Jan 18- Sopa Strike

[Icefire]

Wow. The FBI shut down the file-sharing site Megaupload.com, and arrested its founder this morning. Within minutes, the internet activist group Anonymous shut down the Department of Justice's website and all the websites of Universal Music, which asked the FBI to shut down the site.
That came to a head.

Ok, Now I'm a little lost. How did this happen and why?

[Matthias720]

Wow. The FBI shut down the file-sharing site Megaupload.com, and arrested its founder this morning. Within minutes, the internet activist group Anonymous shut down the Department of Justice's website and all the websites of Universal Music, which asked the FBI to shut down the site.
That came to a head.

Ok, Now I'm a little lost. How did this happen and why?

The FBI claims that since Megaupload had some illegal content (as claimed by Universal Music) hosted on its servers (user uploaded content) they couldn't operate anymore.
Anonymous responded by shutting down the FBI's and Universal's websites as a way of saying "take that" for taking away a website they felt exemplified their internet freedom.

[Taggerung_of_Redwall]

Anonymous is a corrupt, propaganda-spreading group of activists, campaigning for internet freedom and democracy when it suits them. Or they do it for lulz, which you can look up. As of last night, they've taken to posting propaganda inciting rebellion, anarchy, civil disobedience, violence and mass-hacking the entire Internet.
And they're taking down and more websites, affiliated with the Federal government or Universal Music Group. Things look bad.
They were aroused by the undue take-down of MegaUpload, which Universal Music Group asked the Department of Justice to take-down, which they did. This spurred sentiments of "World War Web (3)", the "Digital World War" across the web, and in general the anarchic aims of Anonymous were fervently taken up. The old 'New World Order' concept is rising.

Anyway, SOPA and PIPA have been indefinately put on hold as the majority of Congress now opposes them in both chambers, the House and Senate. Thanks to the Internet blackouts and peaceful protesting, none to Anonymous, who is causing people to re-support SOPA in the government.

[Melody]

ok..................politics has never been my strong point, so the SOPA isn't working?

[Bragoon]

Correct.  The good guys are doing well, doing the right things, and getting stuff done.  The bad guys who say they're on the good guy side are getting everyone riled up and causing trouble. 

[Melody]

oh........................that's a recipe for disaster!

[Bragoon]

Exactly what ToR is saying.  It's gotten twice as complicated in the past two days, and it's a big deal.

[Melody]

would it have been better if there was no SOPA strike?

[Bragoon]

No, it would be worse if there had been no strike, because they still would have arrested the founder of Megaupload.com and Anonymous would still be doing the things it's doing now, and on top of it all SOPA would still have passed. 

[Melody]

oh ok. so now what are they going to do?

[Bragoon]

Hard to say.  Try to figure out a way to lock out Anonymous from their sites will probably be the first thing they do.

[Melody]

and what if they can't lock the Anonymous?

[Bragoon]

Then lots of government sites are going to be down for quite a while.


It will be interesting to see how the government and these companies deal with this.  This is, when it comes down to it, internet terrorism, and it's one of the first cases ever.  This will be a good chance for the anti-internet terrorism groups in these organizations to prove how effective they are.


I do think they'll be able to shake off this problem, mostly because I'm not particularly impressed or concerned about this particular group. 

[Taggerung_of_Redwall]

Read this article by Mashable to learn about the newer, global threat to Internet freedom. It's one of the most comprehensive I've seen so far about ACTA.

[Dannflower Reguba]

Wait, they never shut down the site! I was on yesterday!