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kingjaffejoffer:

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samuelfromtheshire:

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

“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.

The latest of sites to fall is FBI.gov, which finally broke at around 7:40 pm EST Thursday evening.

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 returned an error as Anonymous hacktivists managed to bring down 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.”

What is the argument for MegaUpload?

Everyone is mad that it is gone, yet no one can state why it needs to return or exist in the first place.

You have to use foresight. 

It’s not that MegaUpload specifically is so special, its a symbolic thing that’s going to set precedent. If this goes unchecked, Megaupload will just be the first, Rapidshare, Mediafire, 4Shared, Fileserve will all eventually follow suit and be shut down also. 

This is basically the MPAA and the RIAA trying to control the internet because they’ve failed terribly at adapting new methods to survive in 2012. You can’t stifle technology because you are too lazy or incompetent to implement it into your business. 

Although these services were not created by the MPAA or the RIAA, hasn’t sites like Spotify, Grooveshark, and Netflix made something similar to the model of MegaUpload?

Although, MegaUpload allows the upload of user content to the web, does not the aforementioned services provide media from the MPAA and the RIAA at the cost of a subscription price? Are these not the models that the MPAA and the RIAA should be endorsing?

Netflix and Spotify are a step in the right direction (Grooveshark is illegal by the way and won’t be around unless they change the way they operate). But Netflix and Spotify are DEEPLY flawed systems because content providers (that are represented by the RIAA/MPAA) can’t get out of their own way and simply give the people what they want. 

For example. 

People often whine about, “why isn’t [insert show here] on Netflix streaming!”… its not because Netflix doesn’t want it there, its because movie studios refuse to offer it, or they will only offer it for a HUGE price that Netflix can’t afford to pay. 

Then you have competing services like HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, etc etc, some shows will be available on one service but not on the next. It leads to a fragmented user experience and frustration all around. I’m aware that a lot of people pirate because its free, and they will pirate no matter what, but there are a lot of people who pay for convenience. If you simply find a way to give them what they want exactly when they want it… they will pay you. This is what the MPAA and RIAA fail to understand (or simply fail to execute).

This problem even extends to streaming music services like Spotify and MOG. I don’t know how familiar you are with these services, but there are lots of songs and albums that simply aren’t available (like The Beatles, or the new Coldplay album). The rightsholders deliberately refuse to have the music available to stream, so this leads people to stealing the content. 

When you really examine the legal avenues people have to download/stream movies and music, you’ll soon find so many instances where rightsholders and studios KILL THEMSELVES with archaic tactics and greed. 

The answer to their problem isn’t to kill filesharing, its to put out a better product, a more convenient product.