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Operation Payback Shuts Down IFPI Site
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.'"
Sorry the first post that was here had to be removed since it copied so many others.
that they are reasonable, thoughtful people, intent on a peaceful resolution, and not a criminal use of force and intimidation.
But not these guys, huh?
You never mess with Anonymous. Whether Anonymous is right or wrong is for you to decide. But under either case, you don't mess with them.
We have to fight back, take action, escalate!
are you aware that what you are saying basically totals to 'just be subservient' ?
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.
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Excellent work...
There will be a revolution someday... this is just the beginnings.
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 gave you that idea anyway?
criminal use of force and intimidation
Indeed. Fight fire with fire.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
I bet 99% of people on either side of this issue have never been to ifpi.org, what exactly is this supposed to accomplish?
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.
Adding Slashdot to the DOS just makes it even worse.
Why don't they choose a website that someone would actually go to? Raise your hand if you've ever been to the website they decided to DDOS other than because this was posted on slashdot. What would be better is if they DDOS'd their monetary transaction server, or whatever way they accept money transactions from the outside world.
Captcha: "pervert"
interesting...
So, the IFPI's site got shut down... and how many people noticed and cared? I know I've visited it a few times (in a "know your enemy" context) but I would imagine this isn't going to affect any of the major players in the copyright troubles or the general public. I guess it is kind of like picketing somewhere that no one really wants or needs to visit.
While I would not wish to recommend or encourage illegal action, it is possible that targeting (lawful) content distributors would be more appropriate and have a greater impact (although might be harder to achieve). After all, shouldn't this be aimed at raising awareness in the general public as much as showing that "the Internet" is just as good (if not better) than the US government at taking down sites?
Now the US govt has all the evidence they need to declare file sharers as terrorists/collaborators. Get ready for police action with full UN approval. ACTA's secret rules probably allow deadly force.
A revolution someday? Why not a revolution now? Don't wish for things, when you have the power to make them happen.
The best response to these types of organization is not through government or peaceful resolution. Even by stealing the media these organizations represent you are part of the problem which limits human potential. We can all stop buying (or even stealing) music that these organizations control. If you enjoy music and film, learn to create something of your own and share it. Subvert the organizations, not their websites/servers. Go to free, live performances, learn an instrument, write a screenplay or lyrics, share your creations in public or over the internet.
IFPI Guy: "You see. It's just lawlessness. Those folks scoff at the law and don't care about property."
RIAA: "We've been saying that too. Here's just one more example."
Politicians who writes the law: "I see your point. We're going to have to get tougher and have more stringent laws to protect the rightful owners of the property."
IFPI/RIAA: "We'll take care of the grunt work of writing that law, Senator. Don't you have an 10Am T-off?"
That's pretty much what will happen. The DOS attack has given the other side more ammunition and the attack has done nothing to hurt them.
Bravo! Well, done!
Fantastic! Instead of being creative and beating them at their own game you're giving them ammo to use against you by the real powers that watch over the recording industries interests.
But hey... I'm sure you scored big points among the same crowd that justifies their theft, opps, sorry, their sharing in the name of protest (cough-cough) of the unrighteous copyright laws (haha).
It seems many here are quick to criticize the immaturity or pointlessness of launching a DOS on some arbitrary website no one ever visits, which is their right. However, I think launching an assault on a website (especially as Anonymous) serves a very important purpose, both functionally and symbolically. It conveys a very direct voice of opposition against companies shutting down websites like TPB or (as we've seen just this week) other torrent domains without due process. It is very clear that those companies and politicians have no idea how these websites function. Rightly so, they are made in a tiered and complex fashion so as to spread, eliminate, or avoid liability, as is the case in the OP (e.g. i-frames, torrents with no trackers, using only links to other sites but not actually hosting any illegal content). However, this isn’t an excuse for the judicial system to say that merely because a system is too complex to understand that those who are genuinely innocent should be lumped in with the guilty. That is ridiculous and I’m sure no one would agree with such a verdict. So while many people on Slashdot might complain about the point of DOS’ing a website, it says very loud and clear to those ignorant parties that people won’t stand for this kind of tyranny. Good for them, I say.
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
Nice move. Protest the loss in court by doing something illegal.
not that i care much for sweden law
keep going
warning pointless sig
I'm afraid you're right. The maldistribution of income in the United States is now worse than it was in the 1920s before the crash, worse than it was for most Latin American countries during their "banana republic" phases, and worse than it was for the Weimar Republic. A disgusting excess of wealth accumulated at the top has distorted our political system, making government insensible to the needs of the common people. This Internet censorship is just a tiny example of the ongoing decay of our society. Growing corruption and socioeconomic leads to civil unrest, and eventually, a violent revolution.
Revolutions are not pretty things. While there have been a few good outcomes (e.g., the American Revolution), the vast majority of post-revolutionary governments end up being oppressive theocracies (Iran [a perversion of the original intent]), violent tyrannies (France, the Bolsheviks), or fascist nightmare states (Germany, Italy, Spain). All were belligerent, and all led to war.
In the 1930s, we dodged lightning. FDR was a visionary who managed to head off a growing revolutionary movement by using public works programs, social security, and the rest of the "new deal" to improve the life of the common man. If we'd elected another Hoover, we would have most likely had a fascist revolt.
Today, we're not so lucky, and we have all the ingredients for a political hellstorm: severe and ostentatious socioeconomic inequality; rampant corruption in all branches of government; a climate of anti-intellectualism; and millions of angry, ignorant, and powerless people eager to hang their hats on whatever demagogue gives them the best scapegoat and massages their egos to his (or her) greatest advantage. It's a powder keg.
The revolution may not come tomorrow, next week, or next year, but barring a political miracle, it is coming. And when it does, the most reactionary, unstable, and angry elements of our society will control a military more powerful than the rest of the world combined and enough nuclear weapons to turn every city in the world to glass that glows in the dark. Napoleon and the fascist states of the mid-20th century had nothing on our power. God help us, and God help the world.
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.
I suspect that just like there are provocateurs sent by the police in peaceful anti-globalizing demonstrations, there are provocateurs at the source of these kinds of vengeful, reactive actions. And there is no way to insure that there isn't. These actions are in now way controllable under a sensible strategy. The goal of this is pretty simple: present any protest against corporate abuse as the doing of unlawful elements, and not as the expression of public opinion.
This goes exactly against of what you are pretending here: you say that there is no legal way to advance the views of public ownership of its culture, yet public opinion HAS an effect, since so much effort is put into skewing and misrepresenting it, and stupid actions such as this Operations Payback go a long way to do RIAA and MPAA's bidding to discredit it.
Stupid stupid stupid! And fucking naive.
I know that many of the corporations are pretty sleezy and they make money off the backs of the artists, but the pirate sites do exactly the same thing. At least the corporate suits give a few percent to the artists. The pirate sites keep it all for themselves. If you're going to do this thing, study the masters like Richard Stallman and write something intellectually coherent about intellectual property. Make a solid argument and it's more likely to be respected.
I'd say it's not very different from demonstrations and riots. While in most cases it's questionable - sometimes it's the only way to be noticed.
because public opinion has ANY effect, there is something called acta ? because it has ANY effect that, NONE of the promises the current administration given to get votes, have been fulfilled ?
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I can write, but I'm no threat to the publishing industry. I can even write lyrics, but I'm not a musician nor would I ever be able to be one with my palsy. However, I have DSL line and I can contribute to what basically amounts to an Internet sit-in AKA DOSS.
It always makes me laugh when people don't make the connection DOSS == sit-in. It worked in the 60s, why not now?
The maldistribution of income in the United States is now worse than it was in the 1920s
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I mean, really. Anyone who didn't see more of these attacks because the RIAA and MPAA will not back down is just not paying attention. It's a vicious cycle, and at the end of the day, it's likely that Anonymous will not do enough damage to be considered a real threat, and the MAFIAA will still be far more unethical. But hoping for a real change is pretty pointless too. Hell, it's likely we won't even have Net Neutrality soon, since it doesn't serve the interests of our politicians and their corporate masters. At this point, this might as well be considered fires before the end, as this will certainly not get better by posting on Slashdot about this. People here already know. We should all go out and educate others about this, the non-destructive way. An informed public is a strong public.
There is no -1 Disagree.
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.
I see. So your solution is to make slaves out of the productive people, so that poor people can have more stuff.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You never mess with Anonymous. Whether Anonymous is right or wrong is for you to decide. But under either case, you don't mess with them.
Yeah! Don't mess with me.
Drop hulu, then you get attention.
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.
Look for yourself
http://www.warnerbros.com/
The pie is growing, but the wealthy are taking the vast majority of the increase:
The wealth disparity itself is a problem, but worse is the corrosive effect this wealth has on our political structure: those with money and influence are increasingly able to purchase government policies that further increase their share of the pie even at the expense of the total size of the pie. It's a positive feedback loop: more wealth leads to more power, and more power leads to greater wealth. This feedback is why I'm so dour about our prospects: the cycle seems impossible to break.
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.
You cannot defend the inequality in wealth and/or income distribution by saying that all boats have risen. Maybe poor people have it slightly better off, but at the expense of rich people have it ridiculously better off.
It's also a myth that income is proportional to productivity. The market, via the participants, does not work rationally, nor appropriately in a ton of situations. The invisible hand is no match for irrational behavior of the masses, especially behavior instigated though advertising.
You may have been able to argue better for the market in the past, but when you have one group, producers, actively manipulating consumers, through the application of psychology and focus groups, you're going to end up with insane wealth inequalities.
The simple fact is that no person, regardless of any factor, should be able to and/or need to make more than, say, a million per year. it's DESPICABLE that one person could want and justify having so much wealth at the DIRECT expense of others, regardless of whether those others "deserve" it or not.
Simply put your an idiot for believing that more than a small group of people choose to be poor. For every millionaire there are 10 people who work twice as hard and yet live in poverty.
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
"Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they [Radiohead] hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox singing “Sweet Dreams” and thinks, ‘Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know?’"
-- Noel Gallagher on Radiohead's politics
-kgj
Another point is to consider the efficient market hypothesis and the relative competence of people. If our system allocated resources efficiently, then the variance in personal incomes should match the variance of intrinsic talent. Consider software development: this field is highly unusual because some people can be an order of magnitude more productive than others.
In most fields, the gap is far smaller. Yet income disparity in the United States is on the order of tens of orders of magnitude. The difference between the theoretical and actual figures can only happen if rent seeking is occurring: that is, that income disparity is so severe is a strong indicator that our market system, instead of being free, fair, and efficient, is actually corrupt.
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
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.
dont talk about knowing jack shit.
standard of living and distribution of income are two irrelevant concepts.
standard of living changes with technology and times, and is not dependent on distribution of income.
currently, average american lives in far better standards than a medieval serf. but, s/he gets FAR less than the economy, than a mere medieval serf got in middle ages :
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
therefore, a medieval serf's standard of living, COMPARED to the max standard of living in middle ages, comes much higher than the standard of living of an average american, compared to the max standard of living currently.
you need to brush up on your statistics knowledge. the one which does not exist, that is.
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tell me how hard a wall street exec works. and how productive they are. tell me how hard the owners of unfathomable amount of funds in an investment fund work. and how productive they are.
Read radical news here
Don't the courts know just because the site is called "thepiratebay", it doesn't mean they condone or help pirating! They are perfectly innocent, this is a travesty and an outrage to freedom everywhere!
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.
I'd suggest you do some reading or research before asserting the above so glibly. The Elizabeth Warren lecture entitled The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class would be a good start, though her research and the focus of what's presented, uses (IIRC) "50 years ago" as a baseline for comparison.
No, the way content is distributed and consumed has changed, so YOU DEAL WITH IT. Copyright law enables content creation? Show me a shred of evidence that without copyright law there would be no content creation, or that the quality of the content would be lower.
Hey mister politician.. Look what those nasty cyber terrorists did to us!
We need more laws, more control, more oversight. Heres a big pile of money to make that happen!
Well gee.. I don't know a damm thing about the internet. And i don't give a crap about it really.
And most of my voters don't care either. And people don't like terrorists much. So yes! Yes i will help you gain more control over the internet!
It's a mostly useless issue i can be 'tough' on and still be re-elected. Win win for everyone!
Done deal.
truly, they were multiply-sourced in the DOS attack.
MSDOS was finally good for something. anyone got a torrent for the latest release?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
who directly, and personally made the Great Depression much worse, and much longer than it otherwise would have been
Are you talking about The New Deal? If so, I'm not convinced that history on your side there:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/winning-the-economic-argu_b_167301.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
The maldistribution of income in the United States is now worse than it was in the 1920s
Nonsense. The standard of living is substantially higher - for everyone - than it was 90 years ago
Unfortunately it is true; from the census bureau:
"The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession.
The top-earning 20 percent of Americans -- those making more than $100,000 each year -- received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures."
It is important to note. Having a strong middle class would make most pirates obsolete as they'd be more likely to spend some disposable income on music; whereas now there is no such thing as disposable income for many americans.
"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. "
This seems like you just hate poor people and think that they stay poor because they don't work hard, because they're lazy, and because they're addicted to the teat of social welfare. How terribly wrong you are! Perhaps it has something to do with the coordinated efforts to dismantle the middle class; exportation of jobs via outsourcing, removal of manufacturing domestically. Walmart does not provide a middle class income.
I think FDR helped more people than any single person in the last century by promoting his progressive agenda.
You'll never convince the looters that what they scheme is death and misery for all. Especially the "illuminated" looters here on Slashdot, and even moreso now that they can keep leeching off of their parent's health insurance until they're 26.
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
The maldistribution of income in the United States is now worse than it was in the 1920s
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 [sic] juvenile.
The GP didn't say anything about the standard of living. He was talking about the distribution of wealth. We have reached the point where the inequality of distribution causes a recession, we are rapidly approaching the point where the standard of living will start to collapse, at least for the middle class. Already, access to things like healthcare is far worse and, even after the crash, housing prices (to own) are beyond more people than they were thirty years ago. There is a natural limit to growth, and that is approached when an imbalance in wealth distribution occurs.
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.
Wow! How did Roosevelt personally make the Great Depression worse? Did he wheel around running over the feet of people in breadlines? The claim that he "hurt more poor people than any single person in the last century" is astoundingly laughable and only confirms your subscription to the Fox/Limbaugh schools of nonsense. His policies put people to work and created hope in a nation that had lost hope. He stabilized the financial markets that collapsed due to the policies of the Coolidge/Hoover administrations. In short, he did everything a president is supposed to do when confronted with recession. His efforts to end the depression only started to falter when he started compromising with the Republicans (mostly on taxes) after the 1936 elections.
Roosevelt's policies were more responsible than anything else for the growth of the middle class.The creation of Social Security might be the single biggest factor in allowing the economic growth of the US middle class. WWII didn't end the depression, it was the opening of markets to American agriculture and manufacturing that had previously been dominated by nations ravaged by the war that did. The fact that children were no longer financially burdened by their parents and that those who suffered a bad turn were not driven into the streets, allowed the new middle class to survive the normal economic ups and downs and capitalize on this to an extent never before possible. Instead of this wealth being entirely dominated by a very few, more people than ever were able to share. Since Reagan, the Republicans have been working very hard to return us to the policies of the 1920's, and it is sure to have the same results. Our current economy, with corporations sitting on record profits while joblessness remains high is example of that.
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.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
This is a symbolic protest, more so than an effective one.
The real winners in this war will be those in power, with financial means to buy elected members of our government (which is all of them).
The only way to beat money... is a large group of angry opposition armed to the teeth with weapons. But even then, money still has the advantage in that money can buy bigger guns and write the laws they will hang you by.
How important is the site to the IFPI's daily operations? Who is going to be bothered by the site being down? And why?
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
this is not a problem of the wealthy. this is the problem of a weak government. It is far easier to point the finger at someone who is better off than you, and say it is their fault. The fact is, it is just as much your fault (assuming you are an american) as it is the fault of the wealthy and the corrupted official. It is, after a democracy. At some point, we need to stop blaming the rich for our woes. And no, i'm not rich. I"m as poor as the rest for the time being.
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.
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.
"No, the inequality of wealth has a reasonable effect on the level of social cohesion within a country."
So does the basement level for poverty.
Raise either sufficiently and you can raise cohesion. Another name for that cohesion is placidity or contentment. It's not mandatory that every one own the same amount for (most) everyone to be content.
a guillotine worked for the french
Socialism is predicated on tyranny over our lives and products as well as the idea that we should all abdicate all responsibility for every bad decision that we have ever made in our lives. Socialism also requires that we accept government meddling in our day to day lives. After all, if we're incapable of accomplishing anything meaningful on our own and we shouldn't be held responsible for any decision that we make, then we certainly shouldn't be trusted to determine the correct course of action in our lives.
And I would rather protect the rights of the ultra wealthy on the off chance that all of my hard work and effort pays off and I become one of them. You would take all of that away from me for a little security.
Our plutocratic policies are the direct result of people like you using government to meddle in the economy. You tell government that it's okay to meddle in the economy as long as its in your benefit and then act shocked when they meddle in the economy for someone else's benefit. You're the one who told them it was okay. They were acting entirely consistently with your direction.
They are not, however, acting consistently with mine, because I would rather they stay out of *everyone's* business, yours, mine, and the ultra-wealthy.
Just leave us the f*** alone and let us live our lives. Stop pretending you know whats best for everyone.
The bottom of the http://anonops.net/ FAQ:
Other
Q: Why is this FAQ so fucking long?
A: Because the people who write this crap have copious amounts of spare time, and it makes an interesting intermission between faps.
Q: What happened to tieve.tk?
A: The jews at dot.tk took it down.
I think what i was getting at is something much more subversive then posting a quasi "creative" 1 minute video on youtube and calling it art, or going on american idle and doing what every other act does hoping that they wind up the flavour of the season. The idea that you need to become some sort of mass global success to be considered creative is ludicrous. i think we need to begin to being more creative in the way we try and overcome/ subvert these RIAA type organizations. We need to stop using copyrights for creative works of art. The idea here is that our potential is undermined by the widely held belief that we should buy and sell these "creations" because thats what they are for, (and i think in many cases a. lot of "creative" works are only made to be sold.) There is a reason Michelangelo and Beethoven did not feel the need to "copyright" their work. What i find the most interesting is that so many people seem to be very aware of these problems, yet we decide to own or pirate mass collections of movies and music that someone else created. and then start anti copyright "movements", probably some deep seated psychological fetishization problem. so, why not just create without copyrights?
This is a very dangerous kettle of fish that is being passed around here. I really don't want to reach my hand in, but here it goes anyway.
The previous poster about FDR (being a crook) is absolutely correct. Even a cursory examination of the impacts of his political policies during the depression reveals that unemployment skyrocketed after the formation of the new deal, and that living conditions took serious turns for the worse. Further, he enacted the atrocity that is the federal reserve bank, against the bitter pleas of more sensible men at the time, due to strong influences from foreign powers. (The run-away inflationary cycle of which is what is at least partially responsible for the banking failures of the past few years.) In addition, he created an executive order that seized all privately held gold, and transferred it to government coffers to back the new deal.
The multitudes of destitute people made for a very willing public, eager to be saved from the outcome of their own panic. (the 1930s bank crash resulted from panicked crowds making runs on banks. The natural way that banks make money is by lending more than they have in the vault, and depending upon interest payments for the returns on investment. If everyone makes a run on the bank, the bank will be caught with its britches down, and default on its extended credit. At the time there was no protecting agencies like the FDIC, since there was no national reserve bank. [yes, I called it an atrocity, I'll get to that later.] Because of this the banks of the era HAD to be more sensible in their loaning practices. Despite this, the bank scare caught them at a disadvantage, So, as a matter of consequence, the bank and loan industry crumbled under its own debts, resulting in a massive deflationary spiral, leaving millions unemployed, and many more homeless as people with mortgages got foreclosed on by banks desperate to pay off their debts to remain solvent. Essentially, a substantial amount of the currency that was PREVIOUSLY in circulation, was now stuffed into wealthy people's mattresses. As such, there was a dramatic currency shortage. (Deflation.)
These people were desperate, and would have eagerly accepted a deal from the devil himself. They got pretty much that with FDR and his new deal.
The federal reserve bank.
This new agency had been tried before. It was successfully eliminated by Andrew Jackson, under the incarnation of the "Central Bank". Andrew Jackson is the ONLY president in the history of the united states to pay off the national debt, by halting all deficit spending, paying off it's debts, and dissolving the bank's charter to make more loans. This prior president had some rather choice words to say about it in fact.
** ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it."
"The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government
**
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves."
**
"I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country."
-- amongst others.
So then-- What is the federal reserve bank, and what does it do?
The federal reserve bank codifies lending practices (in general a good thing), but by design creates exponential inflati
In this world those with money are the ones who dictate (law wise) what is wright and wrong, if those of us without money attempt to make a change to said morals then we are squashed with the heavy weight and costs of the legal system. Anonymous, is in a way helping add voice to those who can not have a voice because of the lack of money. The only sad thing here is that Operation Payback doesn't keep up the attack long enough to really make an impact. If these attacks lasted months or years, and effected any attempt for the companies to circumvent them, then Operation Payback might have some real effect, so what if the web site is down for a day or two. The entertainment industry here in America has managed to set up laws such that even material that is claimed (not proven) has to be taken down immediately, with only long and expensive court cases available to reverse the action. It is my belief that they should face the same consequences if they take an action that the public doesn't like they should be denied until an appeal to the public has been approved by the public. It is not fair that industry can spend millions on suppressing us but we have no recourse. I don't really care if the industry falls at this time, they have stomped over our freedoms and are restricting us further each day.
Heck the entertainment industry doesn't even allow projects that were developed outside their channels into their elite group (Eg: the short movie made completely with open source software, Sintel)
And now I'm afraid to develop anything because someone somewhere may have bought some stupid and possibly invalid patent, and they can make the claim that i used something they own, and sue me. (software and other useless patents) It's not a matter of if the patent is good it's a matter of how long they can keep you in court depriving you of profits and costing you legal expenses.
It's these kinds of practices have caused the current ressession, reducing available jobs increasing costs, and returning nothing to the people. They deserve the spit in the face, after how long they have kept us under their shoe. I mean why does a new DVD (not even blue-ray) cost over $30-$60 and a couple of years it's on the rack new for $5, the cost to the company didn't go up, the movie didn't become less entertaining, but yet the cost still comes down. Because they found they can milk more money our of us when it's new. Heck even the upcoming Christmas has been so commercialized that we have to spend almost the whole years savings just to get a few gifts for our loved ones.
This is the main reason that i have gotten into electrical engineering, so that i can create the technological gifts that i want for my loved ones, but without breaking the bank.
I have been following these posts and attacks for sometime and truly understand people feel aggrieved on both sides. I cannot condone the attitudes of RIAA, MPAA, IFPI and other organisations "ruthless attitudes" towards some copyright infringers but there has to be a balance here to satisfy both sides. Lets put this into perspective for one moment. On one hand we have the Music and Film Industry moaning and crying about shrinking profits and on the otherhand you have people who are simply poor and cannot really afford to buy music, dvd's, blu-ray and those people inbetween who just rip anything and everything. Profits are shrinking for these industries, however their "overheads" have dramatically decreased pro-rata, so they are no worse off with the advent of downloadable music, of which the music and film industry does not have to pay for the cost of burning/producing a CD/DVD. Those industries do not need as much staff to run the companies anymore and technology is such, that big studios are no longer needed either, however these people still want to be on the same "Fat Cat" salaries for doing 2 hours work when 20 years ago the same job would have taken them 8-10 hours. It would therefore just be far easier to disband a lot of these organisations that are surplus to requirement and just stick $1.00 on the price of 50 blank CDs and $1.50 on a pack of 50 DVDs and let them argue out the profit share between themselves. Remember if you download an album, you still have to burn the CD that the record company does not pay for. It is your time, electricity, wear and tear on your drive and your cost to buy the blank CD. We can then get rid of these stupid politicians ideas of taxing ISP's coupled with other weird and wonderful useless ideas. Hopefully at that point the music and film industries can shut their festering slits and people can carry on downloading, no more DRM and everyone wins. Is that too much of a simple solution?
All cows eat grass!
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.
the way content is distributed and consumed has changed
So? What difference does that make? The law is still the law. The way banking is done has also changed, so if I electronically transfer all of the money in your accounts to my accounts, you would be okay with that because I used a computer instead of a gun? Right. Keep throwing your little tantrum.
Oh, and by the way, I said that copyright law is what enables content creation TO BE A VIABLE BUSINESS MODEL AND CAREER PATH. I never said that "without copyright law there would be no content creation" or that copyright law somehow effects the quality of content (since quality is highly subjective and difficult to quantify). Work on your reading comprehension.
Value is added: The correction of prices between markets or points in time. Now, if that is more or less than they make is another question.
In fact, the whole problem is that denial of service attacks are perfectly fucking useless, especially when directed against some stooge site that nobody ever uses. In other words, operation payback is not being force full enough.
There are three viable approaches to resolving the piracy issue :
(1) civil disobedience --- You need enough people to pirate like crazy, brag about it, get sued, and not pay the fines.
(2) hacktivism --- hack all the systems of all anti-piracy lawyers, expose their illegal activities, and get them disbarred.
(3) technological --- We could create viable friend-to-friend file sharing by creating an open source social networking and messaging application that envorced privacy through end-to-end encryption for all communications, and shared all file types. App developers would be immunte to prosicution because they'd obviously need file sharing for photos and videos to compete with facebook. Bonus, you'd kill off facebook too.
DoS attacks are meant to be vaguely like civil disobedience but they're neither effective nor sympathetic.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Basically, you say that DOS serves a purpose. Then, you go on a tangent on how the people who are "hit" by this (hint: they are not. not in the least) don't get the Internet. Then, you claim that this sends any message other than "we are doing the right thing as we really are fighting criminals".
I don't get it.
'I' in the IFPI stands for International.
It was created under benediction of THE fascist state which it has successfully outlived.
Seriously, a single administration of a single country will not be the end of it.
You would need an international body like UN or a complete decades long boycott of all their monetary sources BY THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE PLANET to put a stop to that.
And even then it would still stick around. Nazis and fascists sure did.
And they entertained and made money for far less people than IFPI.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You're really arguing that people who make millions would be less "productive" if taxed at a higher rate?
No, I'm arguing that making the 5% of people in the country who pay the vast majority of the taxes pay even more of the taxes won't make poor people any more productive, but it will increase the demographic that is being given an incentive not to be so. How many tax dollars a rich basketball player or the owner of a large business pays isn't the point. The point is that you're liking the idea of taxing them more because you think that will fix what's wrong with poor people. Which couldn't possibly be more exactly wrong.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they [Radiohead] hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox singing “Sweet Dreams” and thinks, ‘Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know?’"
-- Noel Gallagher on Radiohead's politics
That coming from a guy who was in that same interview quoted as "once said [he'd] never read a book", but he admits a book "called Angels and Demons by a guy called Dan Brown" to be "quite interesting"...
Well... Let me put it this way.
Would you turn to a street performer like say... a juggler, for advice on international economy and politics?
Cause THAT is what most (with few exceptions) of these ENTERTAINERS are.
Glorified court jesters with zero qualification outside their limited scope of work.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I hope they will go after the people who DoSSed the site, as it's just childish/immoral behaviour, in the end it's the entertainment industry which is boss over their own content not some annoying nerds. If you don't like the businessmodel these companies have, then go create your own content and release it for free.. Entertainment content is still a luxury item not a basic necessity, and therefore the people who create(/invest in) the content are the ones who can decide how they distribute/sell the content, if you don't like it then don't buy it, but don't go stealing it.. It's not like you don't want YOUR property protected from being stolen.. If you think creating content is so easy then go create it yourself. The only reason why people are against going after downloaders is because they could be the target, downloading is still so easy and doesn't take much effort in comparision to stealing a car, but it's just the same in the end.. Just wake up and try to put yourself in the shoes of contentcreators who are doing it for a living.. A lot of companies are already collapsing because people are stealing their content instead of buying it. And let's not forget, the high profile movies pay for the movies that bomb or arthouse, so one movie makes a profit, but that profit is mostly spend on the losses they made on other movies..
for a very long time
protest movements like ross perot or the tea party are limited, but nothing is stopping one someday from swamping the entire republican/ democratic vote. as people grow more and more discontent, the impossible becomes possible
people are discontent, and there is growing discontent, as their own government increasingly represents corporate interests that screw them over. this will come to a head eventually
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The productive people are working 8AM-6PM... the rich people get in at work at 2PM, read a magazine, ask their secretary if they really MUST stay until 5 and then leave at 3:30 to have a golf game and go to Yoga.
while( true ); do curl --connect-timeout 1 http://www.ifpi.org/ > /dev/null; done
Bullshit. There is no amount of market liquidity that is worth $100 million a year.
Rather than trying to crash the server, Anonymous should be building a targeted spider of all the sites related to the offender. These sites should be carefully and constantly farmed of their content with due care to make sure the site isn't ever actually brought down.
So instead of a DOS, you levy a TAX. Yes, tax the site, as in "that was a very taxing experience".
There are several important results of TAXing a site.
(1) bandwidth charges go up, so there is TAXing and taxing both.
(2) You are never really stepping over the line legally because you didn't "interfere" with their business.
(3) You have an affront-in-depth because you can TAX the core site, and all the accomplice sites. So not just IPFI but Sony Music, and all thier ilk.
(4) The each TAX collector gets the best use of their action.
(5) you are likely wearing out the gear a little too.
So, to use the physical analogy, take all your sit-in participants and, instead of "blocking the door" you make a velvet rope maze of sitters that complicit actors would have to navigate.
Think of it this way... If you block the door to a bank you will get rousted by the man. If you get 1000 people to go to the bank, stand quietly in line, and when they reach the teller have them perform a cash-only or information-only transaction (e.g. "can I get change for a ten?" "I need to check my balance.") Go get a brochure, read it, then go ask a question in person or on the toll-free number like "This says the interest rate is good for six months. Does that start on the day I open an account, the end of the month I open the account, or the start of the month I open the account?", get the answer, thank the support guy and hang up.
So sure, fill out forms; File polite inquiries, visit their sponsors and members; fill out forms and file polite inquiries.
If brochures are available, ask for one. Recommend they contact a friend. Recommend they contact an enemy. Ask for more information by every possible venue to every reasonable destination.
Get their site to _vomit_ _up_ as much bandwidth and postage. Buy one share. Get the actual share certificate printed up and mailed to you. Then sell the share to your friend for a loss. Make sure he gets his share certificate as well. Buy his share for a loss on the same day and get your new certificate. (best done in a bg circle not just two guys. 8-)
A reject connect attempt is cheap compared to actually fetching a web page or sending out an email that was composed by a support-desk guy, or even a support desk automation.
Find business reply coupons and _use_ them.
At first it isn't as splashy, but you know what, when they run to their government buddies and whine "but they are using our free services exactly as offered" their buddies will probably laugh.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
There is a technique known to Anonymous as the bwraep that works on similar lines - it wouldn't work on the IFPI. It works only on smaller sites which have a monthly transfer quota with their host. A bwraep means to simply download until the quota is reached.
No value is added, only value extracted from a system.
I stated that that was not the case, value was added, but that I did not know how much.
On another note, I did not state that liquidity was the added value, I stated that price correction was the added value. IIUC (and I might not), liquidity makes the market work better by insuring that assets can always be bought and sold, and price correction makes the market work better by ensuring that people use the resources in most efficient way (only efficient for effects accounted for in the marketplace, this is where externalities come in). I would assume that price correction was more valuable than liquidity, as the former actually modifies peoples behaviour, but that might be wrong.
Again the goal of that bwraep is to shut off the site, and it is probably very satisfying to see the site shut off...
But many hosting arrangements don't quota-out, they graduate to a higher cost. The hoards don't get to _see_ that, so it isn't as sexy to the protester, but it does _cost_ the targeted entity money.
So TAXing an entity hits them where _they_ feel it, as opposed to hitting them in a way that satisfies you.
Plus how funny to watch a site buy whole new servers to meet the new load of their new importance just to see that load disappear the next day.
You don't win by costing Sony Music and Friends 101% of their bandwidth and server capacity, as that lets them paint you as the bad guy. You _can_ win by constantly costing them 99% of that capacity.
You never "bring them down" but you make them pay out the nose.
A corporation only has one nerve-center to attack, and that's its money. Making a corporation pay a noticeable amount of money for no benefit to the corp is the only way to make it react. Government fines don't work because those are small fees levied after effective action.
Huge random spikes in phone costs (9-cents per 800 call if they arn't voip etc) and bandwidth bills. Making their services look unresponsive to their paying customers. These are the ways you make a company notice you.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
There is little doubt there are misguided efforts to control what others do. On both sides.
On the one end some have navigated into a position of power where they slowly bleed creative people by paying very few well and the rest very meagerly.
Created the idea they were looking out for your best and you are Oh so lucky to be recognized!
On the other hand you have some who disagree with how things are. They hope to slowly bleed those who oppose the idea that you can, or should be able to do anything you want, and the favorite Oh I'm only collecting what's my birthright, but never received!
Both practice criminal activities where the idea is to fully operate on Everything for Nothing. I say criminal because ripping off people is criminal. Ditto knocking out web sites and similar activities.
Both are ignoring the other because they are "unreachable" and don't know how to, or want to talk to the other. Which makes for a beautiful never ending stream of not getting anywhere.
Honestly I find it harder to sympathize with those who have made it their business to rip of creative people and their fans, though they have the law on their side. Which brings us to the most likely to succeed attack angle, law.
The problem with that is when you don't at all understand the battle field you will fail. Law is obviously not an easy to understand battle field, but it is nevertheless where things are being accomplished. The others are 99% of the time not even noticed, maybe talked about by some, or even counter productive.
United Hackers Against the World is pretty much doomed as most hackers (unlike crackers or black hats) are not interested in criminal activities and it's consequences. In the long run I expect that organizations such as RIAA, MPAA and similar, will fail as very few are really happy with their operating basis.
So what does the common man do when he feels the system is against him?
If he wants to increase his odds to succeed, not just wreck havoc on others and use the situation as an excuse to do so, he organizes. Maybe puts up a website, as a group he can now express a very well thought out viewpoint, collect signatures, make press releases. In short use the system to his own advantage.
Civil disobedience must be non destructive and hit on the public nerve well enough that when you end up in front of the judge he will go with the public opinion as much as the law allows him to. Usually this is a really poor path to choose. Only some beaten down minority which has enough public sympathy is likely to have any success. And even then almost never...
However, figuring out how the system works, IS the way to go. It probably means a lot of hard work, long hours, fighting an uphill battle. But then most worthwhile causes are hard won. Most people are preoccupied and not interested in yet another problem.
Going to war to handle things such as slavery is not quite the same as fighting the RIAA and MPAA for their right to make money. (However unethical their business model might be.) They still have the law on their side. Public opinion is however not all for them. Their "think" is outmoded and was never about giving a good service, only how to line their own pockets, at the expense of the artist and customers. (Which makes it rather humorous when they pretend to stand up for the artist against the pirates, as they surely are the Mother of all pirates themselves.)
In other news, the council of sheep reached the conclusion that the best way of fixing things is a mandatory muzzle on all wolves.
The only remaining problem is implementation.