'Anonymous' - just a bunch of crooks?

As anyone can claim to be part of "Anonymous" the original ideals become diluted. Many recent activities claimed to be executed by "Anonymous" are little more than criminal and/or vandalism. Any support/sympathy they may have originally had soon evaporates when people see this kind of thing.

Anonymous isn't one giant organization completely united in purpose and action. It's a collaboration by multiple individuals with differing ideas and desires. One person alone made this threat and demanded payment, not the entire group. Assuming this person is indeed from anonymous, which it could be, branding the entire group based on the actions of one is a form of prejudice. Generally, their goal is to find people they find to be doing what they feel are unethical things, and take their websites down as a form of protest, under the belief that actual protest doesn't effect change.

Edit: Ed Fox, are you aware the average "pirate" spends more than double what the "non-pirate" spends, on legitimate purchases of the very thing they "pirate"? The reason is simple, they actually get to see if the product is worth the purchase prior to buying it. There will be some who view it as a way to attain a product for free, but history has shown this to not be true about the general populace. The main reason why copyright infringement becomes a problem is when the consumer is underserved, so they seek an alternative. An example is Ubisoft, who published many games with a form of DRM that continuously checks a DRM server to make sure that you did indeed pay for the game. When a server has problems and goes down, or needs to be moved, etc. the people who legitimately paid for the product find themselves unable to play, while the "pirates" have no interruption of service. The best way to combat "piracy", and this has been proven, is to create a legal alternative that is at minimum equal to what the "pirate" can get. An example of something that significantly decreased music piracy was the creation of iTunes. Valve, a game developer company, went to a country with the among the worst "piracy" rates, and turned it into one of their largest markets outside the US. The country was Russia. If innovators and companies want to make money, they simply need to understand the main reason why "piracy" occurs, then create a new approach that helps curb even the desire to "pirate". But all of this is beside the point.

Anonymous isn't standing up only for anti-censorship, that's one thing they stand for, they are an activist group, they are activists about anything they feel is important, with a focus on things relating to technology and the internet. One bad apple doesn't mean the entire group is bad. Can you imagine being judged by what our US politicians do? Just because a lot of them are bad doesn't mean everyone in the country is.

"Anonymous" and all like minded groups and persons talk about "censorship". Are these people brain dead? It is nothing to do with censorship. It is a bizarre fight against the basic rule of economics whereby an individual or company creates a product to sell and the money raised from sales is what makes creation of the next product possible.

How can a movie studio. record label or software company possibly survive if half of its product is being stolen by immature selfish people on the Internet?

These childish people simply want everything for free whether it is movies, music, video games or software. The real world does not work that way

I guess Norton consider them to be crooks.

How can a blackmailer be considered to be a hero?