The Anonymous web protests are the Internet equivalent of a mass demonstration. It’s a mistake to call them hacking (playful cleverness) or cracking (security breaking). The LOIC program that protesters use is prepackaged, so no cleverness is needed to run it, and it does not break any computer’s security. The protesters have not tried to take control of Amazon’s web site, or extract any data from MasterCard. They enter through the site’s front door, and it can’t cope with so many visitors.

Calling these protests “DDOS attacks” is misleading too. A DDOS attack properly speaking is done with thousands of “zombie” computers. Someone broke the security of those computers (often with a virus) and took remote control of them, then rigged them up as a “botnet” to do in unison whatever he directs (in this case, to overload a server). By contrast, the Anonymous protesters have generally directed their own computers to support the protest.

The proper comparison is with the crowds that descended last week (December 2010) on Topshop stores. They didn’t break into the stores or take any goods from them, but they sure caused a nuisance for the owner, who also “advises” the UK government — presumably to let him continue extracting money without paying tax.

I wouldn’t like it one bit if my store (supposing I had one) were the target of a large protest. Amazon and MasterCard don’t like it either, and their clients were annoyed. Those who hoped to buy at Topshop on the day of the protest may have been annoyed too.

The Internet cannot function if web sites are frequently blocked by crowds, just as a city cannot function if its streets are constantly full of protests. But before you support a crackdown on Internet protests, consider what they are protesting: in the Internet, users have no rights. As the Wikileaks case has demonstrated, what we do in the Internet, we do on sufferance.

In the physical world, we have the right to print and sell books. Anyone trying to stop us would need to go to court. That right is weak in the UK (consider superinjunctions), but at least it exists. However, to set up a web site we need the cooperation of a domain name company, an ISP, and often a hosting company, any of which can be pressured to cut us off.

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