Hacker Group Anonymous Goes on a Major Offensive

Hacker Group Anonymous Goes on a Major Offensive — What Does it Mean?

Posted by Jonathan Cunningham on
Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 3:44 pm

Coming on the heels of yesterday’s organized internet blackout where several major sites went dark to protest the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) bills from becoming law, it seems that another mini internet war has sprung up this afternoon.

It was announced, without any real provocation, that popular online downloading site Megaupload.com was seized and shut down by the Department of justice. According to the federal indictment, the Justice Department claims that Megaupload.com, which is run by rapper/producer Swizz Beatz (pictured below), has generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and costs copyright-holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated movies, albums and other materials. Thus as of this morning, the site was shut down and several people connected to the Hong Kong-based downloading giant were arrested and charged with copyright infringement and other crimes.

This has happened before with other music downloading sites (many connected to the hip-hop world) when the internet police decided to lay down the hammer.

But alas, those of us in favor of free media have internet goons on our side as well.

This afternoon, global computer hacker group Anonymous went on the offensive in direct response to Megaupload.com being axed and quickly shutdown Universal Music Group’s website along with other major sites such as the RIAA.org (Recording Industry Association of America) and Justice.gov. A spokesman for Anonymous has stated that the group hacked and shut down those websites today in defense of Megaupload. This actually has the potential to get worse.

For starters, the fact that Anonymous was even capable of shutting down the Justice Department’s website and Universal Music Group’s is a big deal. Because both of those organizations are in support of SOPA/PIPA and want to stop online piracy at all costs, having a group like Anonymous crashing their websites is no small feat. Let’s be clear: UMG and RIAA’s websites being targeted are one thing but totally shutting down the Justice Department’s website is a huge blow and rather embarrassing! Of course, neither of these major players in the SOPA/PIPA battle will take kindly to being shutdown today and will likely go after even more sites that they feel are guilty of piracy. If and when that happens, Anonymous will likely retaliate again.

There aren’t any clear winners or losers in all of this but it is good to know that the Department of Justice now has to think twice about probable retaliation before they seize another website. It’s not clear what will happen next but with President Obama announcing that he no longer supports the SOPA bill and 19 Senators joining him in that statement, those who truly oppose online piracy will have to go back to square one and draft all new legislation if they want any bill to clear the House and the Senate.

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13 Comments, Comment or Ping

Chris

Megaupload is not run by Swizz Beatz.

Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz runs it and owns it.

Jan 19th, 2012
Chris

Correction he is the CEO

Jan 19th, 2012
The Messenger

http://megavideo.bz/

mega is back up so when are they going to try and take it down again?

Jan 19th, 2012
Jonathan Cunningham

Chris… to be honest, what’s not clear in all of this is how if Swizz Beats is the active CEO in the company, then why was he NOT named in the indictment? With that title, he’s clearly in charge of at least some facets of daily operation for the website. So why would others like Kim Schmitz who technically owns the company get charged, yet the current CEO not be indicted.
That is the one part of this story that doesn’t make sense.

Jan 19th, 2012
Bob

Swizz Beats wasn’t named in the incident because authorities decided it would be rather embarrassing for him to have to explain to fellow inmates about what he got in for.
“Hey man, what you in fo’?”
“Uh…. I owned a website that big recording companies didn’t like”
“Oh….”

Jan 19th, 2012
Annon

Chris,
We never hacked these sites we simply knocked them off the web you are correct VERY embarrassing for them though. Today we achieved our goal to bring awareness to the internet. Expect US

Jan 19th, 2012
Emma

The Messenger:

That is a fake site. Do not go to that site unless you want jail time.

Read the article on the “new” megavideo site here: http://gawker.com/5877707/the-evil-new-tactic-behind-anonymous-massive-revenge-attack

Jan 19th, 2012
KluunkGirl

I hope Mega is back 2 stay..:/

Jan 20th, 2012
Elizabeth Hunter

Great post Jonathan. Megaupload is some weird world for sure–this is not Napster here. Our government, as per usual when addressing Internet/intellectual property/etc “crimes” (issues) is slightly behind…but…

You know, just RTWT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/indictment-charges-megaupload-site-with-piracy.html

Jan 20th, 2012
Jonathan Cunningham

I’m honestly curious about what (if any) punitive charges the Department of Justice will eventually throw at Anonymous. You take out the DOJ’s website and you’re likely to get charged with some “threat to national security” kind of a charge. I wish John Ashcroft was still around yesterday! Just to see his face: )

It’s almost like Anonymous is doing all of the things that the U.S. gov’t once claimed Al Qaeda was going to do in regards to cyber hacking yet never had the capabilities of executing.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Jan 20th, 2012
Austin Hoffman

hell yea! GO ANONYMOUS!!! i really hope they can pull it off..since it’s all BS…SOPA/PIPA were junk + MU arrest was unfair + I don’t think swizz he has any legal connections to MU…imo it was all fabbed up to get other celebrity endorsements.

p.s. looks like someone is pissed – FBI vs ANONYMOUS video:
http://www.peeje.com/anonymous-hackers-we-legion-211/

Jan 21st, 2012
Bizzy

I am so torn over this issue. On the one hand, part of me wants to ump up and yell, “Boo yeah!!!” and give Anonymous a huge high five. On the other hand, using logical foresight I can see things like this escalating into a huge internet war on the scale of the matrix crash featured in the Shadowrun RPG backstory (the one that ends up wiping out pretty much every server/cashe/website/etc ever and resets technology back several decades).

Finally (and here’s the point for discussion), as a writer, artist, and fan of other creative artists, there has to be a viable channel for those who live off their art to do just that. At SOME point in the process, we have to make enough money to pay the bills and buy more paint. So far, a lo tof the discussion has been either all-control (SOPA) or all free (Google/Annonymous). We have to find a middle road here people. I’ve heard a middle worldview shared a few times, not often, but it needs more screen time; we have to find a way to allow users to consume content how they want, when they want, in a way that is legit and that funds the artist. If you really want to stop piracy, if you really want to make content available, and if you really care about supporting the artists, writers, etc, then we need to put more attention and presure on building this middle road, and spend less time throwing fire balls at each other. The crossfire is going to kill the whole issue.

BTW, This article has a great description of what a working channel should look like:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/23/monday-note-piracy-sopa?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

Jan 25th, 2012