Just yesterday, when Christopher was writing his post about local video production in Ottawa, he revisited our Christmas video from last year, which he wrote and directed:
But then, in the related videos column, he spotted this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=910EbANZk0Y
That’s right, our Christmas video. Hacked. By Anonymous.
For those unfamiliar with their work, Anonymous is “a loosely associated hacktivist group” (Wikipedia). They are noted for publicly taking down government sites, for fighting censorship, attacking enemies of Wikileaks and acting as cyber-vigilantes against internet pedophiles.
And they also, for some reason, found and stole our Christmas video. Within four days of its launch.
I suppose we should feel honoured, in a way. It’s not like we can sue. And their version of our video got 55,867 views, almost 20,000 more than our 35,974.
But the weird part for me is that these mysterious and powerful hackers used my son (the little boy), Christopher’s wife (the mom), and our friends for their Christmas LULZ.
There is a particular kind of honour among these thieves, however. To give them credit, they believe that all online content is to be freely used. So when they “remixed” our video, they made a point of linking back to the original video — and including our full credits — in the “About” section of their YouTube post. Which is kind of cool, in a 21st Century kind of way.
So, Anonymous, what would you like for Christmas this year? 🙂