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RIAA Web Site Moved To Linux
xseedit writes "The RIAA has moved their main Web site www.riaa.com from IIS on Win2003 to Apache 2.2.3 on Red Hat. It appears that the move did not go smoothly as it resulted in an 8-hour downtime starting yesterday around noon, according to Netcraft. And the RIAA is still showing a 'temporarily under construction' page. They also moved their DNS from the small company that had been hosting them for the past 4 years, Tomorrow's Solutions Today (TST Inc.), to Mindshift Technologies. One can only guess what happened here, but the move seems to have been sudden and unplanned. They still haven't moved the riaa.org, riaa.net, and musicunited.org domains — those are still pointing to the TST nameservers that no longer accept queries for those domains. TST Inc. deserves credit, however. They seem to have managed to host the RIAA quite successfully for the past 4 years. Will Mindshift do a better job hosting one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world? I wonder if anybody at the RIAA or TST would care to comment on the reasons behind this sudden move. Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?"
I cannot conceive of a less interesting "story" than this one. Kudos, slashdot.
Evil organizationss won't be able to use Linux or other GPL'd software.
So you can laugh all you want to...
Does that mean they are violating 200+ Microsoft patents now? ...and lets not forget SCO...
I finally got to put a chalk mark in the PROs column of my RIAA scoreboard. Actually, I had to create a PROs column. Actually, it would be nice if they'd go back to M$ and I can go back to having only one column.
I hate to sit here and be critical, but is this really "stuff that matters"? This is one of the most meaningless stories I've seen in ages on this site. After looking at the firehose and what doesn't get accepted, it amazes me that something this dumb can be posting material.
I honestly can't believe this got posted. Everything in this description is pure speculation and the only link is to the RIAA website? I know Slashdot has a tendency to flip out over anything the RIAA does, but this is ridiculous. So their website has some downtime. Whatever. Slashdot needs some better filters for stories or something. Come on.
I wonder if they can sue the provider, if some body hosts music on there servers?
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
yep. same thing happened to me from my rss feed pumping into my igoogle.com page.
Maybe they discovered they were running a pirated version of Win2K3, too bad they didn't become self-aware and implode upon themselves, greedy fucks....
"Hey Gary, why are we wearing bras on our heads?"
As irrelevant as this "story" is, and as sensationalistic as the description is...even then, it's still not as bad as WoW addiction. That shit is no joking matter.
A better hobby is probably feeding Vogon grandmothers to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
This is funny! Not a troll! Worth a good laugh, and therefore deserving of a few +1, funny mods. Mods: please don't take yourselves too seriously.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
More seriously, I don't understand how the story is detrimental to the RIAA's reputation (they moved hosting providers...so what?) so why would it be libelous.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
For example, I posted something about this story:
/ 213350.aspx
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/06/04
and it got rejected. I can't fathom how that isn't better than this shit story.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm trying to see their groovy new website - I can't WAIT to learn all the cool new ways I can help to fight piracy! Gee i know that website is gonna be swell ... ..... but the website still just doesn't work -
All I do is hit "refresh" over and over and over and over
but nothing happens!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
and I guess it messed up their server. My bad.
The RIAA is using Linux...
Control passes through the teeny tiny loops of slashbot's brain for a while
ERROR: CANNOT DECIDE WHETHER THIS IS GOOD NEWS OR BAD
Amen to that. I dislike the RIAA's unjust actions as much as anyone else here. But who gives a crap what webserver or host provider they use!
Well, the posited theory is that it's one of the most attacked websites. If you take this line of reasoning further, they probably hired a security consultant to figure out the most secure method of hosting a website, to alleviate problems. Maybe he specified an SELinux-based web server, and that's why they had so much downtime (heh, I kid mercilessly - Dan Walsh does great work). Maybe the new DNS provider handles DNSSEC correctly, or has better perimeter defense.
Now, if this reasoning is true, it could have been presented much more intelligently as a case study (certainly there's no reason we needed to know about this right away), but there's still some interesting information in it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This story was posted for all viewers at one point earlier today (before the Ubuntu validates as Windows story).
In fact, some of the comments made then appear to have been deleted.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I think the submitter confused the RIAA and SCO. Or maybe he confused Linux and AllOfMP3. Or maybe he's just utterly stupid.
It's all in how you word it. Require negative evidence, make "educated" guesses, etc. Observe:
My best guess is that the RIAA has been feeding little children to alligators in third world countries and charging admission in order to pay for their webhosting, and their previous hosting company found out about it. I have no evidence that they have stopped the practice, but they may now be selling children on the black market as well because of the higher TCO for running Linux, as evidenced by all the non-libelous reports from Microsoft. Moreover, in my estimation the quickest way for the RIAA to migrate their pages to a Linux host involves slave labor in Chinese coding factories with 16 hour workdays, 7 days a week, paying the overworked programmers only One Pittance per month.It's also really easy to claim that any losses incurred during the switch were caused by "piracy." Now I'm not an expert on the RIAA or anything, but I would be completely surprised if it wasn't true.
Sue me for that, suckers.
Why do they (the RIAA) have a "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" on their temporary page right now? I wonder...
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
I suddenly feel so dirty...
It appears that the move did not go smoothly as it resulted in an 8-hour downtime starting yesterday around noon, according to Netcraft.
NETCRAFT CONFIRMS: RIAA IS DEAD!
The RIAA trying to poison the anti-copyright (GPL, BSD, etc) stew... though unless they start toting it as proof of the failure of freedom and that copyright is needed I'll take it as a coincidence.
Great Intellect...
Currently, the RIAA homepage is a simple page which says something along the lines of 'our site is down now'. What I love is how the only site that page links to is completely down.
I'm assuming you're asking about the badpublicity tag which I slapped on there (the tag didn't exist until I put it up)
I was referring to linux, not the RIAA. Since when was it a good thing that the most hated organization in the world uses your OS?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I'm more then sure putting their link on slashdot is not helping their downtime situation.
Um, how hard can a server migration be?
Take snapshot of old server
Deploy snapshot on new server.
Test new server under simulated load.
Sync new server with old server. Bonus if you can keep any web boards fully functional during the transition.
Redirect DNS.
PROFIT.
Sure the details are a bit more complicated but for a single server or small farm that's the gist of it.
If you plan it right and execute it right it should go without any hiccups.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They switched to Linux, so they're good, right?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
very intresting
If I was looking for samples of the latest attacks, I couldn't think of a better site to host. I wonder how much they can sell their logs for to security companies?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
that they moved because the attacks were successful. They were obviously moved in a hasty fashion and that is why the site is under construction. All in all, the Windows site WAS wiped out.
In case some people want to see for themselves the Netcraft stats can be found here and to verify who owns a domain and what the authoritative nameservers are one should use whois.
Is this stuff that matters? Perhaps not for everybody, but some people may be interested. The P2Plawsuits site to settle your case online instead of risking court was moved fast, but I wonder how many people would be willing to enter their credit card info on a site with an invalid SSL cert.
I wonder if explicit ban, requested by any contributor of Linux, Apache, etc. would create a legal order for RIAA to stop using the Open Source software?
This has nothing to do with Red Hat, or even Linux, really.
Parent score 2? Who is a moran behind this score?
does red hat come with libdvdcss ? would be very ironic if it did
They're probably losing millions of dollars in revenue per hour with this downtime.
Or possibly they aren't and don't care about downtime and even less on Sundays...
Moran? What is a moran?
The RIAA likely doesn't know -- much less care -- what OS or web server is running their web site. Unless you're actually a hosting company, or a company somehow involved in web hosting such that it's worth the time and money to run your own servers, the platform is entirely handled by whoever is doing your hosting. You decide who's doing your hosting based on price and features; "Linux" or "Windows" is not a feature in and of itself. Even the security of it isn't your concern: that's a problem for the people running the servers that host your website to deal with as they see fit. You, as a hosting customer, rely on their expertise in that regard.
So, pointless speculation about the deeper meaning aside, it seems they're launching a new site and moving to a new host at the same time. Only they don't have their new site ready (or it was ready, but then turned out to be broken so they're fixing it before trying again) before they moved. That's a bit odd, unless their old site had incorrect or damaging information on it and having no website was better than leaving that content up... but a big company mismanaging the move and relaunch of a website is hardly news.
Of course you were joking along with the GPLv4 guy.
The truth is that the GPL has consciously avoided discriminating against any particular uses.
Because of this philosophy, the GPL is unlikely to ever disallow use by RIAA, by an unpopular gov't, by cluster bomb designers, or even by Microsoft (if they are willing to abide by the terms).
Think of it like the ACLU defending the KKK's right to march even though the ACLU detests everything that the KKK stands for.
It's called meta moderating... if you had bothered to research even a slight bit (kid's these days!) you would know that slashdot has a feature for this. Whilst I agree with neither moderation (all should have been offtopic, as I expect this will get moderated by someone), the fact is that they are completely off topic and should not be viewed by the people who do not surf at -1 (and judging by the utter stupidity of the post I am responding to I can see why). If you don't like what you can't see (and slashdot DOES say "1 reply beneath your threshold" where necessary) then you can change it. If you can't do that, or if your little level 2 gnome can't handle the action, then don't get into the fight.
One other thing... GET OFF MY LAWN! Damned kids...
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of kernels suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
stop guessing and give them a call, god a schmuck!
Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?
Naah, I feel freemasons must be involved somehow.
Pretty sure that most people outside of the US couldn't give a flying fuck about the RIAA.
RIAA runs Linux!??
How will they play DRM-protected music and video formats?
Even good things can be used for evil purposes, examples include the "coalition of the losers" among the Linux community, Novell, Linspire, and Xandros who've made deals with Microsoft.
Simply enjoy the irony.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It could be that the RIAA simply wants to distance itself from Vista inepptitude. Thus linux might be a good choice to dodge the financial bullets.
See the truth, and speak only what is true. Rise up and Know yourself and what is around you.
...is that a desire for greater security was probably the motivation behind the move. If, as TFA says, the RIAA site is one of the most regularly defaced on the planet, then it makes a lot of sense that the people running it would want to try and make defacement more difficult. Cracking the site was probably trivial when it was hosted with IIS.
Personally however, Red Hat wouldn't have been my own first choice, but a lot of web hosting providers do run it and I doubt the RIAA host their website in-house.
Now TFA makes sense, eh?
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
What about "Linux violates 235 Microsoft's patents", will Mustdiesoft sue RIAA for patent infringments ? Also I hope author of Linux kernel will be paid ...
Once a law like that is in force anywhere in the world, we can be sure that software supplied through that country comes with the four freedoms in effect, even if not in intent.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Facts be damned, let wild speculation abound!!!
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
When you say RIAA does not care, you make the assumption that the RIAA is represented solely by management only making top-level decisions. However it's not true that only the web hosting company cares what operating system is on a server. In fact the web hosting company reacts to customer demand for either Windows or Linux operating systems. It is the web development team handling the sites that will decide which OS to go with on the server, and there are more considerations that just price, eg is the team used to developing in ASP, PHP or Java, or they prefer to use MySQL or SQL Server? Furthermore, we don't know if the web development team is in-house or has been out-sourced. Even if out-sourced they will have shown the specs, including the OS, to the person in the RIAA that commissioned the project. At some level, the RIAA signed off on running their site on Linux. Finally, even if the site looks like a bunch of static pages which could be plonked into the directory of any shared hosting that is often not the case these days. Most static-looking sites these days have url-rewriting layered on top of their content management system to make the site more search engine friendly.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If using linux = communism, then the RIAA are a pack of commie bastards! I'm so confused now!!! =(
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
open source business model?
My Winamp dines tonight!
They seem to have managed to host the RIAA quite successfully for the past 4 years. Will Mindshift do a better job hosting one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world? I wonder if anybody at the RIAA or TST would care to comment on the reasons behind this sudden move. Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?"
Or, is this entire article just another excuse to beat up on the RIAA?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
When migrating a web site from one vendor to another, the situation changes slightly:
/etc/hosts so they see the new site not the old one.
2. Bring new site online but keep it out of DNS during the beta test. Run both sites in parallel where possible.
4. Beta-test the hell out of it. Beta-testers should use private DNS or
6. Go live.
Steps 1, 3, 5, and 7 are "pray nobody fscks up."
Things get more complicated if you can't control the changes to the old web site. For example, if you have a user forum or e-commerce on the old web site, you will have to decide how to manage that changeover. Will you migrate each transaction? Will you sync daily? Will you sync one time before going live? What will you do with "test" transactions generated by your beta-testers on the new machine before it goes live?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hackers will now have ample reason to step up virus production for linux!
http://www.riaa.com/manual/
Ha...ye...so much for my voluntarily modding myself down to a 1 (instead of a 2) due to the slightly off topic nature of my post. In theory that is supposed to stop the mods modding you down further.
/. and as you've discovered the way to really annoy the mods is to criticise their modding.
Welcome to
I don't have a problem with modding but it would be nice if there were more and clearer categories (as you can decide in your prefs the effect of the modding categorisation). Mods usually mod any opinion they disagree with as flamebait or troll and any statement of fact that sounds clever even if they know it is utter bullshit as insightful or interesting.
Better mod categories would be, off the top of my head, something like: `untrue', `nonsense', `spam' (e.g.: advertising, meme), `hackneyed', `unverifiable', `totally off topic', `brought off topic', and even `unpopular' if you have to (but, hell, I'd set mine to mod those posts up), with clear guidelines on what is what. Notice how it is difficult to dispute what fits into those categories.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Maybe they thought Linux meant less website attacks? *chuckles* All Linux Guru's hold your head high! RIAA will switch back the M$ in about less than a year because the morons only have time to sue, and no time to learn Linux.
...they got problems with that EULA and DRM things...
Rethinking email
> The RIAA is Paris Hilton for nerds where even the most pointless story that is related to it gets too much coverage.
Can we start a petition to throw them in jail?
Will they soon announce that they've been "playing dumb" the whole time and are now going to stop?
Who wants to start a betting pool on when they'll next go to therapy or rehab and how long they'll stay?
Why is this news?
OP - go away.
I'm not sure how likely this is, but that hasn't stopped anyone else speculating; perhaps they did have their site ready, but something about the fact that it was hosted on Linux servers rather than Windows ones was causing problems?
They can't sue you for that, your slander/speculation has to be realistic for the courts to give a crap.
If you retract the point about MSFTs TCO, they may have a case, though.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Here is one!
It's one gigantic hated, monopoly-spawning megacorp against another! Who am I supposed to hate, now?!
Just kidding... I still hate both of them.
I had actually just been wondering if this would ever happen. Since RIAA claims that artists have to be continually reimbursed for their work (going on eternity, now) in order to incentivize creativity, the fact that they recognize value with an operating system which is distributed freely shows their hypocrisy. The truth is, it doesn't matter if this was a conscious decision or not, the market demonstrated for them that there is value in freely releasing your work for sharing, redistributing, remixing, etc... And it's very wrong for them to enjoy the vast benefits of a society that shares while increasingly closing their content to their paying customers and lobbying the government for stricter controls on that content.
What if the Apache Fuondation would now revoke the Apache license just for the RIAA and clearly state that such organisations are from now on barred to use Apache products? I would LOVE to see such clauses in licenses: "If you are doing evil things, you may not use this product".
But I'm dreaming...
Wouldn't you just love to see SCO or Microsoft filing a lawsuit against RIAA for copyright infringement in using Linux?