Internet under siege?

Nem

Nem

Jedi
Hi there!
I couldn't find any topic regarding the recent protests against SOPA/PIPA so I create a new one because I think it is quite of importance.
If there exists a discussion already, my bad and I would like the mods to delete/modify this topic.

Anyway, just to recall, some of you maybe noticed that yesterday SOTT.net went black to join the protest and the page explained a lot.
Some articles describe it in more detail:
_http://www.sott.net/articles/show/240386-Update-on-SOPA-and-PIPA-What-s-Happening-With-the-Web-Censorship-Bills-
_http://www.sott.net/articles/show/240369-STOP-SOPA-Piracy-distributors-are-SOPA-Promoters

More popular websites that went black were English wikipedia and reddit.

Another thing is that just recently the website megaupload.com went down, presumably was shut down by feds.
More can be read here: _http://techland.time.com/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-megaupload-com-file-sharing-website/

At the "official" Anonymous twitter we can read that Anonymous are shutting down( DDos so only temporarily) several sopa supporting sites and governmental ones:
_https://twitter.com/AnonDaily

The question arises, what the hell is going on right now? What do you think about it? Is there a real threat by SOPA/PIPA or is it encouraging because a lot of people are starting to be aware of the government, which wants to take away their freedom?
 
Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever

_http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-doj-universal-sopa-235/

Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever

Published: 20 January, 2012, 01:48
BREAKING NEWS

BREAKING NEWS
TRENDS: SOPA

TAGS: Law, Internet, Information Technology, USA

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.

Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.

Less than an hour after the DoJ and Universal sites came down, the website for the RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, went offline as well. Shortly before 6 p.m EST, the government's Copyright.gov site went down as well. Thirty minutes later came the site for BMI, or Broadcast Music, Inc, the licensing organization that represents some of the biggest names in music.

Also on Thursday, MPAA.org also returned an error as Anonymous hacktivists managed to bring the website for the Motion Picture Association of America. The group, headed by former senator Chris Dodd, is an adamant supporter of both PIPA and SOPA legislation.

Universal Music Group, or UMG, is the largest record company in the United States and under its umbrella are the labels Interscope-Geffen-A&M, the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group and Mercury Records.

Brown adds that “more is coming” and Anonymous-aligned hacktivists are pursuing a joint effort with others to “damage campaign raising abilities of remaining Democrats who support SOPA.”

Although many members of Congress have just this week changed their stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, the raid on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a blow to the Web.

Brown adds that operatives involved in the project will use an “experimental campaign” and search engine optimization techniques “whereby to forever saddle some of these congressmen with their record on this issue.”
 
Re: Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever

"http://www.thetechherald.com/articles/Anonymous-forces-DOJ-and-several-others-to-protest-SOPA-PIPA/16056/

Anonymous forces DOJ and several others to protest SOPA / PIPA
by Steve Ragan - Jan 19 2012, 23:34

Anonymous, in response to the indictment of Megaupload and its removal from the Internet, has forced the U.S. Department of Justice, the MPAA, the RIAA, Universal Music, the U.S. Copyright office, and BMI to protest SOPA and PIPA. How? By launching a massive DDoS strike, which at the time this story was posted, had been active for nearly an hour.

Within minutes, less than an hour after Megaupload fell from the Internet, and the DOJ released a press statement on the Megaupload indictment, Anonymous reacted. With a statement warning the government that they should’ve “expected” them, OpMegaupload was launched.

On a massive scale, including a reported 5,635 people (or more than 20,000 depending on the source) who armed themselves with LOIC in order to participate in the DDoS, Anonymous went on a rampage.

As of 6:20 p.m. EST, Anonymous had quickly amassed a hit list that included the MPAA.org, RIAA.org, Copyright.gov, Justice.gov, universalmusic.com, bmi.com were all offline.

As we mentioned in our earlier coverage of the inducement, the government’s actions against Megaupload are exactly the actions that has major domains like Google, and content providers like Reddit, worried. Megaupload was charged with – in the DOJ’s words – “engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering, and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.”

The case itself comes just after millions of people wrote to Congress, protesting the controversial SOPA/PIPA bills. The timing of the Megaupload’s fall, and the arrests of foreign citizens on U.S. orders cannot be ignored.

As Mike Masnick on Tech Dirt explained, the DOJ should have known such a maneuver would be ill-advised.

“For them not to think the reaction would be fast and furious shows (yet again) just how incredibly, ridiculously, out of touch with the internet the DC establishment is.”
 
Nem said:
Is there a real threat by SOPA/PIPA or is it encouraging because a lot of people are starting to be aware of the government, which wants to take away their freedom?
Click to expand...

Well, the protest is encouraging because it makes many people aware of the threat to their freedom, at least on the Internet. I'm just wondering why the response is different in this case compared to the NDAA, which is much more serious in its implications. Is this because in this case, people can see immediately how they themselves are affected while in the NDAA case, they are in deep denial, like it is about some "terrorists" in some remote places but not them?

I'm not sure about the SOPA being a real threat though. Some massive sites are participating in this protest and making it so public. I'm wondering if the elites are just not serious about pushing the SOPA through and they allowed it to happen so that the public is deceived that democracy somehow still works. The Internet in its current form may be good enough or better as a mind-programming tool than an overtly controlled one.
 
[quote author=Nem]
The question arises, what the hell is going on right now? What do you think about it?[/quote]

What I liked about the temporary blackout is that it leveraged the power of the 'do it again pleasure center'. IOW, it got people's attention where they were paying attention. When someone sits down at their computer to go to their habitual places to do their habitual activities only to find a blacked out page, they probably feel a bit frustrated and wonder, like Frasier Crane, "What fresh hell is this?"

What I disliked was reading Senator Dodd's public statement about how 'irresponsible' the website operators were because of the negative impact on business and whatnot. The preference for the "corporate" view over the general population's view was made plain for all to see.

What I pay attention to after an event like this blackout are those people who continue to push for SOPA/PIPA despite the public outcry. They demonstrate the non-caring, non-compassionate understanding that raises flags and makes me want to push them into a holding pen for psychopathy evaluation and testing purposes.

If someone can figure out a similar angle to counter the NDAA agenda, that would be a good thing too as far as I'm concerned. :)
 
The war on people is just entering new stages, and what the PTB fears the most is people networking and exchanging information. The control of the internet is only a matter of time if they want to accelerate their agendas. OSIT.
 
Re: Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever

Hmmm. What with the blackout and now this, the power seems to be with the people after all. Another Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction) "event". Quantum consciousness rulez! Or so I think. :)
 
mkrnhr said:
The war on people is just entering new stages, and what the PTB fears the most is people networking and exchanging information. The control of the internet is only a matter of time if they want to accelerate their agendas. OSIT.
Click to expand...

Agreed. My greatest wish is that by the time the sentient machines have total overt, legal control of the wires, satellites and servers of the physical internet, it'll be too late because we will have some kind of psychic connection that is even faster.

A guy can wish just a little, if he knows is just wishing, can't he? :)
 
Nem said:
The question arises, what the hell is going on right now? What do you think about it? Is there a real threat by SOPA/PIPA or is it encouraging because a lot of people are starting to be aware of the government, which wants to take away their freedom?
Click to expand...

One possible outcome of this situation is to reinforce the idea of "internet policing" to the general public as something "we all need for protection."

Preform arrests of megaupload.com employees and shut down the site. This provokes a retaliatory internet attack from Anonymous on federal government and media interest web sites. The next step would be to declare the Anonymous hackers as terrorists and a threat to national security. It would seem that this scenario could increase public consensus of needing to be protected from these internet terrorist. (especially at a time when SOPA/PIPA is receiving increased opposition) This could be one possibility.
 
Re: Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever

Buddy said:
Hmmm. What with the blackout and now this, the power seems to be with the people after all. Another Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction) "event". Quantum consciousness rulez! Or so I think. :)
Click to expand...
OR Anonynous giving needed excuses to PASS SOPA/PIPA ?.
 
I've been reading about these so called "copyright" stuff for a long time and whatever you hear from the mainstream media is utter BS.
Although they pretend to lose money, it was never because people were file sharing.
There are many examples where people bypassed the corporate circuit and got more than expected (Louie CK, Neil Gaiman...the list is long) even if their works were available for free on the internet.

It's the excuse to kill free speech, to stiffle creativity (aka sharing is what makes creativity grows, nothing has ever been created from a void) and to generate more angst and anger.

This is a declaration of war against the internet users as a whole but as long as they can justify it through "copyright" protection and so forth most people will think it's not that bad until they find themselves into the crosshair.

Megaupload was targeted recently because of their advertising video that was removed from youtube although it was perfectly legit for them to do so...now this ? They stepped on the wrong foot in the wrong bar for sure.
MU is used a lot for "legal" files but of course there are also "illegal" files on MU but there is already a system to remove them so using a bazooka to swat flies maybe shows how much the PTB is desperate ? Unless it was the plan all along ?
 
All I can say is what an awful feeling to not be able to access Sott and the Forum even it if it was only for a day. It certainly made me even more appreciative and gratefull for them. I don't even want to imagine what it would be like to lose them/you and our networking for good. To me it is a really scary thought. :cry: Books are great , networking is awesome.
 
stellar said:
All I can say is what an awful feeling to not be able to access Sott and the Forum even it if it was only for a day. It certainly made me even more appreciative and gratefull for them. I don't even want to imagine what it would be like to lose them/you and our networking for good. To me it is a really scary thought. :cry: Books are great , networking is awesome.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. For some reason I'm currently only able to access the forum via IP address, if I type cassiopaea.org it won't load. Other pages resolve OK, so it can't be my DNS server (also I'm using one of the public DNS servers as a backup). That had me worried for a while, this community means the world to me.

The current developments in US legislation are scary indeed, it's clear that the gaming pieces being put in place now will be used at some point. And of course the European Union is never far behind, even if they pretend to oppose US imperialism. But in reality lots of new EU legislation is very similar to what is passed in the US. The member countries are losing more and more of their sovereignty and democratic processes (whatever little was left anyways), and the decision making in Brussels becomes more and more obscure, no doubt by design. It's just painful to watch.
 
Today, on ARTE news, about the Megaupload case, I was baffled to hear that the persons who were arrested were called by the journalist "The guru and his followers" twice.
Somehow linking the whole thing to some kind of dangereous money laundering sect o_O
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom