Wikileaks and legitimate protest

Seems to me there is a distinction between protest and counter-attack (or whatever other, possibly judgmental, term you might prefer). Analogs between the virtual and digital are often imprecise, if not wildly wrong; this may be a case in point.

Protests aimed at stimulating a boycott, such as picketing establishments, more or less aggressively, don’t necessarily involve disrupting operations (e.g., cutting off electric power at a remote switch, running through a store emptying the shelves onto the floor, or setting fire to a construction site, etc.) The digital equivalent to picketing might be a Facebook campaign urging a boycott.

The so-called Wiki attacks (by no means proved to be the responsibility of anyone connected with WikiLeaks) were not so much a “protest” (in my not so humble opinion) as a counter-attack meant to retaliate for aggressive actions by some corporate entities (at whose behest, all of a sudden, we don’t know) designed to shut down WikiLeaks.

One could even go so far as to say the attacks on financial institutions like Visa, MasterCard, and the Swiss post office banks were one more example of the challenge posed by the digital era to established powers of all sorts, financial, commercial, and governmental. Examples abound: record companies’ power over artists, the power of “broadcast” networks over the acculturation of television, even blogs over newspapers and magazines (zdnet being a prime example!). Lots of areas of the net comprise Wiki assaults on established powers.

Good luck in stimulating a discussion here! I tried earlier with “Merry Wikimas”  http://coloradopols.com/diary/… but maybe JO is a poison pill hereabouts.