on Thursday the government shut down one of the biggest file sharing websites Megaupload for hosting pirated content. Investigators say that copyright holders got robbed of more than $500 million. FBI said in a statement that “This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,”. The department of Justice says that the takedown is unrelated to SOPA and PIPA or the protest that happened last wednesday, but people are skeptical. In retaliation to this Anonymous hackers took down sites linked to megaupload's take down as well as SOPA and PIPA, including justice.gov, RIAA.com, MPAA.com, by tricking people to click on links which had botnet software on it known as a low orbit ion canon(LOIC) and started attacking the chosen websites by the time the page loaded. This took out these websites for a good deal of thursday. what do you think about this? Is the goverment's take down of megaupload somehow connected to SOPA and PIPA and the internet protest last wednesday? Is Anonymous wrong to have used innocent bystanders to take down these websites? Are they right to have retaliated like this?
Links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/federal-indictment-claims-popular-web-site-shared-pirated-material/2012/01/19/gIQA4rDwBQ_story.htmlhttp://www.ibtimes.com/articles/285520/20120122/anonymous-hackers-department-justice-attack.htm
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