Keysharri Gill

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Wiki Article #1: Past Time: Re-Encountering Everquest

Wiki Article #2: Copyright and Intelectual Property

Explanation of Anonymous, SOPA, and IP

Anonymous

Anonymous is a loosely associated group hacktivists. This group originated in 2003 on the image board 4chan. Anonymous, also known as ‘Anons’ became know for a series of well publicized hacks and distributed denial-of-service attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites (Anonymous, 2013). Anonymous hackers took on a variety of protests and retaliation actions against anti-digital piracy campaigns by motion picture and recording industry associations. Among these attacks, Anonymous also attacked government agencies of the United States, Isreal, Tunisia, Uganda and many others; child pornography sites; copyright protection agencies; the Westboro Baptist Church and other corporations, such as PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and Sony (Anonymous, 2013). Anonymous hackers have publicly supported WikiLeaks and the Occupy movement. Anonymous hackers are easily recognizable by their Guy Fawkes masks. These masks were the hackers’ way of remaining faceless, nameless, and voiceless.

SOPA

With the increasing use of the Internet, online piracy became more and more popular and easier to perform. Online piracy has been a pressing issue for law enforcement, as it is hard to traffic and track down those offenders. Because of this difficulty to enforce copyright and piracy laws, Congress decided to pass SOPA. SOPA, also know as that Stop Online Piracy Act, was passed by the House of Representatives to help law enforcement deal with and attempt to stop online copyright infringement. This Act authorizes the attorney general to seek a court order against any US-directed foreign internet site committing or facilitating online piracy to require the owner, or the site if the owner cannot be located, to stop any further activities resulting in intellectual property offenses under the federal criminal code (Harvey, 2012). SOPA also established an additional 2-step process that allows any intellectual property right holder affected by a US-directed site infringement the right to require such site to be notified and suspended (Harvey, 2012). This Act expands the criminal offenses of trafficking, as well as increased the penalties for people charged with this crime.

PROTECT IP (PIPA)

Congress also passed PROTECT IP to combat intellectual property theft. PROTECT IP stands for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellecutal Property Act. The Senate passed PROTECT IP in 2011. The PROTECT IP Act is actually a revised version of the failed COICA Act; also know as Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. PROTECT IP is also very similar to the previously stated SOPA Act (PROTECT IP, 2013). This act authorizes the attorney general to commence action against a registrant of a nondomestic domain name (NDN) used by an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities (ISDIA). This act also allows the court to issue a temporary restraining order against the NDN if it was used within the United States to access an ISDIA directing business to U.S. residents and harming U.S. intellectual property right holders (Harvey, 2012).

How Groups of Hackers Relate to Movements to Protect Online Privacy

One related movement to protect online privacy was the incident when a group of several Anons hacked HBGary Federal’s server because the CEO, Aaron Barr, claimed to have discovered the leader of Anonymous. He proposed that the group had around 30 members and 10 primary members who handled the important decisions (Norton, 2012). He was setting up a conference to share his research and results with the public. Anonymous did not like this very much because they found it to be a violation of their privacy and for this reason Anonymous struck back. They hacked HBGard Federal’s Server and recovered more than 71,000 emails and other internal documents, as well as defacing all of the websites (Norton, 2012). Anonymous warned HBGary that they would release the emails if Barr released the names of the Anons members. The founder and president of HBGary met with members of Anonymous, where Anonymous proposed a deal to them to not release their emails and documents if they fired Barr and made a contribution in his name to Bradley Manning’s legal defense. The founder and president of HBGary turned down the deal, which led to the release of their emails by Anonymous.

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is a former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked details of top-secret American and British government surveillance programs to the press in June 2013 (Edward Snowden, 2013). The Federal government Department of Justice requested that there be a criminal investigation of Snowden’s actions. Then on June 14, 2013, prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage and theft of government property. Some members of Congress believed that Snowden should have immunity and actually did the public a favor because those actions of the government were unconstitutional and illegal because it was a huge invasion of citizens’ privacy. On the other hand, members of the House of Representatives believed that Snowden was a traitor and put Americans at risk (Edward Snowden, 2013). Although this may have been unconstitutional for him to expose this surveillance program, Snowden felt that it was a violation of citizens’ privacy and that it need to be brought to the public’s attention.

Works Cited

Anonymous (Group). (2013, June 22). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 24, 2013, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(Group)

Edward Snowden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved June 24, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

Harvey, J. (2012, January 17). A Technical Examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP. blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit. Retrieved June 27, 2013, from http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html

Norton, Q. (2012, January 11). 2011: The Year Anonymous Took On Cops, Dictators and Existential Dread | Threat Level | Wired.com. wired.com . Retrieved June 27, 2013, from http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/anonymous-dicators-existential-dread/all/1

PROTECT IP Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2013, May 8). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved June 24, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act