Free [not]Beer Internet for All from #opindia_back, Benign Till June 9?

Anonymous India calls for a non-violent protest against Internet censorship on June 9, 2012. Vehicles and “harmful items”, as well as “fire or burning at all” are banned. Guy Fawkes masks, banners and recording devices are welcome.  Prospective participants are advised to keep at least 50 meters away from police but hand over “anyone who causes violence” to the authorities.

“Behind this mask is an idea and all ideas are bulletproof”, reads part of the rally message posted as a YouTube video.  The spark behind the protests is the Indian authorities’ decision to force ISPs to block file-sharing sites, such as vimeo.com to prevent pirating of newly released copyrighted productions.

News of ongoing hacking ventures keep pouring on the #opindia_back Twitter account.

 A Facebook event description clearly points to file-sharing censorship as the movement’s main motivation now: “The Government of India is shielding its ministers who are involved in corruption scandals. The Government plans to keep you ignorant about its tricks. They have censored out several websites that share information. Your Ministry of Communications & Information Technology & it’s minister Kapil Sibal is to blame.”

The group appears to have hacked the web site of an Indian power generation corporation, but did not deface the corporation’s home page. This means that they proved their point, but are not willing to go all the way as they simply uploaded their own html page, without causing further damage.

A tentative list of cities for the June 9 protests has also been released.

As these exploits come shortly after the hack targeting BJP sites, it appears that the Indian Anonymous has found its own retaliation flavor: prove that those accused of supporting censorship fail to cover their own backs.