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Pirate Bay Criticizes Anonymous' Attack On Virgin

Posted by timothy on from the leave-that-virgin-alone! dept.

judgecorp writes "Anonymous launched a DDoS attack on Virgin Media, apparently in protest at Virgin's decision to block the Pirate Bay. Now the Pirate Bay has criticized Anonymous, saying it doesn't support DDoS as a form of protest. The statement is interesting, given that Anonymous has been attacking music industry sites and other targets for some years, saying it is in support of the Pirate Bay."

11 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. It's not interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The statement is interesting, given that Anonymous has been attacking music industry sites and other targets for some years, saying it is in support of the Pirate Bay.

    How is that "interesting"? 'Anonymous' are a bunch of cyberthugs which is not the crowd of people The Pirate Bay want to be associated with and they have never wanted to be associated with. The Pirate Bay is trying to legitimately fight for copyright reform and having a bunch of script kiddies attach people in their name undermines that effort.

    1. Re:It's not interesting by Requiem18th · · Score: 4, Insightful

      More to the point. TPB's goal is freedom of speech and access to information. They are not about to punish someone for what the say by trashing their website.

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      But... the future refused to change.
  2. Bystanders by SJHillman · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd have to agree with TPB on this - DDoS has a tendency to affect a lot more than just the target. It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.

    1. Re:Bystanders by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.

      That's very true, but it may well be that Anonymous doesn't have many other weapons. If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole :)

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      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:Bystanders by ewanm89 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Especially being how Anonymous only do extremely inefficient ICMP flood attack, the least they could do is learn to pull off a DDoS properly.

    3. Re:Bystanders by neokushan · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think it's less like a grenade and more like a shitload of spitballs. I mean, get hit with enough of those and it's going to be pretty unpleasant, plus a few are bound to miss and hit some other poor sod to the point where he's going to fell grossed out and maybe want to wipe his face a bit. But er....yeah I'm not really sure where I'm going with this analogy but I think the point I'm trying to make is that it's crude, only somewhat effective and those it "harms" aren't really harmed in a particularly dangerous way - it's more an irritant.

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      +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    4. Re:Bystanders by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Informative

      Especially being how Anonymous only do extremely inefficient ICMP flood attack, the least they could do is learn to pull off a DDoS properly.

      That's so ... ancient information. Anonymous and LOIC do NOT do ICMP Echo floods by default anymore. They do HTTP requests. The latest version of LOIC even makes the HTTP requests non-cachable (using various tricks that force a caching service to pass the request upstream so you'd need a really good CDN).

  3. Not Virgin's fault by iB1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Virgin had no option but to comply with the court order that was issued. If they had ignored it, they would've been fined hundreds of thousands of pounds - probably even more than that.

    I'm not a Virgin Media customer, but I understand that the block is trivial to swerve around, so Virgin Media have obeyed the letter of the law, but haven't made it particularly difficult to get around. Anyhow, DDosing a web-site is just lame.

  4. Headline by necro81 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pirate Bay Criticizes Anonymous' Attack On Virgin

    Although Pirate Bay and Anonymous are regular /. fodder, you know this story got approved only for the headline. Let the jokes commence!

  5. PR by davegravy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow... The Pirate Bay is making public relations announcements. If that isn't a sign that the site now exists more for political reasons than to be complicit in piracy, I don't know what is.

  6. Much more interesting comment... by gstrickler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From TFA:

    “As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behaviour.”

    I find that far more interesting than TPB distancing themselves from Anonymous.

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    make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false