I will confess to some ignorance in the exact operations of Anonymous. All I have ever seen them "do" is a bunch of DDoS attacks and assumed for the most part that was all they took credit for. If what you say is true then I will concede the point.

And I actually chuckled at the thread title. I can object to something and find it amusing at the same time. I am just that awesome.

It doesn't matter what name you use. SonyOps, Anonymous, whatever. The problem is people talking about them as an organization with "members", when it's neither an organization nor does it have members...

Praising or criticizing Anonymous as an organization is pointless. Sometimes people can organize in groups to do things as "Anonymous", but it's just a temporary thing and does not represent the true "Anonymous".

However, you can praise or criticize the idea, because that's what it is. I interpret it as the idea that anyone can do their part in Internet activism or hacktivism against actual organizations which attempt to suppress freedom of information.

One person can't DDoS anything other than a maybe a personal media server. Admittedly I have always been left with the impression it was just one guy who tricked a ton of people into willing instaling a slave client on their computer (fucking brialliant move by the way) and then just started fucking with companies he dislikes.

Anonymous is whatever its individual members do. Wikipedia has a pretty good run down of its major antics. And sure, because someone says "I am Anonymous" doesn't mean they should be held legally or morally responsible for the actions of some other person who says "I am Anonymous" but that just kind of lays bare the silliness of the whole situation. I can only hope that the hammer comes down hard on those responsible, and the rest of these kids will be inspired to rethink their stance on anarchy.

I don't think there's any trickery, those people who ran a DDOS client (which AFAIK does not install itself permanently btw) were doing so knowing exactly what it does.

Those DDOS groups are not a real organization either, they're temporary in nature. Anyone can join or leave at any time without informing anyone else.

Alright, well I didn't mean to give you the impression that I think of them as a real network or organization or anything like that. I understand that there is no Anonymous per se, and that people come and go as they please and only do things in the name of Anonymous "for teh lulz" or whatever nonsense.

No one with half a brain should ever instal a slave program on their computer. Their has to be either trickery, or brain damage involved. No matter how seemingly innocent the variation of the program might be. It can cause all kinds of problems for both your system, and legally should a company decide to piss away millions trying to prosecute any of those involved. Of course the individuals would get a slap on the wrist at best, but the criminal liability still remains.

You are also playing semantics games here. Is my job not a real organization? I can leave at anytime without informing anyone else. No problems really. What about campus Anime/Debate/Port/Whatever clubs? Come and go as you please with no questions asked. Just because an organization uses cells, and has a free form membership does not make it any less real. They absolutely are real. You might not want to attach the disconnected cells actions together, but anyone joining the cells wants that association. Legally they cannot shar responsibility, but technically they are responsible for everything that came before once they assume the name by choice.

Did you ever download a freeware game or application? You also don't necessarily know everything these programs are doing, yet many people with half a brain do download them. Even official software can contain malware, ironically some of it has come from Sony itself in the form of a rootkit on audio CDs.

I'm not playing semantics, I'm stating that something can't be an organization when there is no way to join it or leave it. By any definition of organization, that alone prevents it from being one. Yes, you can leave your job without telling anyone, but you most certainly cannot get a job at a company without the company knowing.

I don't think I can make my view any clearer...

I see you skipped the other examples I gave. Care to address them or just going to pick the example you think best suits your purposes? Book clubs can be the same way in many areas. Hell we had an unofficial club that turned official for minor funding video game club on my campus. Consisted entirely of anyone who walked through the room we were in and wanted to play the games we had on. Anonymous is a collective of cells, and there is a real organization there. They choose to associate themselves with all past actions using the name.

Also, I check what I download and install. Anything I don't fully trust, or can't find detailed information on goes to a virtual machine first to see whats what. Once I have proven its safe then it gets installed. That is still not remotely the same as intentionally installing malware though. This is like someone knowing the rootkit was on the cd, and then using it for the specific purpose of getting the rootkit there so someone else can use it in a malicious way.

What book clubs let you take stuff without even looking at you? I don't see anything different about the other examples you gave, that's why I skipped them.

The burden of proof is on you to prove that there's an organization which encompasses all of Anonymous. Good luck with that...

Your virtual machine won't necessarily stop the software from doing what it wants to do, especially if your virtual machine has network access. It can spread viruses on your LAN, etc. I'm assuming you don't reverse engineer all the software you download, so you're still at risk even if you run it on a VM first.

I don't think malware means what you think it means. If a program does exactly what it advertises and no more, it's not malware even if it does stuff that other people wouldn't like.