On Canvas, users can upload images, edit directly in the browser and add captions. Once published, they can be remixed and commented on by other users. The site employs a badge-like system of stickers, which can be applied to images as a way of casting a vote. Drag the "LOL" sticker onto an image you thought was funny. Or you can give a cookie sticker to images that "need a little condescending acknowledgement." Stickers contribute to aggregate totals and help determine each image's overall popularity and placement.

The interface is highly interactive and easy to use. Voting for (or against) images is done via dragging and dropping icons, as is the assigning of stickers. The images themselves can be modified within the browser using basic image-editing interface that even includes a Photoshop-style "clone" tool.

Unlike 4chan, Canvas's content will be archived indefinitely. Images are grouped into categories, such as politics, photography, cute and funny. There's even a tab dedicated entirely to animated GIFs.

Canvas has received funding from a few notable sources, including Union Square Ventures, SV Angel and Andreeson Horowitz.

As the creator of one of the Internet's most base, vile and creative websites, 4chan founder Chris Poole knows a little bit about the effects of user identity on user behavior. 4chan, a completely anonymous, real-time message forum, is the birthplace of many an Internet meme and user identity, or the lack thereof, can play a big part in this.

Poole spoke about the collaborative, creative process today in his keynote address at SXSW in Austin, Texas, spending some time on the topic of identity and authenticity. In this horserace, Poole unsurprisingly comes out on the side of anonymity.

Some, such as blogger Robert Scoble, argue that linking comments to Facebook identity increases authenticity, not only by adding context to what people say, but also that people cannot anonymously pose as other people. Poole, at least when speaking of authenticity in terms of creativity, appears to take quite the opposite position.

"Anonymity is authenticity," said Poole. "It allows you to share in an unvarnished, unfiltered, raw and real way. We believe in content over creator."

Of course, when we speak of 4chan, we're talking about a collection of memes and creations that few bloggers or publishers would want to grace their comments section. 

Poole argued that identity can stifle content creators (whether commenters or otherwise) because of what's at stake.

"The cost of failure is really high when you're contributing as yourself," said Poole. "To fail in an environment where you're contributing with your real name is costly."

On this point, Scoble had a very different opinion when he wrote last week. "REAL change comes from people putting their necks on the line. I couldn't remember a time when an anonymous person really enacted change in, well, anything. It's why I sign my name to everything, even stuff that could get me fired," wrote Scoble.

What do you think - do you want Poole's version of authenticity? Will anonymity always lead to the variety of creativity we see on 4chan? Or is anonymity a necessary party of true honesty and authenticity?

Sometimes, it's the community that makes a site what it is. It's that unique thread of personality, inside jokes and general rules of engagement that gives it the je ne sais quoi and separates it from the crowd. What would Reddit be without Narwhals and bacon, for example? For anonymous message board 4chan, its that unique community identity that's lead to such wondrous Internet memes as Pedobear, Rick Rolling and Chocolate Rain.

So, with4chan founder Chris Poole launching a new site, can we expect more of the same or will a new venture attract a new crowd?

And this is the thing - because it is a service started by the creators of one of the most vile, immature locales on the Internet, can expect more of the same? Take a gander at the screenshot:

Poole told TechCrunch that "Canvas is all about discovery, sharing and play" and that other types of content, such as video, audio and rich text, are on the way. "Our goal," writes Pool on the company's launch announcement, "is to create the best place to share and play with images."

Canvas will have accounts and user profiles - as opposed to 4chan's completely detached, userless experience - but they will be "nothing more than a gathering of the various content [the user] added to the site."

The service opened up today to several thousand beta testers and you can request an invite by logging on to the site using your Facebook account.  But this connection to your Facebook identity is tentative at best and only exists for purposes of onboarding new users. That means the most important 4chan characteristic - anonymity - will remain in tact. This point seems to be the primary for many taking a first look at the service today.

Arrington finishes his discussion of Canvas by noting that "Canvas is a separate entity from 4chan, with no connection other than Poole. But my guess is more than a few of the 4chan crowd may head over to Canvas to take a gander." ReadWriteWeb alum Adrianne Jeffries finishes with a similar caveat, warning that "If Mr. Poole wants Canvas to appeal to the big kids, he needs to ditch some of his old crowd, and real ID seems to be his solution."

From the looks of things, though, it looks like only a matter of time before pudgy "babbys" with mouths for belly buttons devolves into the standard 4chan fare  that, as Jeffries notes, "runs ads almost exclusively for anime and porn."

Both attacks seem tangentially related to Wikileaks, on whose behalf the group has previously targeted Visa, PayPal and others. In the case of Zimbabwe, Grace Mugabe is suing the Zimbabwean newspaper The Standard for $15 for publishing a cable asserting she is benefiting from illegal diamond sales. Tunisia has blocked access to the primary Wikileaks cable site.

"The Tunisian government wants to control the present with falsehoods and misinformation in order to impose the future by keeping the truth hidden from its citizens. We will not remain silent while this happens. Anonymous has heard the claim for freedom of the Tunisian people. Anonymous is willing to help the Tunisian people in this fight against oppression. It will be done. It will be done.

"This is a warning to the Tunisian government: attacks at the freedom of speech and information of its citizens will not be tolerated. Any organization involved in censorship will be targeted and will not be released until the Tunisian government hears the claim for freedom to its people."

Neither country is well-known for its embrace of the web, though there are certainly more Tunisians online than Zimbabweans. Given the relative lack of importance the web has in these countries, the strategy in attacking them is opaque. A dry run on a more web-centric country? The efficacy of the Anonymous DDoS attacks overall is uncertain, especially when the goals are far from clear.

4chan, the infamously crude message board, is currently down due to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and has been since the early morning hours according to the site's Twitter account. The attack comes just a day after similar attacks slowed down Bank of America's Web services.

The 4chan status page lists several parts of the site as being up, but "Boards", "Post images" and "Static files" are all listed as down and the site barely loads after a minute or two. Even this, however, is changing over time with the intensity of the attacks. Geekosystem editor Robert Quigley ponders who could be behind the attack, asking if it could be Tumblr users still hanging on to the Tumblr/4chan battle of earlier this year. Quiqley goes on to wonder if it could be the banks themselves acting in retaliation or even 4chan itself.

It would be a move straight out of a movie to DDoS attack yourself, wouldn't it? What's the best way to prove your own innocence? Make yourself the victim.

We don't have any information on who is behind the attacks, but that would be some high drama right there. The safer bet, though, might be that supporters of the various sites that have been taken down by Anonymous are retaliating. We'll keep an eye out on 4chan's status page for an explanation.

It's easy, perhaps, to dismiss this back-and-forth of bored and disgruntled teenagers. And because one of the call-to-arms on 4chan said "We are Anonymous" and involved a denial-of-service tactic, it may be easy to confuse 4chan v Tumblr with the more recent DDoS attacks undertaken by Anonymous.

The blog TorrentFreak has a "behind the scenes look at Anonymous' Operation Payback," examining some of the history and motivations behind the recent series of direct actions that Anonymous has coordinated against pro-copyright groups. And as the TorrentFreak story makes clear, the anarchic nature of the group makes it difficult to generalize too much about who they are or what they want.

"We can safely conclude that this Anonymous group doesn't have a broad shared set of ideals," writes TorrentFreak's Ernesto. "Instead, it is bound together by anger, frustration and the desire to be heard. Their actions are a direct response to the anti-piracy efforts of pro-copyright groups." According to interviews with TorrentFreak, some of Anonymous' members are also frustrated that their actions have not driven media attention to their demands. These have been posted online for over a week and include short, medium and long range goals for revising copyright law.

Rethink Copyright Law... Or Else

While the demands call for an immediate end to piracy lawsuits, Anonymous's call to wean the world away from its current copyright laws seems more measured. In fact, the group does not demand an end to copyright altogether. Within the next 2 or 3 years, Anonymous says copyright lifetime should be reduced to around 25 years. Within the next 10 years, it should be reduced to about 5 years. And in the long term, it should be reduced to between 0 and 1 year.

The list of demands makes no mention of file-sharing, even though many of the group's targets have been those associated with the criminalization - or at least demonization - of file-sharing, groups like the RIAA and the MPAA.

"What we are now trying to do, is to straighten out ideals, and trying to make them both heard and accepted. Nobody would listen to us if we said piracy should be legal, but when we ask for copyright lifespan to be reduced to 'fair' lengths, that would sound a lot more reasonable," a spokesman for Anonymous told TorrentFreak.

Shutting Down Websites, Opening Up Dialogue

It's debatable whether or not DDoS attacks get you heard, let alone accepted. And while the FBI investigations into Anonymous's DDoS attacks may have put a damper on the group's actions, it may be that other forces - those very anarchic forces that gave the group its origins - also serve to undermine and fragment the message that Anonymous is trying to communicate about the problems with contemporary copyright law. And although spats with Gene Simmons make for great headlines, the DDoS attacks so far haven't really made for great political dialogue or legal change.

If you're unfamiliar with 4chan and why an ISP/wireless company would block it, read more about it on Wikipedia. The high-traffic image board of mostly anonymous users was created by Christopher Poole in 2003 and has been the subject of a fair amount of negative media and legal attention over the past six years. But why would Verizon choose to block the site now? Does this put Verizon on par with foreign ISPs that block torrent sites and social networks? Or is there more to the story?

However, a couple hours ago, Poole posted, "After an hour and a half on the phone, we've received confirmation from Verizon's Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are 'explicitly blocked.'"

In the past, we've held a generally negative view of ISP censorship and traffic shaping, regardless of site content. It'll be interesting to see how this battle shapes up, as Poole is calling for 4chan users to file complaints with Verizon's Network Repair Bureau.

We are contacting Poole and Verizon to figure out specifically why the site is being blocked and will update this post as more information becomes available.

While we've personally confirmed that the image boards are not accessible from the Verizon wireless network, we're not certain that Verizon as an ISP is blocking the site or whether they plan to in the near future. Again, a move of this magnitude would have to have some pretty compelling justifications, and we can't wait to find out Verizon's reasons.

This incident calls to mind AT&T's temporary blocking of the site in July 2009. Eventually, AT&T said the block was due to a DDoS originating from 4chan IP addresses, to which Poole responded, "We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and Internet censorship - two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attention - so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise."

UPDATE: A Verizon NRB rep said their center has been deluged with phone calls but was unable to relate the specific reason the site has been blocked. We are continuing to call other Verizon numbers at this time, but we've been alerted that Verizon has not yet set up any process for dealing with media calls on this issue as no other media outlets have yet contacted them.

UPDATE: Multiple Verizon FIOS/DSL customers have let us know that the boards are still accessible from other devices not on the Verizon wireless network. However, we're confused as to why Verizon wireless would block a website and still allow access on other parts of its network.

UPDATE: Poole, a.k.a. Moot, responded to our email this morning, confirming that only Verizon Wireless customers were effected by the block - not FIOS/DSL customers. As for the reason for the block, he wrote, "None of the techs could give us a definitive answer. It took them hours to even figure out/acknowledge the block was occurring on their end."

A major wireless and Internet provider can't tell a website owner why his site is blocked? It's interesting, but the day is young. We hope to receive word from Verizon soon. A Verizon PR exec has said he is looking into the matter, but hasn't yet been able to give us any definitive answer.

The choice of the fake user's "real" name, username, avatar, and bio are typical examples of the kind of crass and often tasteless humor that runs rampant on anonymous forums like 4chan. The new Twitter account clearly refers to Joseph Fritzl, the Austrian who, unknown to the rest of his family, imprisoned his daughter in his house's basement for 24 years until his double life finally unraveled last year.

Not all of the humor on 4chan is this crass, however. The site, after all, was also the breeding ground for popular Internet memes like Rickrolling and lolcats.

While the members of 4chan's 'random' board (often referred to as /b/) first tried to manipulate twitter with automated scripts that set up fake accounts, they weren't able to hack Twitter's captcha process, which is probably the reason why even the enterprising 4chan pranksters haven't been able to reach more than 200,000 followers for their fake account yet. Knowing 4chan, however, we don't expect them to give up anytime soon, and we wouldn't be surprised if they managed to break Twitter's captcha at some point as well.

If you would like to see how exactly this hack works, here are the instructions that one of 4chan's members created for the rest of the /b/ community.

Oprah Might Just Win this Race

However, given that Oprah is going to talk about Twitter on her show tomorrow, there is still a good chance that she will pass by Kutcher, CNN, and 4chan's BasementDad in no time.

Moot

The members of 4chan's /b/ board also made the news a bit earlier this week, when they manipulated a Time.com poll so that it featured the name of 4chan founder 'moot' as the most influential person in the world.

Where is Twitter?

Interestingly, Twitter, which should be aware of the sudden rash of fake accounts that all subscribe to only one user, hasn't closed this account yet.

Update: We just head from Twitter's Biz Stone. Twitter is aware of this situation and "and will react accordingly."

Note: we did not include a link to 4chan in this post, as a lot of the material there is NSFW (or worse). If you insist on going there, a quick Google search for 4chan will do the trick.