The Pirate Bay has been taking a beating lately. After being forced to move through multiple hosting solutions and surviving harsh international copyright law litigation, the pirates could use some good news for once. That piece of good news came over the weekend in the form of a mass DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the MPAA and RIAA’s websites over the weekend.
According to TorrentFreak, the perpetrators of the attacks were the famed citizens of the country of 4chan, all under the unified moniker of Anonymous. 4chan, using its tried and true methods of group insurrection, distributed a flyer around the Internet describing ”Operation Payback,” in which the denizens of 4chan (and countless other users from all over the Internet) would all use a software tool called a “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” at the same time to disrupt website operations at the MPAA and Friday, and the RIAA on Saturday. LOIC is a small piece of software that will fire data at a website with intent to cripple. When many are used in tandem, bad things happen to websites.
This was the document being spread around, via TechCrunch:
Operation:Payback is a bitch.
DATE \September 19, 2010\
To whom it may concern,
This is to inform you that we, Anonymous, are organizing an Operation called “Payback is a bitch”. Anonymous will be attacking the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America), and their hired gun AIPLEX for attacks against the popular torrent and file sharing site, the Piratebay (www.thepiratebay.org). We will prevent users to access said enemy sites and we will keep them down for as long as we can. But why, you ask? Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s rights to spread information, but more importantly, the right to SHARE with one another.The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause; yet they do no such thing. In their eyes is not hope, only dollar signs. Anonymous will not stand this any longer.We wish you the best of luck.
Sincerely,
Anonymous,
We are legion.
Both sites are back up and running, and many would discount the attack as meaningless treachery that will have no lasting legislative effect. However, attention mongering is definitely not outside of 4chan’s modus operandi, and they have proven time and time again that social disruption doesn’t have to have a goal to be noticed. If anything, this attack showed the anti-pirate world that they may not be as invulnerable as they think they are. Never underestimate the power of Anonymous.
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