Hackers of the world are going to retaliate. It's going to get ugly.

Quote - Hackers of the world are going to retaliate. It's going to get ugly.

Well, Megaupload hosted many, many illegal stuff. So , I should be really happy that they shut down this site. But I have a strange feeling. I think something very evil is on the way.

Yep. It starts with megaupload, then every other site like it, then torrents... Alot of underground hackers are going to be pretty pissed off. And you know what they are capable of...

Does anyone know if these hackers get paid to destroy sites or do they just do it for fun?  If they are that good and do it for free, get a real legal job that pays..

My opinion only.

For some reality check, see this xkcd entry. When bits square off against metal wrenches, metal wrenches win.

Remember those apocalyptic 1980's movie about dystopias (Max Headroom, Blade Runner etc. etc.)? 30 years later, are CNN breaking news.

Most do it for fun and reputation. When they get caught, government and major corporations hires them to protect their sites lol.

So they arrested a guy who ran a large company that made millions from copyright violations. That's not underground hacking, that's sleazy business.

We Know its not hacking, but it will anger hackers. Thats where the threat will come in. They can be really nasty if they want. Just look at what happened to Sony.

I see that police had to cut their way into a safe room to drag one of the principals off, which is a pretty risky endeavor; for alleged copyright infringement.  Why not just have a couple of cops watch the place untill he gets hungry?  Of course, that doesn't look as impressive on the news.... :rolleyes:

Re: "Sleazy business" 

There's a story going round that The Pirate Bay has links to a Neo Nazi organization.  That, however, could be the usual propaganda bullshit that goes with these sorts of things.

What isn't in any doubt is the hacker's collective, known as Anonymous, have very close links with TPB.  They can and do take direct action against people they don't like.  For a bit of background, look up ACS:Law. 

FWIW, I kinda admire Anonymous.  They may do some questionable things at times but sometimes they get it right. 

The hackers have already gone after the fbi, riaa, and a number of other sites as well in defence.

Megaupload (and other file sharing sites) do provide an invaluable service to everyone on the net. Tink about all the hosted free poser content.

And from wwhat it sounds like, they were shut down because the riaa "believed" much of the content there was in violation.. with little or no actual proof.

The issues should have been taken up with the people uploading violating items, NOT mega.

Gizmodo posted the hacker retaliation earlier.

If there is a retaliation against this action, by Anon or hackers, whomever, surely it will be exploited to panic people and help build support for the PIPA and the SOPA.  :unsure:  Am I just paranoid?  Is the timing of this suspect?  Maybe they want a response by the online underground groups?  :scared:

"Hackerz"

lol

Don't be naive.

"They" want this Nazi stuff passed, and having fake "Hackerz!!! OMG!" fake-shutdown their websites gives weight to their arguments to people who don't know any better.

It's classic false-flag, Strategy 101 stuff people.  Real Hackers don't seek this kind of attention.

Hmmm....

Considering that Mega yanked everything they ever got a DMCA notice about immediately, this was definitely not warranted.

And yeah, black hats don't go for this kind of thing; script kiddies do. Now if the black hats get into the fray, oh mama.....

Crashing the FBI's server farms would be only the beginning..... 

Yes, MU hosted a lot of illegal stuff,  but what about this (something i read on another forum) "How many businesses use MU as a FTP service (25% of business traffic is to MU based on an article I recently read)? How many families use MU to store photo albums and home movies to share with friends and family? How many people use MU for file backup? How many of those people just lost everything because they thought storing everything online was the safe thing to do? "

Piracy is bad, but this is not going to stop piracy, it's just going to piss people off... 

and we're supposed to trust the "cloud"?

cough yeah. right.

Hackers will be upset that it's a little bit harder to get and distriute pirated software? Cry me a river... I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy. It's like a junkie being upset that his pusher got caught and sent to prison.

On the bright side, maybe we'll get people coming in here to say: "I can't download a pirated copy of Poser any more, and I really want the new version. How can I, what do you call it, BUY the program?"

Quote - and we're supposed to trust the "cloud"?

cough yeah. right.

 I've been saying this for a long time, too.

this may be a good opportunity for users to check if there are warez hosted by any of the other file-sharing services, that they might move their legitimate files to somewhere safe.  I'm guessing that some other major file-sharing sites will also be shut down, but I can't name them because they may host warez files like MU, possibly including files ripped from DVDs and stolen from poser merchants.  the big surprise for me was that they nabbed one of the perps in hongkong, with which I didn't realise the feds had any extradition agreements.  this may mean they can also try to nab some in russia.

I'm pretty sure MU's site has a report copyright button, can't get on there to verify that, lol. 

Another thing I found interesting about all this is that MU is the 13th most visited site on the web.

THEY BLINKED

Cheers

Quote - Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he would postpone a critical vote that had been scheduled for January 24 "in light of recent events."

Quote - Reid expressed hope on Friday that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, who has been shepherding the bill through Congress, could help resolve differences in the legislation. "I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks," Reid said.

Leahy slammed the Senate derailment of the anti-piracy legislation as a "knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem" but said he is committed to getting a bill signed into law this year.

There are already alternatives in the works.

They're not done yet.  I guess we'll see whether the next effort is any less horrible.  :unsure:

They'll wait until something else has our attention and then slip it through.

Quote - They'll wait until something else has our attention and then slip it through.

Yeppers.  I think at least one of the political parties may be worried about the other one organizing or raising money online.  If there's a law to allow them to shut down sites almost at a whim, they don't need to feel threatened by the social or political potential of the internet.  I think someone wants something like this to pass before the coming election cycle.

Or possibly I've been reading those forums too much.  :unsure:  :lol:

Quote - > Quote - Hackers of the world are going to retaliate. It's going to get ugly.

 

Well, Megaupload hosted many, many illegal stuff. So , I should be really happy that they shut down this site. But I have a strange feeling. I think something very evil is on the way.

What I don't understand exactly is "who owns the internet" and how can the USA force their laws onto other nations? 

This guy was living in New Zealand. His site was hosted from there. Yes, other countries could access the sites because that is just the nature of how the internet works.  But I'm completely confused about how the USA prosecuters could have the site shut down and arrest him? 

Didn't that SOPA thing get sidelined yesterday?

I would say the SOPA isn't gone, it's just going to try to sneak in the back way when no one is paying attention.

And the USA can force our internet laws onto other nations as long as those other nations let us.

Quote - Megaupload (and other file sharing sites) do provide an invaluable service to everyone on the net. Tink about all the hosted pirated poser content.

Fixed this for you..

C'mon, there was ample evidence in the form of company emails indicating that the staff at MU were well aware of the fact the majority of their income was being derived from illegal distribution of copyrighted material.

I've had to deal with MU's DCMA reporting system countless times this past year and although they do tear down files within 24-48 hours they did not appear very effective at banning the uploader as they would simply reload the file (renamed, of course) 24 hours later.  Considering that the vast majority of uploaders are doing it for the money that the file hosters pay them for each download it would be very easy for file hosters to perma-ban someone who continually violates copyrights.

After all, the file hoster would have personal identifying information for people they are paying such as a paypal address, yet they still chose to turn a blind eye and let the user continue to upload pirated content, like many other file hosters (who are all sweating bullets right now).

Don't be surprised if the authorities go to the length of auditing the data on the seized MU servers and starts going after the uploaders themselves.  Word of advice; if you've got illegal content on any file hoster still standing you'd probably want to take the time to delete it before they too get taken down.  Otherwise, you may find your local law enforcement knocking at your door some time in the near future.

PIPA and SOPA needn't have been devised if these sorts of legal actions had been taking place all along.  If you don't want to police yourself, then expect someone to do it for you.

If the USA declare the internet to be a national security issue then it moves into the intelligence services and miltary to handle. Hackers taking down FBI or NASA sites falls right into the governments hands because FBI is Homeland security and NASA is effectively a branch of the military.

While piracy sucks... I am also against the government getting too involved with what we do online, most people do not use filesharing services to host and share illegal or copyrighted content. Me personally I use rapidshare a whole lot to distribute files to my employees all over the globe and to quickly swap files with clients, it is super handy to just upload a batch of proof images to RS or another service and provide a link.

I had some of my stuff pirated in the past, while that is really annoying I would rather go after those people myself and file DMCA orders in masse then having some authority just take away our freedom. I would rather drag someone to court myself then have it done for me. If i am slighted i can very well take care of it myself. I would also rather have people steal my stuff but keep our freedom and responsibilities to act upon that and not be told: all of this is bad you can no longer look at it/use it/make your own decisions.

Seriously who tells us what is next? Eventually it is going to be much like a witch hunt, you only make an accusation and it will be acted upon without proof, sure that is great for big companies, perfect way to shut down a smaller rivaling company after their buy offers failed... etc etc.

So the music industry was up in arms over all their songs on the net for free (and the music execs ought to get on their knees and thanks Steve Jobs for inventing iTunes :p _) but you know what's on all my radio stations during the morning drive? It's a bunch of dumb ass's talking trash...not music.

Then I would strongly suggest using a file hoster that does police themselves and when they receive DMCA's they take appropriate actions by ensuring that the offending party is not given an opportunity to continue to violate the law on their servers.  Basically, a file hoster that has no interest in earning cash with ill-gotten content.  Skydrive comes to mind.  You can pretty much guarantee that Microsoft really does have a zero tolerance policy relating to piracy and are in no danger of being taken down for illegal activity.

Megaupload wasn't doing anything different from the other data storage and sharing sites. How long before they come for Rapidshare and the rest? I guess our President needed to show Hollywood (and its campaign contributors) that he still supports extreme measures to enforce copyright, even if he's jumped clear of the stinking SOPA bandwagon in this election year.

Lololol who here have never downloading illegal stuff ?

"Que celui qui n'a jamais fauté me jete la première pierre" disait Jean.

Hypocrite.

Quote - While piracy sucks... I am also against the government getting too involved with what we do online, most people do not use filesharing services to host and share illegal or copyrighted content. Me personally I use rapidshare a whole lot to distribute files to my employees all over the globe and to quickly swap files with clients, it is super handy to just upload a batch of proof images to RS or another service and provide a link.

And this is going to be the fun issue in coming years. Because any individual or company who had sensitive material in MU's cloud, if they can prove that this has harmed them, will be in a position to sue at the local and federal level. And will. This isn't knocking over a drug dealer, as I've seen many equate it to; this is bombing your local drugstore because -some- of the contents may be addictive. I've never heard of anyone being charged for downloading from MU; and if they are in the top 100 websites visited, I can easily see how the ad money adds up.

Maybe it's time for an Occupy style movement against the FBI. After all, they effectively stole the personal property of tens of thousands of individuals with no due process, no notification, and no proof whatsoever that that personal data is relevant to their criminal charges. If that data has no bearing whatsoever on their criminal case, should it not be returned immediately? Will they not be held responsible for its loss? (mmmm, 100,000 small claims court trials from people who want their personal info back, only to be told some fumblenut corrupted it looking for the Evil Overlord Manifesto that was never found. Talk about choking the court system). 

The great thing about the interwebs, is that when one site is taken down (to the sound of blaring trumpets and chest-pounding), there's dozens of others just like it flying under the radar. It's only the high-profile (aka mainstream) that you become a worthy target. It's like swatting locusts: you don't have a big enough swatter to take them all out.

And it's not Poser stuff that drives this. It's mega-corporations who make billions from film, tv, and music. I'm having a hard time feeling sympathy for anyone involved. Nor do I feel like the FBI is doing me any favors, but then I'm not a billionaire.

Why does Anonymous take on stuff like this? Because they can. That's what they do. The more high-profile, the better... sort of like the feds.

Honestly, as countries switch from producing actual products, to a service-based economy you're going to see worse. One must pay for everything, everything has to be regulated, controlled, and come with a license. It is 2012, after all.

Megaupload wasn't really good in preventing misuse, from what I've heared. They did not use checksums to identify violations, so if you want to see your file gone from MU, you will have to track down every single download URL. Other file hosters do this in a different way.

Another doubtfull thing is that Megaupload actually paid money to people with a lot of downloads. I don't think they checked if the content was legit. And Kim "Dr. Kimble" "Dotcom" Schmitz isn't really known for his willingness to stay within the borders of the law.

I don't like the thoughts behind PIPA and SOPA, this goes way to far. But closing MU has not much to do with this.

And, by the way, I doubt that that much of the content is company based stuff. Companys usually need to controll who is downloading what, or they want statistical data who's using their stuff. Megaupload wasn't made for a corporate environment.

Just my two cents. 

Quote - Lololol who here have never downloading illegal stuff ?

"Que celui qui n'a jamais fauté me jete la première pierre" disait Jean.

Hypocrite.

Me, for one.  Apart from it being morally reprehensible I could not take the risk of being banned from sites where I sell, or could potentially sell. 

Quote - Lololol who here have never downloading illegal stuff ?

"Que celui qui n'a jamais fauté me jete la première pierre" disait Jean.

Hypocrite.

I have had my experiences with that kind of stuff. Ages ago, I've got an Commodore Amiga and lots of games for it, pirated of course. Everyone did it. Well, after a while the software companies ceased to create new stuff for the Amiga. It did not sell. Everyone had R-Type, but nobody paid for it. 

The thing is simple for me. If I want to use it, I will have to pay for it. This is especially true for the movie industry. Hollywood productions are expensive, really expensive. Many of them don't make enough money to cover the costs. Others cover the costs, but little more. Just a couple of blockbusters have to provide the money to keep everything running. That does not work all the time, just see "United Artists".

It's a simple thing - if you like something, pay for it. We all have bills to pay. This is true for the Hollywood blockbuster and this is true for Wikipedia. If you want to fight the system, fine - but do it by avoiding the stuff you fight against, not by pirating it.

Works for me. 

Attention !!!

I dont approve pirating, i understand it in some circumstances.

Here is a really good explaination of the subject

TED

Cheers

Quote - Me personally I use rapidshare a whole lot to distribute files to my employees all over the globe and to quickly swap files with clients, it is super handy to just upload a batch of proof images to RS or another service and provide a link.

It's always hard to tell, but I get the strong impression that Rapidshare does have a checksum system that blocks repeat uploads of a removed file (one of the things which was listed as missing at MU in the reported list of causes) so it sounds as if it stands a better chance of standing up to scrutiny.

Expensive software might consider moving to a subscription service, so the masses might be more likely to pay for what they're using when it can be paid for on a monthly basis.

Does 3dsmax really need to be thousands of dollars for few people or would it do just as well being 15 dollars a month for thousands of people?

This idea that software needs to be elite, and not in the hands of the poor, is absurd and, well, elitist.

Quote - This idea that software needs to be elite, and not in the hands of the poor, is absurd and, well, elitist.

Preface: I do not mean to start a fight and I'm responding with the utmost respect.

Ready? I think you made that up. I am in the business of making and selling software and I've never seen any evidence for that. I cannot speak for every company, but I have written a lot of very expensive software and I've never had any software marketing department say anything like "Ted, this software needs to be elite, so make it so poor people can't get it."

When I build something that sells for $1,500,000 per copy (one and a half million, not making that up, had several companies pay that much) it is not because we were elitists. It's because the software cost us $8 million to make, test, and deploy in an enterprise environment.

I've made programs that sold for $30,000, $10,000, $495, and $29. Each of these price points had nothing to do with elitism. They had to do with a go-to-market plan that involved targeting a certain problem, and the price was in line with the value created. There was nothing more to it than that.

The software that sold for $1.5 million paid for itself in revenue recovery (that was its job) 10 times over.

But if you wanted to buy that software, you could not afford it, simply because it would not create the payback doing its job for you. You don't have $15 million of unbilled revenue that you forgot to collect. So you can't get the value out of this software.

Same is true of 3dsmax. It helps organizations do a job that creates millions in revenue. You can't get the same as a hobby, so you don't believe it's worth that, and you want to pay less. The market and the business don't work that way, and can't work that way.

Heard.  Yet, this is precisely how it looks to those of us on the bottom.  It looks elitist.  It smells elitist.  And you've played a bit of a shell-game with your example by using something you created that is highly specific to one situation and therefore has no value to anyone outside of the company you created it for (for the sake of argument.)

Your argument is a bit "Voodoo" for my tastes.  I'm just a small-town, country lawyer with no fancy, big-city degrees or certifications, but I tend to see things very simply:

I have a program that I can charge 2000 dollars for and sell to 100,000 people who have 2000 dollars, or I could sell that same software to 1,000,000 people who have 200 dollars.

Just because Bill Gates has a Gazillion dollars doesn't mean I need to charge Bill Gates 17 billion dollars for my software when I am also going to sell it to a billion other people who only have 20 dollars, even if Bill Gates is going to make 800 trillion Gazillion dollars using my software. 

Now, you can scramble that up any old way you like, call me a simpleton, whatever, but at the end of the day, black is black and white is white.

More People would use (and purchase) 3dsmax if they had financial access to it.  More people = More revenue = reduced cost per unit.

Quote - It's always hard to tell, but I get the strong impression that Rapidshare does have a checksum system that blocks repeat uploads of a removed file (one of the things which was listed as missing at MU in the reported list of causes) so it sounds as if it stands a better chance of standing up to scrutiny.

useless. see if I take a file, encrypt it, say with truecrypt, that checksum is now invalid. it's a simple job to then post the key elsewhere, say a forum, for those that know where to look.

and that wasn't even hard to think up... hell you could in theory, encrypt poser assets into graphics files (stenography) and distribute that way. again, not hard to do.

right now tho, it's more trouble than the pirates wish to goto. but in the future....

(no I'm no pirate. reading this thread, those 2 methods popped into my head right off.... and if I can think them up...)

Minor correction - steganography - one of my favorite subjects.

A variant: I once made, but did not post, a pair of images that looked like nonsense. When you xor'ed them, and saved the file as mp3, you got a popular copyrighted song. I never did it in practice, but it is theoretically incredibly easy.

I suppose each was what you'd call a "derivative work" but you'd be hard pressed to prove either one by itself was so.

Software companies see things one way, the users see it another. I know there is overhead. I know they need to stay in business. I know it's in their best interest to develop their software to a level where large companies will want to pay large sums to use it. However, I'm not particularly fond of being used to help them, then thrown under the bus.

Case in point: Cinema4D. Less than a decade ago, they were a hungry company that not only made it possible for amateurs to use their product, they actively courted any and all comers with free copies to use and spread the word. (Back when they had a platform you couldn't crash with a sledge hammer.) They'd answer emails, pick up the phone, chat, and knew which sites needed mods. Fast forward a few years and a few bigger name customers, and all that went right out the window. Then the rewrote the core so all those people who were diehard supporters not only had to repurchase the whole package, nothing from that point forward was useable at all to those who couldn't afford to respend a few thousand dollars.  No, I never got a 'free copy', or thought I deserved one. The change in attitude was what put me off.

Then there was the Pixologic incident. I lost my copy of Zbrush's registry file in a computer crash. Call them up, and was, to make a long story short, told I was either too stupid to follow instructions, or trying to rip them off. At least that was just a few hundred dollars down the toilet, and it was my fault for storing whatever it was on the dead computer.

Actually, I guess the whole thing is the users' fault. If we were all rich, and we were all exceptional artists earning a living doing this, we could afford to pay what they seem to need. And if we can't we can all just go use Blender. Quite frankly, as William said, I'd much rather pay and use Max, but I have other bills.

The timing makes it very tempting to think that this was indeed a sop to H'wood who were no doubt pissed over the admin's rejection of SOPA/PIPA - which in turn was a sop to the Valley moguls. The real problem is that anyone with enough money can buy legislation or even legal action. In the long run, that situation will do far more damage than any bill or bust.

Just my opinion, I don't think that AutoDesk could make money selling cheap Max/Maya etc. because the market isn't that big.  IMO, most of those pirated copies don't get used for much besides taking up HD space of people who really thought they would use them and didn't. If they'd give away a standalone Max2obj converter, probably half the pirated downloads would go away - again IMO. Much of the rest of it is people who want to get into 3D and figure that they want the 'best' program.

AFAIK,there are other sites that offer incentives for frequent downloads. Either way, people will continue to upload with or without the few dollars. - as an act of rebellion if nothing else. Other sites will be smart enough not to have their servers located in freaking Virginia. The business will probably be taken over by the Mafias as well. Ultimately, you can't promote the internet to take down corrupt regimes in other places and attack it to support corruption at home. Now that people can produce and distribute their own movies and 3D TV etc. are coming, Hollywood if facing a day of reckoning - and probably fighting a hoplesss rearguard battle.

Quote - > Quote - Lololol who here have never downloading illegal stuff ?

"Que celui qui n'a jamais fauté me jete la première pierre" disait Jean.

Hypocrite.

Me, for one.  Apart from it being morally reprehensible I could not take the risk of being banned from sites where I sell, or could potentially sell. 

Well I have never downloaded anything illegal, not because I might get banned (although I do understand that is a valid reason) but I also feel it is morally reprehensible.  What annoys me though is people that down download such stating that "everyone does it" as some sort of justification.  It is not a justification and is also untrue.

I am just returning from a 2 year stay in the Plaedeas.

I studied the Art and Philosophy of the Ancients at the UOP.

Hope you don’t mind me landing in the middle of your  Forum.

Al  Lalelujah aka Banaman