That rosy-cheeked, kind of creepy Guy Fawkes masks you've been seeing plastered all over the news lately? Apparently they're a boon for massive Time Warner company, who owns the rights to the image thanks to the Warner Brothers' big screen adaptation of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta.

According to a New York Times report, Time Warner made roughly $28 billion in revenue last year and one New York costume shop owner told the paper of record that they sell over 100,000 of the Fawkes masks per year. That same costume shop sells the masks for $6.49 apiece on Amazon.

As for how the Anonymous group came to claim the pale, mustachioed look for themselves: The loose collective of hacktivists first latched on to the costume for purposes of real-world anonymity back in 2008, when Anonymous protested the Church of Scientology.

And speaking of remaining anonymous, local technical-creative cooperative Noisebridge, has created an ID card of sorts for (capital A) Anonymous protesters and others who show up to the now weekly demonstrations, identifying them as members of the press. The idea there is that anyone with a blog, twitter account, or anything else located at public http:// address could reasonably be considered a member of the press and will hopefully be treated as such if they've got some semi-official looking paperwork on them. Although that apparently didn't keep SFPD from detaining a few local reporters at last week's protest, so we wish them luck with that.

[NYT]
[NoiseBridge]