Biella Coleman and Michael Ralph write a long, nuanced rebuttal of Joseph Menn's recent FT article on Anonymous. Coleman, an academic who has done some fabulous work studying hackers, Anonymous and other 21st century anthropological phenomena, is the person I trust most to produce clear accounts of Anon, 4chan, and related subjects. — Read the rest

(photo: Demonstrators wearing "Anynomous" masks protest in Madrid. REUTERS.)
Joseph Menn has a must-read analysis piece in the Financial Times today, mercifully freed from the paywall, about why the world fears so-called "hacktivists" like Anonymous. Everyone with a computer connected to the internet should read this piece. — Read the rest

Anonymous officially denies that it is responsible for the recent hacking attacks on Sony—well, to the extent that an entity like Anonymous is capable of doing anything "officially," or with one voice. But two hackers identified as veterans of Anonymous tell the Financial Times that the cyber-activist group, or at least cells of the group, are probably behind it. — Read the rest
The government of Iran said today it has been targeted by a new computer virus dubbed "Stars." From a blog post by Joris Evers for computer security firm Macafee:
Stars would be the second malware infestation targeted at Iran within a years time, following the discovery of Stuxnet in July last year.
— Read the rest

Police in Moscow have confiscated 3,500 copies of a book written by a Anna Sokolova (shown at left, she's on Twitter), investigative reporter with Forbes Russia, about links between regional authorities and corruption. From the Moscow Times:
The confiscation took place after Deputy Governor Igor Parkhomenko filed a libel complaint with the local police over the book, titled, "Corporation 'Moscow Region': How Russia's Richest Region Was Bankrupted."
— Read the rest

Security reporter Brian Krebs has a fascinating piece up on Pavel Vrublevsky, founder of Russia's biggest online payment processor, ChronoPay. Krebs reports that this man also co-owns Rx-Promotion, an online pharmacy that sells tens of millions of US dollars worth of controlled pills to Americans each year: Valium, Percocet, Tramadol, Oxycodone, and other substances with high street resale value. — Read the rest
Time magazine's Lev Grossman's got a great profile of four authors of notorious software tools that formed the nexus of the last 12 years of copyright cold-wars: Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen, Justin Frankel (Gnutella) and Shawn Fanning ("Napster"). — Read the rest
Here's a scanned copy of an interview with the recently-departed punk poet icon Jim Carroll, by Joseph Menn in the Boston Globe. The article is not available anywhere online, and it's a fascinating read, so I'm glad Joe scanned it and published to Flickr. — Read the rest
The LA Times's Joseph Menn has a great, well-researched feature article on the history of the copyright for the image of Mickey Mouse as portrayed in the earliest Disney cartoons — and the theory that Disney made mistakes early on with its copyright registration, placing images of that specific Mickey (not the Mickey we know today) in the public domain. — Read the rest

Today in the LA Times, a piece by Joseph Menn on striking WGA members in Hollywood who hope to launch venture-backed online entertainment startups as a way to bypass conventional entertainment economics:
At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.
— Read the rest
The domain escrow firm that handled the transaction says, in a press release,
The sale is the largest all-cash domain transaction in history. It is the second largest domain sale overall after Sex.com, which sold for reportedly US $12 million in cash and stock during a private sale in January 2005.
— Read the rest
Joseph Menn, the author of All the Rave, an excellent book chronicling the rise and fall of Napster, is giving a signing and a reading at Stacey's Bookstore (581 Market Street, San Francisco) on July 15th at 12:30. Joining him will be Napster server achitect and founding developer Jordan Ritter. — Read the rest