Operation Payback Shuts Down IFPI Site 376
newtley writes "Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music's main IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) website is down. Not coincidentally, there's an Operation Payback post addressing the Pirate Bay crew's lost sentencing appeal: 'Dear IFPI, MAFIAA and other parasites, The recent verdict in the Swedish Appeal Court (ThePirateBay spectrial) provoked this statement from Operation: Payback. We emphasize our statement with a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack aimed at the IFPI's website.'"
yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
the 'peaceful resolution' you speak of, has no effect. people elected someone on various premises, and he fulfilled maybe one out of a few dozen. people elected representatives on various issues, yet they set out to make laws totally against the will of public. they have even gone the extra mile of bringing out laws with NO transparency and democratic process, in the form of acta.
then there is the 'noncriminal', legal ways of doing that eh ? like, battling them in courts, where they have multiples of money to win over you ?
excuse me but what you speak of can only work in an ideal world.
Meh. (Score:1, Insightful)
DDOSes are not serious for people who do not rely on and in fact mostly hate the internet. Quietly compromise and subvert their servers, collect damning emails for a while (they'll be there), then leak them and/or counter their plans. After a while, when you've got the hang of their writing style, you could also send forged ones.
What the hell is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet 99% of people on either side of this issue have never been to ifpi.org, what exactly is this supposed to accomplish?
Re:Once again we prove... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether Anonymous is right or wrong is for you to decide. But under either case, you don't mess with them.
What a utterly stupid statement. That's justification for doing nothing about bad behavior by any individual or organization simply because they engage in bad behavior, and those who engage in bad behavior are not to be messed with.
Idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, because launching a DOS attack against a web site you don't like is *such* a good way to demonstrate that you're a respectable, law abiding organization.
Don't listen to, or view recorded media? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Once again we prove... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure they're shaking in their boots. I mean, Anonymous went and took out a website that no one visits. What will they do now? How will they bribe politicians without ifpi.org?
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people consider imprisonment to be the use of force and intimidation. DDOS attacks seem tame in comparison. I suppose maybe you care a lot about whether the use of such tactics is "criminal" but that only depends who is writing the laws.
Re:Once again we prove... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. While I don't always approve of the things Anonymous does (such as what they did to Boxxy), you can't deny that they know how to get things done.
Seriously, am I the only who's thought about what we could do if we could get get Anonymous to focus on digging up information on corrupt politicians / cops / other government employees?
Yes it serves a purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
protest? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't listen to, or view recorded media? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to fix things is to: 1) make corporate lobbying illegal and put all politicians' dealings in the open, and 2) perform an evidence-based reform of copyright law to restore it to a reasonable length and scope.
In doing those things, a lot that is wrong with America will automatically correct itself. Alas, things may already be beyond repair...
Re:yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
like, battling them in courts, where they have multiples of money to win over you ?
Like, not buying their music? Like getting voters to care enough about copyright law that it gets changed (because let's face it, most people don't care about copyright law)?
If you're going to get into a fight over this, you should pick a fight that you can win. Like the non-violent methods of MLK, who broke the law in a way that brought attention and public opinion over to their side. Starting a Pirate Bay might possibly be considered that. Doing a vengeful DDOS does not do that. It shows that in fact, those who oppose copyright really are unethical criminals who only want the law changed so they can do unethical things more easily.
If you fight unethically, then even if you win, you find the victory isn't worth winning. Unless you don't actually care about your ethics.
Re:yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not entirely true. Educating the public, and persuading the common people that overly restrictive copyright laws hurt them personally, would probably have a very positive effect.
What effect do you think this direct action is going to have? Because I don't see it as likely to have any effect at all -- at least, not a positive one. Taking a website that nobody visited anyway offline for a few hours is hardly going to make the entire recording industry turn round and say "Oh God, what have we done? The real pirates were us all along!". At best it will be ignored. At worst it will be used to justify new censorship laws.
Parasites? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't listen to, or view recorded media? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, if we stop buying their media, they'll simply assume we're stealing it anyways because there is *no way* that their profits should ever shrink. It is the best option and the easiest to implement though and it's the method I've been using for quite some time already.
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Pirate Bay is not the Pirate Party is not "Anonymous" - I'm guessing, but I assume jdpars is talking about "Anonymous" - a multinational "mob."
Even if they could appeal to some government function, they can't - unless some global government came about and I missed the memo.
not uncommon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a little gem for you:
Ethics is not black and white, and no ethics system that is more inherently "right" than another.
"Unless you don't actually care about your ethics." translates to "unless you subscribe to an ethical system incompatible to mine."
Re:yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Like getting voters to care enough about copyright law that it gets changed (because let's face it, most people don't care about copyright law)?
i wont even comment on that. i think anyone with little insight would have realized by now that with this capitalist economic system and the current democratic election process, there is no way that people's interests can overcome private interests due to control of those interests on all aspects of life in the economic part. like mass media, donations and so on.
Like, not buying their music?
and, that's the naive bit. your not buying music will not have effect, because they have heaps of cash signing over any band you are buying now. to refuse them, that band has to have a lot of principles, and choose to stay small, or, have a lot of willpower and break out of it like radiohead.
and the above situation does not even take into account the fact that those interests can manufacture laws or conditions that will render your indie music outlets ineffective, like killing network neutrality and asking them big money for transit.
If you're going to get into a fight over this, you should pick a fight that you can win. Like the non-violent methods of MLK, who broke the law in a way that brought attention and public opinion over to their side. Starting a Pirate Bay might possibly be considered that. Doing a vengeful DDOS does not do that. It shows that in fact, those who oppose copyright really are unethical criminals who only want the law changed so they can do unethical things more easily.
you are only saying this, because you dont know enough about history, especially on the subject you speak of.
mlks non violent methods were ENTIRELY organized violation of existing laws. flat out. there were segregation laws, and they have contested those laws, they DISOBEYED them, in an organized manner. so much that, at a point even mlk has exclaimed that, their organization moved like a military structure, very efficiently.
and that only succeeded, because they were moving from states that did not have those laws, and the federal government, a stronger entity than those states, were sympathetic to them in general.
had the federal government been the party observing those laws, things would turn out different, and the nonviolent VIOLATION of law by disobedience, would not succeed. history is filled with such cases.
please dont talk on matters on which you do not have sufficient information, like this assumption of yours regarding 'legal' nonviolent methods of mlk.
If you fight unethically, then even if you win, you find the victory isn't worth winning. Unless you don't actually care about your ethics.
there is no 'ethical' fighting against an oppressor. excuse me, but oppressors are called oppressors, exactly because they do not provide you any acceptable means to refuse their oppression.
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
people have given their votes to current administration on a number of election promises. NONE of these have been fulfilled, and even this administration pursued acta even more fervently than the former.
so, public's opinion, mattered ZIT.
what makes you think, it will effect anything for this matter ?
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:1, Insightful)
Nonsense. The standard of living is substantially higher - for everyone - than it was 90 years ago. How rich some people is has nothing to do with how much better off everyone is. Your class-baiting, "the pie can never grow, so the only way for anyone to enter the middle class is to take money from somebody else" clap-trap is embarassingly juvenile.
In the 1930s, we dodged lightning. FDR was a visionary
No. FDR was a patronizing rich guy (who wasn't "visionary" enough, apparently to spread his own "maldistributed" disgusting display of personal wealth around to the nearest farmhands, was he?) who directly, and personally made the Great Depression much worse, and much longer than it otherwise would have been. He hurt more poor people than any single person in the last century, and his legacy is a lower strata of squalid dependency and a sub-culture of plantation-living poor people who - thanks to people like you - blame entirely the wrong people for it and think that only cure is more of the same.
enough nuclear weapons to turn every city in the world to glass that glows in the dark
Give it a rest, already.
Re:Parasites? (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond that people, in the US atleast, aren't educated in rhetoric, logic or debate. Which tends to make such discussions a waste of time as the only way of winning an audience like that is to scare them worse than the opponent.
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the inequality of wealth has a reasonable effect on the level of social cohesion within a country. Obviously people are materially better off now than poor people were in the 1920s. You'd expect that. But it doesn't mean that the poor people today have the same opportunities (despite the best intentions of law makers) to progress in their lives as those who are raised in rich households.
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Don't listen to, or view recorded media? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Even by stealing the media these organizations represent"
Most of the post sounds great, but again as people have posted thousands of times in the past, though somehow you still haven't gotten the message: COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS NOT STEALING!!!! Please stop propagating the incorrect and polarizing claim that it is stealing or theft because it absolutely is not.
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm impressed: I couldn't squeeze that many fallacies into the same sentence if I tried. You're arguing that poor people aren't productive, and that the welfare state, with its progressive taxation, is "slavery"? You're really arguing that people who make millions would be less "productive" if taxed at a higher rate? If you're posting on Slashdot, it's exceedingly likely that you are not wealthy enough for our current plutocratic policies to work in your favor.
You illustrate my point perfectly: you've been convinced by the propaganda of the ultra-wealthy and their lapdogs to argue (and presumably, vote) against your own economic interests and damn our country in the process.
Re:yeah (Score:1, Insightful)
people have little foresight, the difference in peoples mind between 20 and life sentences are so minor
and then educated people know their life is ruined after the former
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:4, Insightful)
I would not consider someone who makes $100 million/year trading oil on a commodities market to be a productive person. No value is added, only value extracted from a system.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE57D3PQ20090814 [reuters.com]
The definition of "poor" is slowly encompassing more and more of the middle class in the US. I'd make sure you're on the right side when the pitchforks come out after the 21st century equivalent of "let them eat cake" occurs.
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:4, Insightful)
like, bush crowd, and their unwarranted laws, constitutional violations.
who is going to prosecute them ? supreme court ? THEY are the one appointing the supreme court justices.
like, bp oil spill. who is to prosecute them ? the senators who are their collaborators ? the administration which cooperated with them ?
what you say, is only naivete.
and, no, youre wrong, there isnt even the pretense of being accountable when it comes to putting somebody in jail or prison in the u.s.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144656/%22we_can_make_him_disappear%22:_immigration_officials_are_holding_people_in_secret,_unmarked_jails [alternet.org]
"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008.
http://www.thenation.com/article/americas-secret-ice-castles [thenation.com]
Re:yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
Like, not buying their music?
Which does nothing. Which scenario do you think RandomMediaExec is going to think of first when the album doesn't sell well:
A) The album sucked
B) People are taking a principled stand against our actions
C) ZOMG!!!!111!11 RAMPANT PIRACY!!!111!! EVERYONE WHO DIDN"T BUY THE ALBUM MUST BE A PIRATE!!!111
Most media executives go with option C even though the main cause may be A or B. Every drop in sales to them is correspondent to an increase in "piracy" in their statistical games.
Re:Parasites? (Score:2, Insightful)
Take a poll of the American/Swedish/European/World population. See how many can tell you one thing (aside from sword-fighting ninjas) about RMS and how many can tell you one thing about file-sharing or Anonymous. We all know the number will weigh heavily in favor of the latter. People remember Napoleon, not De Tocqueville.
Re:yeah (Score:1, Insightful)
If you fight unethically, then even if you win, you find the victory isn't worth winning. Unless you don't actually care about your ethics.
There's a reason I laugh at people who have no idea about the Middle Ages.
Knights in shining armor never existed; and a fair fight is nothing more than a sign that you've grossly miscalculated before offering battle.
Re:Once again we prove... (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? How did the "Great Tumblr Takedown" go? Oh that's right, it backfired.
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
so, public's opinion, mattered ZIT.
Ah, but it was played beautifully. Dissipating anger into disappointment. The dems acted as place holders until the Bush thing blows over.. In the same fashion they did between Ford and Reagan because of Nixon. Like good tag team partners, the dems tap the repubs to jump back into the ring.. to a cheering crowd... It's quite a sight. Public opinion is everything. It must be carefully controlled.
Re:yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
And if it happened to YOU because someone doesn't agree with your opinion. No matter what the topic? Is it still ok?
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was "illegal" for those who were participating in lunch counter sit-ins.
The point was, the law was wrong, not the people.
The same is true today. The problem is with the MafiAA types, not the people doing the protesting.
This will work about as well as all the others (Score:3, Insightful)
A DOS attack! That'll show 'em!
A bunch of internet vigilantes perform a Denial-of-Access-to-Information Attack in an attempt to get a court judgement in another country overturned in the vain hopes that the majority of people won't view them as little more than spoiled brat troublemakers ...
You know, MLK and his people braved fire-hoses, dogs and shotguns at close range.
The worst you guys have is running out of Mountain Dew and porn.
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
I still fail to see any violence.
You seem to be thinking I'm saying something I am not.
Stop reading behind the lines, there's nothing there. I mean exactly what I wrote, and nothing more. There is simply no act of violence.
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:3, Insightful)
Blame? Who said anything about blame? Moralizing and pointing fingers doesn't accomplish anything. I don't begrudge the rich for taking advantage of their access to the levers of power. Human nature is immutable.
Ideally, we'd align incentives so that actions taken in self interest benefit all. Unfortunately, we don't have that incentive structure today. If we want to remedy that situation, we need to convince or force those currently in power to be more egalitarian; it just so happens that the people in power today (as is usually the case) are the ultra-wealthy.
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:3, Insightful)
The little things we agitate about today: censorship, abuse of copyright, overzealous airport security, our foreign wars, the loss of our manufacturing jobs, are all caused by the increasing ability of the wealthy to pervert government to work in their favor. When power is concentrated in a few hands, the result is inevitably selfish exercise of that power and poor outcomes.
The problem seems more spread out than that to me. Consider the anti-Bush villainization, or the anti-Obama villainization now. Most people are still playing my-team vs your-team, and not really caring about the influence of the powerful on the government. If the influence of the powerful was the core problem, people would at least care about it. And actually they still have enough power to be able to do something about it if they wanted to. But nearly everybody is willing to mistreat other people in exchange for some apparent advantage for people more like themselves. Its not just the rich who are doing this, its most people. For example, the loss of manufacturing jobs is directly related to the way wall street profiteering dominates the economy. But try talking to any upper middle class people about our ethical responsibilities while investing and see how far you get. I'd give a similar example for lower middle class people, having to do with unreasonable collective bargaining demands or entitlements, but they don't really have that kind of power any more. They did have a hand in losing it though, and one can still see the same kind of selfish stupidity with public sector unions in many states.
I'm also optimistic that things can get better. A lot of things are a lot worse now than they ever were before, but a lot of things are better. I don't think what we've got now is worse than Jim Crow. And its not as if we lack the power to break the cycle. Wealth stops being power if people stop being willing to be bought.
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Y'know what? It may be called "out of line" by someone, but I'd say the O:P operations are the modern-day equivalent of a lunch counter sit-in, or Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat.
Not even close. This is more a bunch of babies pissed they missed nap time, then any sort of civil disobedience ala Rosa Parks/MLK.
Re:yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you rather punish people or fix them? I vote the latter, prison is the former. And as it so happens, prisons tend to just make small time first offenders into hardened criminals with nothing to live for, as you lose pretty much any chance of getting a good job, living in a nice neighborhood, having friends outside of prison, after you have been there. We could instead rehabilitate criminals and help them get into social positions where continuing a criminal lifestyle would be harmful to them, instead of practically unavoidable.
Personally, I don't see the purpose in conviction for revenge. Shit happens, and when it happens to you, you need to get over it instead of spending the rest of your life watching another man suffer in what goes far beyond revenge. Punishment doesn't dissuade crime, wealth does. If we fixed poverty instead of fucking the poor as much as possible and ensuring that there are always more and more poor around, there would be a lot less reason for them to commit crimes. If you don't need the money to live, you are a lot less likely to steal it.
Or we could just be dumbasses and tell people to suck it up and not do bad things as if it will make a difference. The 'suck it up' mentality achieves nothing for society. The "hey, a problem, lets fix it" mentality does.
Re:yeah (Score:1, Insightful)
You are preaching common sense here. In the US, want to know why some guy smoking a joint can get a life prison sentence?
It isn't because the offense is so dangerous to others that the offender has to be locked up.
It isn't to deter other people, because we all know that if you have a good defense attorney.
It definitely isn't to rehabilitate.
In fact it has almost nothing to do with the offender. The US has a large private prison lobby, and for every guy locked up, they make a good chunk of change.
The reason why people get locked up in the US far more than other countries? It makes private corporations rich, and allows them to buy more lobbyists to demand tougher sentences and keep the money rolling in. A state makes a new supermax facility? Its beds have to be filled somehow.
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it wasn't illegal. Sit-ins were non-violent and did not violate the law.
I hate when people who are little more than thugs trying to get their way try to wrap themselves the curtain of non-violent protests and pretend they're doing the same thing.
Hint: The word "attack" in DDoS Attack is not non-violent. It may not be injuring anyone, but it's still an act of agression, completely the opposite of Rosa Parks and The greensboro 4.
So no, the law was not wrong. There was no law being broken by either the sit-ins or by woolworth. It wasn't illegal to be desgrated, it was merely company policy.
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when is agressive attack equivelent to non-vilent protest? You seem to be quite confused about the methods used in those events, or confused by what a DDoS attack is.
What would be similar is if a bunch of individuals quietly sat down in the lobby of the IFPI and simply refused to move. Attacking them is the opposite of what Rosa Parks or the Greensboro 4 did.
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
themselves the curtain of non-violent protests
It is a non-violent protest, though.
but it's still an act of agression
Alternate suggestions? The government is practically bowing down to rich corporations. What are some ways that you could get the government to listen to you without being 'aggressive' over extremely rich corporations? They may not be doing much, but at least it's something.
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
How are they wrong? Is it because they're taking action (even what little action they are doing counts) against a corrupt government? Just because something is illegal that doesn't mean it's wrong. There may be no other choice at this point.
Re:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni (Score:1, Insightful)
Federal reserve conspiracy theorists aren't even on the level of 9/11 truthers --- they're more like birthers or victims of alien abduction. You were right to stop before you went further into tinfoil-hat territory, but you were pretty deep into it to start. Debt-based money is nothing more than fractional reserve banking, which is a very effective tool for driving economic growth.
As for going off the gold standard --- that was a good thing. It allowed inflationary monetary policy, which also drives economic growth. Read a fucking book, you ignorant bastard, before you convince somebody the government is stealing your precious bodily fluids too.
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
Your business place gets it's lobby inhabited by 200 people completing a non-violent sit in, which hampers customers and employees from doing business. Loss of business means loss of income to pay your salary if you work for them. Until the sit in ends, you're out of work. You now have no income to feed your family. Non-violent enough for you?
Thousands of people take to the streets to participate in a non-violent march against your company's practices; loss of reputation puts customers off doing business with you. Loss of business means loss of income to pay your salary if you work for them. Until the protests end, you're out of work. You now have no income to feed your family. Non-violent enough for you?
A party is elected which campaigns to outlaw some unfavourable business practice; they pass a law that prevents you from making money the same way you always have. You're out of work. You now have no income to feed your family. Non-violent enough for you?
I think you've just successfully categorized every form of legitimate protest as "violent". Good job you're not in charge of lawmaking.
Re:Once again we prove... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't say it wasn't illegal. Anything can be illegal, you just have to pass a law. In some countries, it's illegal to wear a beard, or illegal to eat non-halal.
What I said is that it's non-violent. No-one is hurt, nothing is damaged, the only harm that is done is much the same harm as every form of legal protest does- loss of business. Notably, neither of your two quotes called it an act of violence.
To call it "violent" is a nakedly political statement, and completely false.
Re:Well, somebody's showing... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll grant that they are breaking the law, but they are doing it to protest that the law is unjust.
If you don't like their approach, suggest an alternative, that has any chance of success. (And define success.)
I don't like what they're doing, but I dislike it less than I dislike the corrupt legal systems that they are protesting. (OTOH, let's not be confused. It's just a protest. It's not anything that's very effective.)
The "effective" measures that I can think of are all much more illegal, and all require a much higher level of commitment. Things like assassinating all the janitors and secretaries that work for the company. One a day. So replacing them gets to be so expensive that it can't be done, but they can't be given 24-hour guard because there are too many targets. That has the potential of being effective, but I don't think group of people is so committed that they would do it.
Were they to do as the above paragraph suggests, then one could reasonably argue that they were doing wrong, rather than merely acting illegally. But if they were so committed that they would carry out those acts, then I doubt that they would pay any attention to your evaluation of their moral worth. (Actually, I doubt that anyway. *I* certainly consider it a mere assertion without any backing argument.)
Re:yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
There's also the little fact that at those times the ownership of the media was much less centralized, and editors would print an interesting story, even if it went against normal policy. Readers had choice.
Today, even local papers are parts of a media chain, and editors aren't allowed to print something against company policy, interesting or not, or they'll be fired. (Also Fox news recently won a case based on it's right to intentionally lie to people about what the truth was. *None* of the other media companies objected. Few publicized it.)
If you hold a protest today, there is no media coverage. Not even local coverage. I've watched it happening. That means you can't use the classical means of consciousness raising, so you need to find alternatives. And if all of the legal means have been rendered ineffective, then you have only illegal means that might be effective. (I doubt that this will be effective, but at least it's an attempt.)
P.S.: It's classic history that when non-violent means are rendered ineffective, violent means will be adopted. By a smaller number of people, but larger numbers of people who aren't that committed will sympathize with those who commit the violence. So don't be surprised if this pattern repeats. Non-violence will be used if it can be used (and is seen as an available option). If it can't be used, other means will be used.