Anon: Sony attacks dropped, PSN users were “butthurt”

A VG247 interview has confirmed that Anonymous has dropped action against Sony, as well as branding PSN users "selfish" and "butthurt" over their anger at the service's recent outage.

Anon was speaking as covert group LulzSec this week brought down EVE Online, League of Legends, Minecraft and The Escapist with DDOS attacks, and as Anonymous-related arrests took place in both Spain and Turkey.

The escalation in attacks against games companies comes in a year specifically marked by a major PSN breach which compromised user data and took services down for weeks. For a complete overview of 2011 hacking and DDOS stories, hit this.

Here's the interview in full. These questions were answered in response to a VG247 request on Twitter yesterday, by a person who replied with the following: "You said you were looking to speak to members of Anonymous. I cannot speak for Anonymous, or as Anonymous, but I can speak as Anon."

VG247: Does Anonymous approve of LulzSec's disruptive actions against MMOs and other games companies "for the lulz"?

Anon: There is no support for Lulz Security's actions of disrupting MMO's 'for the lulz.' Anonymous, as a group, is about activism in defence of certain rights, and the lulz that can be had while doing this. This doesn't follow or achieve this. Though, individual Anons are free to do what they want.

Has Anonymous finished action against Sony?

We are no longer attacking Sony. There is nothing more to gained right now from continued attacks except unpopularity.

Surely Anonymous should advocate legal changes that protect the freedom of hackers and the neutrality of the internet instead of taking actions that make companies lock down tighter to stay solvent?

Anonymous supports and advocates anything that would free the internet and allow it to stay an open uncensored network. This is why we opposed ProtectIP so greatly and why we laughed at Tennessee's attempt to ban everything.

Whether we existed or not companies would continue to tighten up online security, and demand laws to protect their websites. All we do is exploit their failings, and demand the law does not act in the favour of the corporations, all to ensure transparency. If they continue to tighten security then all power to them, but we find away around them.

And as a note of interest, Anonymous is now considered a terrorist group. Trying to enter any sort of democratic process (despite the fact that this would fundamentally undermine one of our concepts) would be pretty much useless.

It's been interesting watching LulzSec this week, as it's clear those people are doing what they do for fun. Is there an element of that within Anonymous, or is action within the group always motivated by freedom issues?

Freedom and Creativity is promoted within Anonymous. During operations we always tell people that the LOIC isn't our only tool, and to be creative with their attacks.

Anonymous isn't a whole though, with individual wings acting under the name in their actions. There are many 'just for the lulz' cells but they're generally overshadowed by the arrests and actions of the politically motivated cells.

I know Anonymous officially denied responsibility for the PSN attacks, but it did approve of them. A lot of gamers, obviously, were very angry about what happened. Do you think that are they're being selfish by ignoring the fact that Sony was taking legal action against hackers?

Our intention with our initial attacks on the PSN was that of a sit-in, preventing traffic to their service in order to protest their actions. We didn't want to p**s off the consumers as they were the ones whose rights we were campaigning for. Sony were removing true ownership of the console, as well as prosecuting hackers, and we were trying to spread this information to the consumers.

Instead of listening or reading what our cause was they just became butthurt. Their annoyance is understandable, but their actions were selfish as they cared more about immediate pleasure receival than they did about their rights as a consumer (and the rights of the hacker).

How does Anonymous feel about arrests of individuals in Spain and Turkey this week? Do you think it's likely we're going to see more of this?

It is obvious that we are going to receive more attempted arrests, as we receive more attention. With many operations targeting corruption within government agencies, we are going to draw the attention of the Man.

The arrests are a shame, as we feel that the defense of certain rights and liberties is a worthy cause, though we are aware of the risks associated with it. If we weren't aware of the risk of arrest we wouldn't hide our IP addresses and keep our identities as removed from Anonymous as possible.

But, for every Anon they arrest, ten more will step in to their place. They are fighting a war against an idealogy, and just by mentioning our name their increase our numbers. We garner support from those who become disgruntled by the actions of someone we oppose. Anonymous is the manifestation of an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.