Top: Photo courtesy Hamburg, Germany Anonymous, Bottom: Nadia Plesner Darfur awareness T-shirt
Uh-oh. Things just got real serious for luxury brand Louis Vuitton. Sources are reporting that the anti-corporate hacker group Anonymous has issued an all out war on the LV brand.
Anonymous who?
Anonymous is a group that originally started in 2003 as an internet meme on the 4chan website. They attack their targets by using well-coordinated tactics that usually employ large anonymous groups of people.
They are the same group responsible for Project Chanology; a very public internet protest of scientology that organized a series of denial-of-service attacks against Scientology websites, Operation Tunisia; DDoS attacks on the Tunisian government websites which led to an upsurge of internet activism among Tunisians against the government, Operation Avenge Assange; a take-down of MasterCard and Visa’s websites in support of WikiLeaks, and now, OPERATION SKANKBAG; an operation designed to cause “financial damage” to the Louis Vuitton brand.
OPERATION SKANKBAG is in response to Louis Vuitton’s 5,000 Euros a day lawsuit against artist Nadia Plesner.
Nadia created an image of an African child carrying a Chihuahua and a handbag to raise awareness of atrocities in Darfur and Louis Vuitton is claiming the painted handbag resembles theirs in a lawsuit against the artist.
According to Nadia’s foundation website, she also uses money from her t-shirt sales to ship medical supplies and equipment to Dafur.
Anonymous has responded to the lawsuit by calling on fellow anon-ers to give away replica handbags to the homeless.
Additionally, they’ve threatened to hand out fliers in front of LV stores, make “Louis Vuitton whores” a Google trending topic, and take down the luxury brand’s website.
