A seething mass of angry cyber protestors recently deployed Low Orbit Ion Cannons (LOIC) against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and Aiplex Software.
The digital offensive was reportedly led by 4chan users, who successfully downed sites belonging to the above-mentioned organizations.
“As word spread of the attacks, sympathizers who had never even been on 4chan joined the attacks, simply by loading up their LOICs and following some very simple instructions,” TorrentFreak’s Enigmax confirmed.
“The ultimate in decentralized protests [went] ahead and there [wasn’t] a lawyer or police force in the world who can do anything about it. Is this the protest of the future? Well, if nothing else, it certainly can’t be stopped.”
According to Mashable’s Samuel Axon, 4chan users (particularly Anonymous) have been responsible for several memorable attacks against various sites in the past, including Gawker, YouTube and Twitter.
“[But] this time around, they used Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which overwhelm websites with a flurry of requests that would be harmless if they were coming in reasonable numbers or from just one source.
“[Clearly], Internet piracy, particularly that conducted over the BitTorrent protocol on sites like The Pirate Bay, has been an issue of concern for the MPAA, the RIAA and other organizations for years now.
“[And] while they’ve won small victories along the way, they obviously haven’t quelled the rebellion just yet.”
Update 9PM PST: All three sites are (currently) back online.
