OpPayBack: Anonymous Target BREIN 'Pro-Censorship' Foundation

Extending its Finnish Elisagate campaign the Anonymous campaign has opened up a new front in its "anti-censorship" war targeting Dutch anti-piracy foundation BREIN.

The new campaign was announced on Wednesday via a statement posted on Pastebin. In it the unnamed Anon called for all Anonymous members to enact a coordinated spamming campaign on BREIN - an anti-piracy foundation that represents authors, artists, publishers, producers and distributors of music, film, games, interactive software and books.

BREIN's past requests for the Dutch governement to have internet service providers block certain Pirate Bay domains and IP's was listed as a key reason for the operation.

"After censorship in Belgium and more recently in Finland, Dutch anti-piracy lobby can impose censorship to dutch ISP's to censor domains and IP's of The Pirate Bay. BREIN gets to pick even the IP's it wants to see censored," read Anonymous' statement.

Following up: "Anonymous will not sit idle while BREIN removes parts of our interwebz. Undock your battle ships! Sailing these shallow Dutch seas we will hit this enemy vessel under its waterline. They should have expected us."

The collective's statement then posted BREIN's contact information requesting all like-minded individuals contact them and express their discontent at BREIN's actions. As well as the email addresses the statement also linked to two Anonymous posters calling for people to download and fax them to BREIN's office.

The call to action comes as a part of an ongoing series of campaigns against online censorship led by Anonymous.

As well as its activities in the Netherlands, Anonymous had begun an ongoing cyber war in Finland, protesting a recent court decision that forced Elisa, one of Finland's largest internet providers, to block access to the PirateBay website - a common dumping ground for Anonymous statements and data releases.

Outside of Europe Anonymous is also actively combating the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act. Designed to combat online piracy, since being announced the SOPA bill has come under wide-spread criticism, with numerous groups voicing concerns about the new powers the act could grant U.S. law enforcement.

A common concern is the suggestion that the act will allow police to arrest, fine and potentially jail individuals for seemingly minor offences, such as uploading a copyrighted video onto YouTube.

Anonymous initially issued threats of possible "retribution" against companies supporting the bill in December when it announced "OpBlackOut" - a website defacement campaign that would see it target law enforcement agencies and companies vocally supporting SOPA. The collective has since continued to issue threats to any group or company actively supporting the bill.

Following the threats, though not listing Anonymous, numerous companies including Sony, Nintendo and EA have quietly stopped supporting the bill.

UPDATE: A second statement attributed to Anonymous has since appeared on Pastebin listing the contact details of several high-up employees within the entertainment industry. 11/01/2012, 4:03pm

UPDATE: The Dutch courts have now put in place blocks on the Pirate Bay website.11/01/2012, 4.06pm