Anonymous on Saturday (16/04/11) staged mass sit-ins on Sony stores throughout most of America and the UK. Other countries were also meant to take part but few reports of sit-ins were logged.

The group Anonymous were staging these sit-ins to defend the rights of free speech for everyone and true ownership of hardware from Sony. In context they were also polarised against the decision of Sony to remove the “otherOS” option from the PS3 system and blocking distribution of information on how to get around Sony measures of removing this feature.

However it appears that Anonymous’ work has once again been in vain, as several reports throughout the UK especially in London reference consumers assaulting what few protesters were present with water pistols and chucking food – this is not at all surprising given that the UK is one of the biggest consumers of the PS3 and that not many people side with what Anonymous have done thus far or even understand their cause.

What gives the whole event a negative spin is that speaking to various reps today (17/04/11) from different stores they provided us with a glance at the following internal memo which was quoted in saying:

Thank you all for your understanding and hard work during the protests on Saturday. I would also like to thank all of you that demonstrated positive initiative during this time…we are also pleased to announce that the hard work all of you put in has lead to noted profits…

After speaking to several reps from Sony stores it appears the actions by Anonymous increased sales for many stores with some store managers telling us that initial sales were up almost 10% – I guess that all publicity is good publicity!

We also asked what was meant by “positive initiative” and many Sony reps said they were advised when asked what the signs outside meant:

Defending free speech

That they were to tell customers that this was referring to Skype being built-in to their Internet TV’s, the PSP Go and the upcoming NGP – this in turn resulted in increased sales specifically for televisions with the Skype function.

In conclusion it appears Anonymous have indeed failed once again with their Sony Operation, relating to this whole chapter it seems that they have bitten of more than they can chew and that they have very little support – indeed they are fighting a lost cause.