The government takes down Megaupload? 15 minutes later Anonymous takes down government (justice.gov) and record label sites (universalmusic.com). I love these guys.
Tried Universal and yup its down. So Awesome!
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Companies need to be a lot better about distribution. I bet you game of thrones is one of the most pirated series because you can't get it until April 2012 from HBO.
Exactly, for shows like Entourage, I need to download the episodes since I don't have HBO but always buy the season when it's released. I'll do the same with Game of Thrones when it's released.
I'm actually starting to become more of a fan of Anonymous. It's civil disobedience in the digital age.
The thing I respect about Anonymous is that they certainly have a lot of power, but they don't throw their weight around needlessly. They're extremely selective about what action they take. It's not 'today we're going to crash site x because we don't like them and have nothing better to do.'
It's very disheartening to see how much crap is going on in the States right now and how it's spilling onto FOREIGN soil. The CEO/board of megauploads was arrested in New Zealand and the company was based in Hong Kong.
The guy now faces 20+ years in jail on charges of "international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy"
Among the charges the CEO faces are:
-20 years on conspiracy to commit racketeering
-20 years on conspiracy to commit money laundering
-5 years for each successive copyright violation.
He's looking at more than 50 years in jail... you can kill a man in the US and only get a 20 year sentence. WTF? And the whole time MPAA/RIAA/SOPA supporters are going "we won't abuse any of the powers in these laws" Riiiiigggght.
It's very disheartening to see how much crap is going on in the States right now and how it's spilling onto FOREIGN soil. The CEO/board of megauploads was arrested in New Zealand and the company was based in Hong Kong.
The guy now faces 20+ years in jail on charges of "international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy"
Among the charges the CEO faces are:
-20 years on conspiracy to commit racketeering
-20 years on conspiracy to commit money laundering
-5 years for each successive copyright violation.
He's looking at more than 50 years in jail... you can kill a man in the US and only get a 20 year sentence. WTF? And the whole time MPAA/RIAA/SOPA supporters are going "we won't abuse any of the powers in these laws" Riiiiigggght.
Rackeetering and Money Laundering are charges that the MPAA/RIAA have pushed to have included?
Sounds like lots is going on other than the simple distribution of copyright violations.
Apparently the racketeering charges stem from the fact that on megavideos they collect ad revenue and have charge "premium" users fees to skip ads.
The staff working at the company have been indicted as well.
This is a site that complied with DMCA take-down requests too. So really, its not too different than youtube, mediafire or the like.
Apparently the racketeering charges stem from the fact that on megavideos they collect ad revenue and have charge "premium" users fees to skip ads.
The staff working at the company have been indicted as well.
This is a site that complied with DMCA take-down requests too. So really, its not too different than youtube, mediafire or the like.
According to the indictment, not really.
Quote:
For instance, the “abuse tool” allegedly does not remove the actual file being complained about by a rights holder. Instead, it only removes a specific Web address linked to that file—but there might be hundreds of such addresses for popular content.
In addition, the government contends that everything about the site has been doctored to make it look more legitimate than it is. The “Top 100” download list does not “actually portray the most popular downloads,” say prosecutors, and they claim that MegaUpload purposely offers no site-wide search engine as a way of concealing what people are storing and sharing through the site.
This arstechnica article goes into more detail on why they were taken down. Why they save those emails I have no idea, so dumb.
It was recently revelaed that Hip Hop superproducer Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keyes husband is CEO of megaupload.
Anonymous also took down Universal music and the Justice departments website in retaliation.
What is most weird is that despite being the CEO of this evil, evil company, Alecia Keys' husband just happened to NOT be charged, even as all the other senior people were.
No meddling from the RIAA there at all, I'll bet.
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What is most weird is that despite being the CEO of this evil, evil company, Alecia Keys' husband just happened to NOT be charged, even as all the other senior people were.
No meddling from the RIAA there at all, I'll bet.
Hilarious how that works.
Its not like the CEO would be responsible for what happens with a company, right?
What kind of questionable stuff have they done? (serious question, haven't followed their history)
Off the top of my head, they used to be much more petty and in it for s***s and giggles. Stuff like Habbo Raids occured at least once (I only heard of one, but have at least 2-3 different versions of the story), and posting flashing images on an Epilepsy forum have been done (which was the one that always concerned me...though I'm not sure if it was a support forum for epileptic users or if it was a forum about epilepsy). There is also one case of them defacing two forums (spamming it with users, then DDOS attacks and employee information stealing), one relatively unrelated, because one of Anonymous' members was insulted. I'm not sure about the rest of the stories I've heard, so I'll leave it at that. At this point, they're somewhat of a real internet boogeyman, where their reputation far precedes them.
The only other reasonably confirmable story I've heard has been threats against the Westboro church nuts. I don't know who shot first there, but it ended with a DDOS on their site.
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Last edited by kirant; 01-19-2012 at 07:23 PM.
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Yikes that doesn't sound very good at all. Are people sure this was the group or just individual hackers claiming to be them? That's the part that would worry me because anyone can claim to be a member if they have the knowledge of how to attack, no?
Also IMO Westboro Church deserves everything they get and more. But that's for another thread.
Yikes that doesn't sound very good at all. Are people sure this was the group or just individual hackers claiming to be them? That's the part that would worry me because anyone can claim to be a member if they have the knowledge of how to attack, no?
Most attacks seem to occur from groups of Anonymous members or at least users claim to be from Anonymous without dispute from the group. I'm not sure if they are actually part of the group, or if the group just doesn't care as it spreads their image and doesn't entirely go against their beliefs. I haven't seen many cases where they deny that the attacking users actually were part of their group (as the link below indicates, it seems that they were a bit confused by whoever took down Westboro, as they claimed it'd be a waste of resources to go after them).
"Anonymous" isn't all one big organized group. It's just a collection of people with varying motives under the same brand. That's their whole thing.
It seems though that most of their actions are at least agreed on by most of the members of Anonymous. I've tried to keep my sanity while lurking and there is at least some semblance of organization. Decisions are generally made in psudo-group format and the choice is upheld. I'd compare it very much to how swarms of people in a protest would have psudo-group decision making as to where to protest, ending up with generally large but scattered groups while some cases (such as Wikileaks or SOPA/PIPA) end up having their users agree they should pool their resources.
