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scans_dailyGreetings, Ladies and Gentlemen! Chocochuy reporting for duty and bringing you some news from the global community.
As you might recall, yesterday was the peaceful blackout of pages like Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla and our very own Dreamwidth in order to protest against the SOPA bill. Well, just some hours ago Megaupload was shut down by the FBI, thus causing the arrest of its inner circle and the loss of countless Terabytes of both illegal and safe files. Retribution from hackers all over the globe was not denied and hours later the group that calls itself Anonymous hacked several government sites as well as asking all cybernauts to join their revolution against the rich 1%. It might be kinda exaggerated to say this but I am certain that were witnessing the genesis of the First World Internet War. In my honest opinion I think the loss of Megaupload may be a heavy loss for most cybernauts and it may also herald the beginning of some authoritarian movements if the FBI can go shutting down websites when the SOPA has not been approved yet. What we are really seeing is a struggle between two powerful forces, none of them wanting to give up, that will change the way we use the internet from now on if a peaceful solution is not found.
I will be glad to hear your opinions in this matter, comrades, especially if this SOPA bill goes out of control and tries targeting our beloved fanfics/fanarts.
As you might recall, yesterday was the peaceful blackout of pages like Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla and our very own Dreamwidth in order to protest against the SOPA bill. Well, just some hours ago Megaupload was shut down by the FBI, thus causing the arrest of its inner circle and the loss of countless Terabytes of both illegal and safe files. Retribution from hackers all over the globe was not denied and hours later the group that calls itself Anonymous hacked several government sites as well as asking all cybernauts to join their revolution against the rich 1%. It might be kinda exaggerated to say this but I am certain that were witnessing the genesis of the First World Internet War. In my honest opinion I think the loss of Megaupload may be a heavy loss for most cybernauts and it may also herald the beginning of some authoritarian movements if the FBI can go shutting down websites when the SOPA has not been approved yet. What we are really seeing is a struggle between two powerful forces, none of them wanting to give up, that will change the way we use the internet from now on if a peaceful solution is not found.
I will be glad to hear your opinions in this matter, comrades, especially if this SOPA bill goes out of control and tries targeting our beloved fanfics/fanarts.
Here is an old Captain America picture done by Frank Miller. It may be over-used but it seems quite fitting.
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Date: 2012-01-20 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 03:08 pm (UTC)I personally hope it's dead in the water anyway, and that PIPA goes the same way, because if either passed, other countries - especially places like the UK, would pretty much enforce it too.
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Date: 2012-01-20 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 03:51 am (UTC)I mean, I heard much the same outrage when the original Napster got shitcanned.
And The Pirate Bay.
And Grokster.
And Morpheus.
And (going way back) Audiogalaxy and The International Lyrics Server.
Of course, this is speaking as someone who's used MegaUpload maybe a dozen times in the last five years.
Life, and file sharing, will go on. and this wasn't the first salvo in an all-out war on file sharing (see above).
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Date: 2012-01-20 05:17 pm (UTC)Kind of wonderful how fast things are changing.
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Date: 2012-01-20 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 04:21 am (UTC)However, if anyonymous stays focused on gov't sites for a while, that'll really throw a wrench in things, because if twelve hours of server-tweaking doesn't fix things on their, they'll start looking for people to arrest. (Not that they won't be looking for people to arrest already, but it's a back-burner project now. If the FBI's website is down for a week, they'll start demanding arrest warrants for everyone who tweets the word #anonymous.)
I'd like to believe my gov't is not stupid enough to break the world wide web. I can't quite get there. I'm not, however, worried about the future of the internet, which existed before the www prefix. I'm rather delighted that all the attention is focused on the big fileshare sites, as if none of the previous methods existed.
Saw my first pro-SOPA/PIPA tv ad today. So *weird.* Fascinating how it didn't mention at all what kind of measures would be taken to end all this "foreign theft" that's destroying American businesses. Also interesting that they never mention that the actions that are so "destructive" may be entirely legal for the people who're doing them.
I suspect that if SOPA/PIPA get enacted (which I doubt, at this point) and start going after sites, fanfic/fanart are far, far down on the list of targets. They want to kill YouTube and ThePirateBay. Time to haul out the Cute Cat Theory of the Internet, and remind politicians that threatening obscure geeky hacker sites will go over just fine with most voters, but threatening the lolcats will get them thrown out of office.
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Date: 2012-01-20 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 10:36 am (UTC)PS
Date: 2012-01-21 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 04:22 am (UTC)In fairness though, I've downloaded many hundreds of files from MU, and every single one of them infringed copyright, so it's hard to muster *righteous* indignation. That said, I *did* assume the site owners/admins maintained better plausible deniability. I'm a bit surprised by how blase they appear to have been.
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Date: 2012-01-20 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 10:40 am (UTC)Well, who's laughing now, dude? ;)
If I'd taken his advice my whole career as an artist would be gone now.
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Date: 2012-01-21 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 05:45 am (UTC)(Seriously, "cybernaut"? Dude.)
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Date: 2012-01-20 03:55 pm (UTC)By the way, cybernaut is a valid word. I know it is not used as much as one believes but it does imply those who surf the cyberspace.
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Date: 2012-01-20 04:15 pm (UTC)This sentence is so wonderfully 90's I wanna get mirror shades, a trench coat and a katana and start rocking.
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Date: 2012-01-20 04:39 pm (UTC)Cowabunga, Dudes!
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Date: 2012-01-20 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 08:15 am (UTC)*is educated*
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Date: 2012-01-20 06:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 06:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 05:15 pm (UTC)All Hail Britannia!
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Date: 2012-01-20 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 12:41 pm (UTC)It is, of course, targeting completely the wrong people with that approach, because the people who say, download maybe one song through illicit means are hardly on the same level as people who actively profit from pirating DVD's on a massive scale.
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Date: 2012-01-20 03:31 pm (UTC)Like, if they have a comment feature.
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Date: 2012-01-21 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 06:53 am (UTC)I'm surprised that the arrested are facing prison, though. I'd always assumed these sorts of things just attracted insanely heavy fines and civil measures.
Personally, I'm more alarmed by the whole Anonymous hijacking people's computers for a DDOS attack thing.
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Date: 2012-01-20 11:06 am (UTC)Heck I saw more and more files that I wanted to download being put on other file-uploading sites. Megaupload may have been one of the originals, but it was no longer the 'go-to' website if you wanted to upload files. It got bigger than that until I had no idea what Megaupload was really for anymore to be honest.
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Date: 2012-01-20 02:35 pm (UTC)Like, if you shut down filesharing sites because people pirate from big companies with them, which sites do freelance creators use to get their own large files to their audience?
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Date: 2012-01-20 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 03:11 pm (UTC)Maybe?
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Date: 2012-01-20 11:02 pm (UTC)tl;dr, MU being shut down is legitimate, their owners getting arrested is also legitimate, the timing of this bust was probably not a coincidence and probably was done on purpose to time with the online protests. :x
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Date: 2012-01-20 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 11:01 am (UTC)I'll have to keep my work files on some other file sharing place then.
(we've had lots of documents to share in the company here, so someone suggested megaupload, to avoid using our internal network and slowing everyone down)
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Date: 2012-01-20 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 01:08 pm (UTC)They probably thought it was "cool" or something...
"Carbonite " <- never heard of that one
"Google docs " <- I guess I'll have to go with this one now :P
We needed something simple that people using their own private laptops or not knowing anything about computers could use.
(and it didn't need any login or anything, just a link sent by email, *click download*, wait and that was it~)
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Date: 2012-01-21 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 03:09 pm (UTC)So this is not "some users uploaded copyright stuff on a file storage site", this is "the owners knew about it, encouraged it, did it themselves, made enormous amounts of money off it, bragged about it, and lied about removing the content when asked". ...I can't really summon a lot of outrage.
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Date: 2012-01-22 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 06:14 pm (UTC)And I'm extremely against SOPA/PIPA.
But this is just ABSOLUTELY over dramatic. "First Internet World War"? Anonymous sounds like a child who has no idea how governments, yet alone the rest of the world, even works
And you do NOT hack governments websites and servers! That is NOT Protest. The occupy movement is a protest! Hacking government websites causes real, tangible problems and threats to not only security but also people's jobs!
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Date: 2012-01-20 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 06:39 pm (UTC)Particularly with using a website claiming to be a Megaupload backup to force would be supporters to launch DDoS attacks themselves through malware.
See more on this here: http://gawker.com/5877707/the-evil-n
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Date: 2012-01-20 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 09:56 pm (UTC)Ah well, if any variation of this goes through us in the rest of the world just have to cough up the cash for our own root servers. Costly, but it's an investment that pays itself back.
Just wish that our politics sphere wasn't equally big a snakepit as US of A's. They'd probably bend over backwards for a chance to get in on this.
Irving Forbush is the Man with a Plan!
Date: 2012-01-20 10:22 pm (UTC)Irving Forbush for President!
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Date: 2012-01-20 10:29 pm (UTC)Check the facts
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Date: 2012-01-20 10:38 pm (UTC)Anyhow, it seems the SOPA/PIPA bills have been stopped for the moment (I am not gonna imply it was 100 % thanks to Anonymous, though). Maybe they will resurface one of these days.
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Date: 2012-01-20 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 07:18 am (UTC)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/2
This guy was also an inside trader and embezzler. But I mean, he acted here like he was some tinhorn Tony Montana, and lived on a lavish estate. I have little pity for him.
I'm just glad I never, ever trust the Cloud.