Crowdwar post getting some traction

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Steve Hall over at AdRants picked up on my post about Anonymous and the anti-Scientology movement online, and this got picked up by Ian Schafer over at IanSchafer.com. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out of this. I've gotten some interesting comments. Digg this morning pointed to a new Anonymous video press release. And the discussion continues. One thing I wanted to address was Ian's comment from his post:

Free communication should never be limited — but we must thoroughly understand all methods of communication if we expect to be able to separate information from disinformation.

I'd argue that, despite all the misinformation it helps to perpetuate, an unrestricted Internet makes it easier to separate information from disinformation. The reason why this is goes hand in hand with all I've written about the Internet as Marketplace of Ideas on steroids. And I think the easiest way to understand it is to look at how a site like Snopes.com debunks common myths.

Snopes just happens to be a site with a particularly good reputation for debunking myths and confirming the questionable. Whenever someone starts a rumor about Bill Gates giving $1 to charity for every forwarded e-mail, Snopes spreads the word about it being bogus.

The truth of the matter, though, is that every Internet user can be a Snopes.com. The thing that is unique about the Internet is that it leaves tracks for others to follow. So, for instance, when there's Scientology misinformation afoot, a single Internet user can construct arguments to debunk the disinformation. Social news sites and the like can help do the rest. The Marketplace of Ideas tends to be self-correcting, as those with the time and inclination refute or confirm individual facts (see Fisking) and leave tracks for others to follow (blog posts, comments, tweets, whatever).

Where things start to get hairy, IMHO, is when people or organizations who are losing the battle choose legal threats or other forms of censorship to undermine the facts. If I had to guess, I would say this is why Anonymous has an 'all bets are off' approach to taking out Scientology. Scientology is trying to operate outside the system as well as abuse it.

I continue to be fascinated by a couple things:

  1. The continued support from participants in social news aggregation sites. This goes well beyond the latest and greatest Internet meme.
  2. The notion of the distributed strategy. If Anonymous truly has no leadership, it coulda fooled me. It's unbelievable how well-coordinated all the pieces are. You have people hacking, Digging, producing videos, participating in meatspace protests. That's a lot of moving parts.

So yeah, I'm still watching this carefully.

Internet War

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This whole thing about a distributed group called "Anonymous" targeting the Church of Scientology is fascinating to me. I think when this is all over, people are going to study this in preparation for modern cyberwarfare. In case you're unfamiliar with the declaration of war and subsequent strikes against Scientology, here's a synopsis:

A NOTORIOUS group of internet users known as "Anonymous" have taken down a Scientology website after declaring war on the church.

Anonymous, whose membership included hackers, has begun a "third wave" of attacks in the week-old operation dubbed “Project Chanology”.

The group has already flooded Scientology servers, preventing access to at least one of the church's websites.

Chief executive of the 7safe.com security firm Alan Phillips told Sky News in the UK that the group may have used a denial of service attack to take the Scientology website out of service.

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The group also claimed to have downloaded many of the church’s “secret documents” – which can now be downloaded from popular file-sharing sites.

We might be witnessing the opening salvos of the first widely popular "crowdwar."

Make no mistake, what the group that calls itself Anonymous is doing is terrorism. They're using a blend of legal and illegal tactics to bring Scientology down. Obviously, the DOS attacks are illegal. Posting copyrighted, private material is illegal, too. Funny thing is, I find myself rooting for Anonymous even though their tactics are deplorable.

And I'm not alone. A simple visit to Digg, Fark, reddit, or pretty much any of the social bookmarking/social news sites will demonstrate that the word is spreading quickly and that many Internet users are behind Anonymous all the way.

I'll not defend Scientology, because their tactics are just as scummy and I look at this as Xenu getting his comeuppance, but if you think about this situation in the context of political systems, it's obvious that we're heading toward a world where tyranny of the majority is reality. In other words, organizational or individual rights won't matter as much as pleasing the masses such that they don't openly attack your assets in illegal ways. Call it hacker rule if you will.

So far, we've seen denial of service attacks to take Scientology websites offline, leaked internal materials, plenty of war declarations and "rah-rah" support videos on YouTube, widespread popularizing of anti-Scientology stories through social news sites, and a lot this bubbling up to the mainstream media. Near as I can tell, there's no unifying strategy, just a lot of people participating in whatever way they're comfortable, whether it's Digging a story, posting to blogs and online forums, or working with the hackers.

Mark my words, this is a significant social event and people are going to be studying it for years to come.

Catching up on podcasts

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A while back, I had a problem with my iPod. It's a long story. Suffice it to say that I corrected it, wiped iTunes clean and started over. So I lost all my podcast subscriptions. Old episodes remained on my iPod, but iTunes lost all my subscriptions. So basically, I had a bunch of old Across the Sounds, outdated ze franks and time warp Rocketbooms with Amanda Congdon. I started getting those old subscriptions back in order (one of those things you always mean to do, but forget). And then I started listening to some new things. Among them, DishyMix, which is Susan Bratton's show. Cool stuff - I subscribed, but then also downloaded some back episodes. Last night on the train, I listened to the Brad Berens episode and the Doug Weaver/Scot McLernon episode. Any there are many more I want to catch up on, including Joseph Carrabis, C.C. Chapman, John Durham and a lot more. This show is really fun - I've worked with Brad Berens for years now, and I don't think I knew he was also a comic book guy (which is something I need to talk to him about). Let's just say I think it's really cool that someone went out and put together a sort of "Behind the Marketer" type of show where we get to hear not only about how people in our industry make a living, but what they do when they get some downtime.

I'm also looking forward to catching up with what Jaffe has been doing. I like Joseph and what he does so much that I feel guilty about admitting that I've fallen off his subscription radar.