US Copyright Group — Lawsuits, DDoS, and Bomb Threats 365
Andorin writes "The US law firm of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, otherwise known as the US Copyright Group, filed suit at the end of August against another 2,177 individuals for allegedly downloading and sharing the slasher film Cornered! (In total the USCG has now filed suit against over 16,200 individuals.) In retaliation, Operation Payback, the Anonymous-led project responsible for DDoSing websites of the RIAA and MPAA, targeted the US Copyright Group's website with a DDoS, temporarily bringing it down for a few hours. The group behind the attacks say they'll continue 'until they stop being angry.' Additionally, the local police department evacuated the office of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver after a bomb threat was emailed to the firm. The building was searched, but no bomb was found."
There's more to it (Score:5, Informative)
This only happened after Aiplex Software was contracted to DDoS attack file sharing web sites:
http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/an-interview-with-anonymous/ [pandasecurity.com]
Vigilante justice (Score:5, Informative)
Sometimes a fed up community just goes extralegal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy [wikipedia.org]
Re:Hmmmmm (Score:3, Informative)
I will never understand why westerners are so supportive of corporatist removal of our rights to own outright and modify our stuff as customers and human beings.
You are confusing explicit support with apathy and ignorance. I know an argument could be made that they are equivalent, but the truth is the people who care AND are willing to act is such a small percentage that the organized actors (corporations and law firms) are the only ones who are effective at advancing their agenda.
Re:All this for a loser film? (Score:5, Informative)
Recently a lawyer in the UK was also targeted by the 4chan group.
What's notable is that he was in the same business as the law firm in this article - sending out compliance letters for alleged copyright infringement. As this article [arstechnica.com] notes, lately the UK lawyer had only been getting business from porn movie producers; all his mainstream clients had stopped hiring him because they no longer saw a net benefit in suing their fans.
This might explain why the law firm was threatening people over a c-movie: the 'real' movie studios in the US might no longer want to work with people like them.
The law firm he ended up with was ACS Law, run by middle-aged lawyer Andrew Crossley. ACS Law had, after a process of attrition, become one of the only UK firms to engage in such work. Unfortunately for Crossley, mainstream film studios had decided that suing file-sharers brought little apart from negative publicity, and so Crossley was left defending a heap of pornography, some video games, and a few musical tracks.
US Copyright Group, NOT USCG (Score:1, Informative)
USCG = US Coast Guard, NOT US Copyright Group. Please don't USCG for these rat bastards.
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Informative)
Why -1 Troll?
It's begging the question. The question is phrased to make you accept, as a fact, without presenting evidence, that there are 'many abortion clinics known for doing illegal late-term abortions'. So long as there's an overriding argument that violence can be justifed if it's in self defense or support of the law, then the Troll AC is claiming that violence CAN sometimes be appropriate, AND he's advancing a claim that the abortion clinics are doing something that does make it appropriate. He uses the word "many" to imply that the actions are so common the legal system must be ignoring a violation of the law deliberately, and "known", without specifying if it's 'known' to a legal standard, or just 'known' by somebody having started a rumor without any evidence.
Abortion is also a much bigger hot-button issue than the RIAA. The chance of rational discourse drops when Abortion is brought up, and on Slashdot, the chance of people managing to discuss a local hot topic such as the RIAA was already low. (Hell, the way Slashdot is these days, the chance of rationality is too low even without it being a sensitive topic).
Re:I am... (Score:3, Informative)
You should have included what the copyright date of that film is because I've never heard of it.
Re:I am... (Score:4, Informative)
There's plenty of people who think pot is horribly dangerous, and there's many of those people who more or less make it their life's work to spread terror about how bad marijuana is to the public at large.
Yes, and most of those people think so, because someone in government decided it should be a class A drug instead of a potential wood pulp replacement, and spread the message "POT IS BAD*".
Before then, it was just another plant in the forest, used as a painkilling medicine by shamans and witch doctors for millennia. Or something like that.
When you think about it pretty much ALL our beliefs are shaped by either Government or Religion. That doesn't make the majority "right", it just makes them "more listened to".
* Of course, drugs in this context do not include Alcohol or Nicotene, two of the most dangerous and addicting substances known to man. But we tax those, so its okay.
Re:I am... (Score:4, Informative)
To prove that the problem is the stated one. Otherwise it's just an excuse to get what you want.
No, it's just a sensible reaction to a broken law to balance out all the times when it wasn't broken.
Not completely. The public still gains from the works that are produced with the expectation of copyright.
Not when the work is priced such that there is no significant net value to the public, just the creators and middlemen/parasites. Given the extremely low cost of entertainment these days (e.g. slashdot is more entertaining than most movies for many) that is more likely than not.
You could refuse to buy or support any copyrighted work and put your support behind works with open source licenses. It would have the same effect of collapsing the system.
No, he said refuse to obey unethical laws. Nothing to do with collapsing the system. Quite apart from the entire artificial scarcity silliness.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.