Anonymous vs Sony

I found this sort of "threat" posted April 24, 2011, 8:20 pm by Anonymous here:

Dear Greedy Motherfuckers SONY,
Congratulations! You are now receiving the attention of Anonymous. Your recent legal actions against fellow internet citizens, GeoHot and Graf_Chokolo have been deemed an unforgivable offense against free speech and internet freedom, primary sources of free lulz (and you know how we feel about lulz.)

You have abused the judicial system in an attempt to censor information about how your products work. You have victimized your own customers merely for possessing and sharing information, and continue to target those who seek this information. In doing so you have violated the privacy of thousands of innocent people who only sought the free distribution of information. Your suppression of this information is motivated by corporate greed and the desire for complete control over the actions of individuals who purchase and use your products, at least when those actions threaten to undermine the corrupt stranglehold you seek to maintain over copywrong, oops, “copyright”.

Your corrupt business practices are indicative of a corporate philosophy that would deny consumers the right to use products they have paid for, and rightfully own, in the manner of their choosing. Perhaps you should alert your customers to the fact that they are apparently only renting your products? In light of this assault on both rights and free expression, Anonymous, the notoriously handsome rulers of the internet, would like to inform you that you have only been “renting” your web domains. Having trodden upon Anonymous’ rights, you must now be trodden on.

If you disagree with the disciplinary actions against your private parts domains, then we trust you can also understand our motivations for these actions. You own your domains. You paid for them with your own money. Now Anonymous is attacking your private property because we disagree with your actions. And that seems, dare we say it, “wrong.” Sound familiar?

Let Anonymous teach you a few important lessons that your mother forgot:
1. Don’t do it to someone else if you don’t want it to be done to you.
2. Information is free.
3. We own this. Forever.
As for the “judges” and complicit legal entities who have enabled these cowards: You are no better than SONY itself in our eyes and remain guilty of undermining the well-being of the populace and subverting your judicial mandate.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not Forgive.
We do not Forget.
Expect us.

So the concept here is kind of interesting given that Sony has now lost about 100 million credit card and personal information records.

(BTW, Anonymous, two days after this, say that they did not do it here.  However, Wired yesterday reports here that the Anonymous "We are legion" tag line was found inside the Sony systems.)

Basically that when you purchase something you "own" it in the eyes of Anonymous - lock, stock and barrel - as it were. The idea, apparently, is that purchasing something, like a PlayStation/3, gives you leave to do whatever you like with it as its now your private property.

Now what people do not realize is that they are not "purchasing" the software on the system (see the Sony "Terms of Service" here).   Instead you are purchasing some form of "right" to make use of the software (and in the case of the PS/3 gaming network) access to the network.  (Software here includes images, music, programs, etc. - not just "software".)

Think "ski pass".

You buy a ski pass that allows you on the lift for a given day - you are not purchasing the lift, the ski slope, or anything else - those things are the property of the ski lodge.  You purchase a "right" to do something, not the something itself.  Similarly when you buy a book (or CD or anything similar) you do not purchase unlimited rights to do whatever you like with the content of the book or music - only the right to own the book for the purposes of, well, using it as a book.

Copyright law, which has been around for some 300 hundred or so years (see Wikipedia), is generally used for this purpose.  The original author owns the material (whether words or music or software).  Others, such as a book publisher, licenses the rights to reproduce the material in exchange for a royalty - that is a payment to the original author.

The idea is that for each book the publisher creates, for example, the author is paid, let's say, one dollar.  Now if I were to purchase a book and then make copies and sell them I would be bypassing the copyright of the book and the license of the publisher.  I would make all the dollars and the original author would get nothing.

As time has progressed things like software became governed (by law and court decisions both in the US and internationally) by a more sophisticated type of license agreement call the "shrink wrap" license.  The idea here is that when you buy something like a software package it comes in a sealed box.  By opening the box you implicitly agree to the license inside.

Today the box has been done away with entirely and we now have the "I Agree" button - same concept.  By "Agreeing" you agree to the terms of use of the network or whatever software you buy.

So it seems that Anonymous has missed the point of the Sony Playstation - purchasing the physical box does not entitle you to do whatever you like with the software on the box.  Certainly you can do whatever you like with the box "in private, i.e., not connected to a network" - you can smash it up, make love to it, eat it, whatever you like.

You can probably even make videos of this for Youtube.

But once you start messing about with the software on the box you are entering the world of the "Terms of Service" because by purchasing the box you have no doubt somewhere along the line agree to those terms (most likely when the box first turns on it displays some sort of information about this).

Now being an old geezer in the software industry for thirty some years I have seen the progression of all of this licensing stuff.

My guess is that the kind folks at Anonymous are all about 25 years old and have only been involved in software, as it were, for the last ten or so.  Of course during this time most of their influences regarding the owner ship of intellectual property (which is what the concept of copyright is about) has probably been limited to things like limewire.com and BitTorrent - sites for the "sharing" of content.

These sites rely on the notion that what you purchase, say a song or Adobe Creative Suite CS5, is yours without limit, i.e., not constrained by copyright or license.  Hence the notion of freely distributing copies to anyone you know or don't know.

Now certainly there are cases where this is allowed, for example, copies of Linux or Fedora released under a GNU license which allows copying.

But most things owned by businesses are not licensed that way.

My guess is that Anonymous, if they are involved, or the true perpetrators of the Sony thefts who ever they are, will have a chance to go to school on copyright law if they are caught or apprehended by law enforcement.  Especially since Sony will be bowing before Congress soon to explain the lose of 100 million user records.