__---- ===================== +++ #OpPirateBay +++ ===================== ---__

Greetings Citizens of the World, We Are Anonymous.


Freedom of information is an idea that has carried the human race through centuries. By publicly sharing information, ideas are shared, and can be fixed. When this idea is removed, easily correctable mistakes happen. Take alchemy as an example. Hundreds of people tried to turn lead into gold. Each one of them found out for themselves that it did not work. Now imagine. Imagine if they had the technology or willingness to share that information. The knowledge would have been spread to each alchemist. Each one would immediatly know. Now, we have the power to instantly spread knowledge to almost anyone in the world. Book, video, all the containers of human knowledge can be disseminated everywhere on Earth. With the advent of Open Source technology, once expensive software is being spread and improved upon.

Children, who once lived under a veil, can now learn about anything. Slowly, dictatorships are falling as their citizens learn about the strategies of protest, and the ideals of democracy. But, today, freedom of information is threatened. Private businesses are trying to shut down sites that help share this information for the good of their profit. Think of a world, where knowledge is a commodity. Imagine needing to pay a fee to learn how to do a task. The poor would lose the ability to learn their way out of poverty.

Instead, the rich, who own much of the worlds books and movies would get richer and richer. Governments are heeding the call of the corporations to pad their own wallets. Instead of thinking about the future, they are thinking of the present. They are more concerned with their luxury cars, than the knowledge that the future generations will need to build better cars. This must change. We can no longer stand idly by and let the future slip through our fingers.

We are not taking action against Anti-Piracy groups. We believe that they have a right to their own ideals. We will not turn to hypocrisy. However, we will go after large corporations that reject the idea of free information and governments that support this. They are not doing it as a matter of ideals, instead they are doing it for money and personal gain.

As many of you know, the file sharing site The Pirate Bay was taken down and a crew member was arrested. The Swedish police in Stockholm seized servers, computers, and equipment from the office of the company in an attempt to lower piracy levels and discourage the downloading of such files. They failed miserably. The level of piracy has had a scarce amount of discrepancies since the removal of the site from the internet. The Pirate Bay was taken down and the premisis raided by the police, violating their right of freedom, when in fact the police were strong armed into this. Private companies pressuring the police force into taking down the site was the true reason for this blatant violation of rights. Movie groups and other companies have been pressuring the police force for years to take down the site, to no avail. But it now seems that the police have chosen to go against our rights and strip citizens of the most basic human right. This can not, and will not go unnoticed. We must take action against this intrusion of our rights. The time to act is now!

We as a collective will not sit and twirl our thumbs as our rights are violated. We will retaliate. We have the means and we have the reasons. You may not see us coming, but you will definitely see us once we have made our move.

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.