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[What's Burning?]

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.

Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.

The latest of sites to fall is FBI.gov, which finally broke at around 7:40 pm EST Thursday evening.

Less than an hour after the DoJ and Universal sites came down, the website for the RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, went offline as well. Shortly before 6 p.m EST, the government's Copyright.gov site went down as well. Thirty minutes later came the site for BMI, or Broadcast Music, Inc, the licensing organization that represents some of the biggest names in music.

Also on Thursday, MPAA.org returned an error as Anonymous hacktivists managed to bring down the website for the Motion Picture Association of America. The group, headed by former senator Chris Dodd, is an adamant supporter of both PIPA and SOPA legislation.

Universal Music Group, or UMG, is the largest record company in the United States and under its umbrella are the labels Interscope-Geffen-A&M, the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group and Mercury Records.

Brown adds that “more is coming” and Anonymous-aligned hacktivists are pursuing a joint effort with others to “damage campaign raising abilities of remaining Democrats who support SOPA.”

Although many members of Congress have just this week changed their stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, the raid on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a threat to the Web.

Brown adds that operatives involved in the project will use an “experimental campaign” and search engine optimization techniques “whereby to forever saddle some of these congressmen with their record on this issue.”

RT reports

The number of congress members that had expressed an opinion on SOPA/PIPA was 80/30 for/against. In one day of protests, the number in congress that had expressed an opinion had changed to 65/102 for/against.

Where Do Your Members of Congress Stand on SOPA and PIPA?

[killem2]

I think if face book would have went down in protest, it would have made a bigger statement about the bill. Same with google.

[myownalias]

There was a young guy on the news in Britain because he had a website which pointed people to other websites which showed you how to get pirated stuff. He did it in the UK, its legal here. US have asked to have him extradited to the US where its illegal and the dumb judge has agreed . How can this be fair? His mother was in tears. I think there'll be an appeal.

AFAIK, it is not illegal in the US as long as you personally don't host the files or torrent files. linking to say The Pirate Bay is completely legal, otherwise how is Google allowed to list it?

As for the guy being extradited, is he is European citizen? if so, the US has no grounds for extradition as the 'crime' was committed on foreign soil and therefore bound by the laws of that nation!

Perhaps Ive not understood exactly what he did. I thought his website only linked to other websites. It's something thats legal here but not in America and he getting extradited through a treaty Uk has with USA. Apparantly the US make quite a lot of extradition requests to the UK. It was on the BBC news a week or so ago. I'll see if I can find out more.

EDIT: Ive found a link...ok its the mail online, but it gives the basic facts of the story
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... innon.html
A more reputable source
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-so ... e-16544335

It's a publicity stunt plain and simple; I can't believe that the UK has allowed extradition to the US, I can only think that his website was hosted within the USA, as hosting is much cheaper than their European counterparts. I don't see how the United States can extradite a British national for a crime not actually committed against the United States directly, either way, it's deplorable, if all he was doing is listing torrents or links to illegal download sites, Google is allowed to do this in it's index without repercussions, why is this any different?

The scary thing is; that just talking about sites by name that share illegal media could get your site taken down (if hosted in the USA) or worse jail time if the SOPA bill is passed! It amazes me that the US government and the people that drafted this bill don't see the obvious infringements of the constitution and the bill of rights, NO MORE FREE SPEECH!!!