Last night, Anons, and supporters of Anonymous, took down numerous copyright-related websites following Megaupload’s takedown by the feds. Media outlets speculated that the attack would hurt the SOPA protests in the long run.
So far that doesn’t appear to be the case. But it may be too soon to tell.
At some point in the evening, riaa.org, mpaa.org, copyright.gov, bmi.com, universalmusic.com, wgm.com, fbi.gov, whitehouse.gov, and France’s copyright site hadopi.fr were unable to load due to Anonymous’s use of the Low Orbiting Ion Cannon (LOIC), a fancy name for a software tool which turns innocent users’ clicks into a distributed denial-of-service attack, a hack which involves overwhelming websites with traffic.
The operation was at first dubbed #OpPayback, then called #OpMegaupload on Twitter, and received an impressive amount of media coverage in the last 12 hours. @YourAnonNews, a fast-growing Twitter account used by Anonymous members to spread news, of their exploits, announced that at least 5,000 people were involved with the attack, and according to CNN’s Anonymous source, at least 27,000 computers were used.
Many outlets took to theorizing about the detrimental impact the attack would have, considering it followed the day of peaceful Internet protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act.
CNET wrote “Anonymous legions nuked that goodwill” before speculating they were played by the feds to act illegally. TechDirt was convinced “it’s a bad idea long-term,” after echoing CNET’s idea that Anonymous was provoked on purpose. CBS News wrote the DDoSing retaliation “exacerbated the issue” and Forbes speculated the move might have undone all the good that came from protesting on Wednesday.
Even UK’s This Week reported “cooler heads are warning yesterday’s attacks might have destroyed in one fell swoop public support for the ‘blackout’ campaign.”
Looking at public support online, that does not appear to be the case—at least so far.
Internet users have taken to leaving encouraging comments on a one minute Anonymous video about Megaupload’s takedown.
While some YouTubers have expressed disappointment, like Herkeless who wrote Anonymous “turned a peaceful, legal, effective anti-SOPA Internet campaign into a hacking scandal,” and Tweeterfist, who commented there might be a“ number of agents inside Anon, helping stir the pot,” the majority of the 5,000 comments were highly supportive.
Many users left comments, in all caps, writing “support” from whatever country the commenter was from. It ranged from Brazil, the UK, Russia, Indonesia, China, etc, proving that this operation had global support, if not global origins. (The attack might have originated from Sweden, after all.)
As Gawker pointed out, many of the folks passing around the LOIC link were Spanish speakers, and the tactic used mirrored the one used among Mexican Anonymous during Operation Safe Roads. (Operation Safe Roads also had global support, with Anons from at least 25 countries participating in the attack.)
And the Wall Street Journal reported today that Carlos Sánchez Almeida, a prominent privacy and piracy lawyer based out of Barcelona, is threatening to sue the United States Federal government over its take-down of Megaupload.
Did #opmegaupload dampen public support? First impressions online say no—but only time will tell.