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.'"

Comments

yeah

[unity100]

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.

Re:yeah

[Haeleth]

the 'peaceful resolution' you speak of, has no effect

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.

Re:yeah

[unity100]

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

[The Hatchet]

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.

What the hell is the point?

[BitHive]

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...

[Cl1mh4224rd]

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.

Yes it serves a purpose

[Palmsie]

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.

Re:Don't listen to, or view recorded media?

[airfoobar]

Even if everyone stopped buying from those companies, they'd still find a way to make themselves a tax. You'll be buying Lady Gaga songs every time you pay your water bill.

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:Don't listen to, or view recorded media?

[__aaqvdr516]

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:Rebels leading the charge! Freedom fighters uni

[madprof]

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

[QuoteMstr]

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:Well, somebody's showing...

[Moryath]

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.