and troll each other.

When the news of sony suing the dude that hacked the PS3 came out, the majority of the anon mass did not like it.

Splinter groups from the main mass congregate into a smaller group of anons and developed ways to attack the PSN.

They then distributed this information to the main group whose strenght relies solely on numbers.

Now thanks to the work of this small group, a security gap was formed, Some anons exploited that gap to hack into the PSN and take the info.

So in reality it probably was a group of anon that attacked and hacked the info, but it is not certain if they are part of the main group or not.

Does this explanation seem better?

That sounds about right. Like I said somewhere else, the people who did it could also be members of Anon, but that doesn't mean they can't also act on their own or in splinter groups. I'd only count something as an 'official' action (and that's a bad term to use with Anonymous) if almost everyone on Anon's sites agrees and the masses are behind the action. Since it's a numbers game the numbers are what matter. At least that's better than trying to identify whether something is Anonymous or not by the motives behind it, which are schizophrenic at best.