Anonymous Attacks US Government

[Sparrow]

But, at the end of the day, there's one thing we must remember: Anons are douchebags.

 

[spartan231490]

Why can't they attack the government over something that is actually bad for us, like the patriot act? Or pork-barrelling. Really, this is what they have a problem with?

 

[ShadowKirby]

Yes anons, because the right to pirate stuff is primordial in our every day lives.

 

[Verlander]

My two cents. Cheers!

Your two cents fail to realise that anonymous is not just one group of people. Anonymous is everyone on the internet.

Which is why everyone thinks Anonymous is this weird, strange group of people who do everything for "teh lolz". There are multiple Anonymous groups all pushing for different things, but the news lumps them all together >.>

Yeah, but it isn't everyone on the internet is it? It's a minority on the internet. I mean, anyone COULD be anonymous, but chances are, they aren't.

The anonymous nature of, erm, anonymous, is it's biggest downfall, as well as its strongest asset. It's far too easy to imitate them, etc. Let me put it this way (as my two cents failed to impress you... not surprising, American cents aren't exactly worth much), I support the protest group that don masks in aid of the families of Scientologist "disconnect" programmes, I do not support the pointless spammers that want stuff for free. Pretty soon someone is going to get pissed off, and people who have appeared under an "anonymous" identity are gonna get fined, sued or jailed. Stay well away from it

 

[Bek359]

What have we learned no one not even the US should fuck with anonymous

No. It just means that they have angered a sleeping dragon. They've attacked the U.S. government, and not in a particularly impressive fashion, either. If and when the U.S. gov't drops the hammer, Anon is fucked. They're playground bullies who think they're tough shit. To paraphrase Gandalf, they have delved too greedily, and too deep.

 

[Galad]

and has organized actual physical demonstrations to take place tomorrow

If they have actually done any significant damage to any of the organisations listed in the article, they wouldn't be showing their faces at any demonstration since they'd get arrested.

At least that's my interpretation of this

 

[AgDr_ODST]

oh damn and here I was thinking that the bunch of lowly trolls that make up anonymous had done something big like shut down the main White House website or....i don't know gotten out of thier houses and done something more than a little DOS attack......stupid me for thinking such

 

[stonethered]

Someone needs to teach those punkass little bastards to stop screwing with the rest of the world and take their complaints to the polls and the courts like the rest of us. Maybe now that they've done something against the government we'll finally see some action taken against them.

Hell, let their computers become practice for the hackers we all know the government employs. It'd serve them right.

 

[WOPR]

Anonymous Attacks US Government

The internet group Anonymous has struck a blow against the very heart of copyright law in America.

Taking on loud-mouthed rock stars like Gene Simmons [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104513-Gene-Simmons-Declares-War-on-Anonymous] is one thing, but yesterday Anonymous had bigger fish to fry. As part of two months long "Operation Payback," Anonymous attacked the US Copyright Office website [http://copyright.gov/] with a denial of service attack, successfully taking it down for around half an hour.

Anonymous targeted the site because it is "Perpetuating the system that is allowing the exploitative usage of copyright and intellectual property." The US Copyright Office not only records details about copyrights, it also provides expert advice to Congress on copyright issues, as well as aiding with drafting new legislation. With that resume, it's not hard to see why the strongly pro-piracy Anonymous might consider the Copyright Office a particularly tempting target.

The websites of the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the British Phonographic Industry, amongst others, have also been attacked as part of Operation Payback, with the RIAA site reportedly taken down for three straight days last week. Anonymous says it will keep up the attacks until it "stops being angry" and has organized actual physical demonstrations to take place tomorrow in various cities around the world.

Source: Torrentfreak [http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-ddos-takes-down-the-united-states-copyright-office-101103/] via GamePolitics [http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/11/04/anonymous-takes-down-us-copyright-office]


Permalink

I'm not trying to be rude or stupid but can anyone make "What they're fighting FOR" a little more clear?

it sounds like they just want to be able to pirate more things which actually hurts the economy

of course I COULD be WRONG

I just can't make heads or tails of it because it's such a bizarre and oddly worded case

 

[Popido]

Why can't they attack the government over something that is actually bad for us, like the patriot act? Or pork-barrelling. Really, this is what they have a problem with?

Some big copyright companies got too greedy and started to DDoS attack different sites that they suspected on holding some copyright material. Anon got pissed and DDoS'ed back, hence the Operation: Payback. And the companies pretty much cant do anything about it, because taking this to the court would just make them reveal their criminal acts. So, nope, this whole thing was not planned from the start.

...fuck this thread is so depressing. I'll just leave this here:

A long time ago, copyright was meant to stimulate creativity. Now, copyright is abused to assure a steady flow of income. Andrew Crossley was one of the lawyers that found a way to turn piracy into money. We pirates, as so dubbed by the media, have been claiming that the entertainment industries have been unable to come up with new business models. We could not have been more wrong. From the leaked ACS:Law emails, we learned that it was not the artists, not the people actually working for their money, but the lawyers that found a way to exploit a lucrative business model based on copyright. Since copyright protects intellectual property for more than 70 years, everything made after 1935 can be exploited by pay-up-or-else letters. Money can be made by exploiting a law to prevent other people from exploiting your work.

The piracy witch-hunt is not to stop piracy. It is not to secure the artist?s income; it is just another business model allowing a group of lawyers to do what they do best: defend their statements with law. They found a way to make it legit to financially rape exploit children. And the entertainment industry associations even openly stated that they don?t intend to share the money from this exploitation with the artists. Instead, they intend to use it to start even more lawsuits. This is the extreme opposite of what copyright was intended for. Judge and jury must be brought to understanding that the entertainment industries are not interested in stopping piracy, but exploiting it. This is what kills creativity. This is what discourages the real artists.

Operation Payback is the protest against these flawed laws, against the lobby that issued the laws in the first place. Documentaries, such as Steal This Film (http://www.stealthisfilm.com) and Rip! A Remix Manifesto (http://www.ripremix.com), were ignored. So we started with Denial of Service attacks; we started the protest of the future by targeting websites of lobbying groups and law firms that abuse copyright law. We simply will no longer be ignored. While the operation moves forward with new actions such as defacing websites, people have realized that defacement is not the only thing that can be done. People started protesting on their own: bomb threats, prank calls, hacking websites, and who knows what else. Several media outlets are reporting about the operation distancing itself from these splinter attacks, like the attack on individual artists who have this ?Sue! Sue! Sue some more!? attitude. But protesting is done regardless whether a core group approves what happens or not. Operation Payback is the movement, the protest itself, the moving force that tries, where we uncover how deep the copyright exploitation goes nowadays. That movement cannot be turned away, stopped, concluded. As long as anybody continues to fight for this cause, the operation will exist.

The operation, in the least, is a success. The operation is not lead by a core group anymore. It is decentralizing and spreading. It?s gaining strength and momentum. At this point in time, the future of the operation is unknown. We are still discontent that a student who downloads songs is considered criminally equal (or sometimes even greater) to a terrorist, a child molester, a serial murderer. We are discontent that children who want to share a song with their school friends are being brainwashed that this is wrong. If an artist does not want his or her creations to be shared, then why were they published in the first place? We are discontent that pirates are considered criminals, are considered dangerous to society. We are discontent that the entertainment industries consider their monetary worth more than the livelihood of the artists themselves. And as long as these laws are not changed, as long as lawyers keep suing people, the operation will continue.

DDoSing websites was the first step; hacking and defacing websites were the next. What will tomorrow bring? Would we go on the streets, fighting our ways to the office? Would we have to overthrow the walls of the White House to make our statement? Do we have to fight for a new renaissance? Do we have to start a revolution, to get our freedom to share in this world? Stop this madness. Stop suppressing our needs to share, just to preserve cash money. Teachers pass their knowledge onto others by sharing. But if we are no longer are allowed to share our findings, our knowledge, our emotions, our expressions, our hearts, and then the evolution of mankind stops here.

The government gave the entertainment industry free reign, heard all their wishes. Now do your task and help your citizens. Heat our wish from uncensored internet. Heat our wish to share what we like and make. And trust us that we reward the people whose work we appreciate. Because that?s what it is still about, right?

Have fun.

 

[stonethered]

...and has organized actual physical demonstrations to take place tomorrow in various cities around the world.

Physical demonstrations you say? Cue the INTERPOL, MI5, FBI and/or CIA in 3... 2... 1...

(Any of my fellow Yankees know what the first two are? I'll give you a cookie the the first one who answers correctly.)

I believe Interpol is the International Police, who I assume work for either the UN or NATO. MI5 is British Intelligence, the equivalent to the American CIA if I'm not mistaken.

 

[tofucyborg]

Oh noes, not half an hour! 1/48th of a day! Gasp! That's almost 2% of one day!

How about this anon, they'll stop 'being angry' when you smarten up and realise that people deserve to be paid for the things they work for.
I'm not saying that the RIAA should be allowed to sue people for 100x what they stole but in no way should people's work be taken from them without a [figurative, but literal] cent earned (for each person). Capitalist country, capitalist rules.

Actually 1/48 > 1/50 so it's more than 2%.

 

[Callate]

Um... Guys? Gene Simmons, for all his bullshit (and the man is nothing if not bullshit), doesn't actually have federal law enforcement officers at his beck and call.

The U.S. Copyright Office does. I think Anon have just called down a world of hurt they do not fully understand upon themselves in the name of their petty theatrics.

 

[WOPR]

Finally! Someone's sticking up to these internet terrorists!

if attacking the government doesnt scream "terrorism" to you, i don't know what does.

Pff...

Terrorist are laaame. We should call them The Opposing Force. It would go well with all that "Hackers" and "Pirates" stuff.

heh... half-life reference...

good one **thumbs up**

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Well, over here in the UK the plan is, if you're even accused of copyright infringement three times, you can be banned from the internet for life. No wasting any time looking for proof of such archaic concepts as 'guilt' or 'facts', and it seems they're going to be basing some of these accusations on the amount of bandwidth used.

Looks like WOW is going to die out in Europe then, with it's constant flow of data and 5GB+ patches, as all the players will be criminals locked away from the internet.

I firmly expect an uprising of ex WOW players suddenly shut off from their digital crack, raiding government buildings and dragging politicians out to Madame Guillotine.

So as has been repeated, it's not about 'lol we want to steal music and movies', it's about ludicrous theft of basic rights, coming into force purely to protect the profit of massively rich corporations. It'd almost be interesting to see the music industry in five years, where no-one is buying any new music, as there's nowhere to hear it with youtube and most internet radioo sites cleansed of all unlicensed music, and the only stuff allowable is a dozen or so tracks on constant rotation, paid for EMI and WMG and Sony.

"Damn, our profits for new artists have dropped by 90%, I wonder if it's because we don't allow anyone to put them on the internet, not even the bands themselves (see OKGO, blocked from putting their own music video up, despite their success almost entirely coming from a previous music video that went viral). It's almost as tho it wasn't theft, but the consumers doing our advertising for us by spreading the word to friends. Still, can't change now, the 10% we have left is pure profit, no piracy going on! Well worth losing 90% to stop a kid getting to hear new stuff for free!"

"Um, you don't suppose some of those kids would have gone out and bought some of that stuff they heard, and that'd be why we're down 90%?" *fingers in ears* "lalala I can't hear you!"

 

[tofucyborg]

OK. A lot of you have disappointingly missed the point of these attacks. First of all, I am very much so OPPOSED to piracy (in America, some countries should have it -- for example, in Romania nobody would have any software if they had to pay for it). However, the current copyright laws are made so as to unfairly favor RIAA and similar organizations. It's much more expensive to pirate an album and get caught and sued, than to STEAL a physical copy of the same album from a store and get caught and sued. By orders of magnitude.

What Anonymous is doing is sending a message. Yeah, half an hour downtime, or even a few hours aren't important, but the message is. While I don't agree with their methods, I definitely support their cause. For it's not "propagation of piracy," which is idiotic. Rather, it is the overturning of "[a] system that is allowing the exploitative usage of copyright and intellectual property."

My daughter shouldn't be sued for $10000 because she downloaded the new Brittany Spears album, or whatever. She should at least get a chance to buy it. Or pay a smaller amount. Think a little bit before you say something. Even if it is online.