Source Code

"TANGO DOWN #Megaupload  Fight for Internet Freedom!” went the tweet from the LulzSecITALY account, and it was like the heady days of last year when the hacking group had every newsroom around the world wondering which organisation's website was to go down next.

At the time of writing, the shutting of the Megaupload video hosting site by US officials is causing quite a storm off the back of protests over the much-debated Stop Online Piracy Act.

We all saw how much of a fuss there was when US legislators threatened to implement SOPA and its sister-act in the Senate. The Stop Online Piracy Act aims to tighten up anti-piracy laws, by forcing internet service providers to block access to overseas sites which offer material in breach of US copyright laws.

Headlines told us how Wikipedia had gone dark (well, the English-language part, and you could still get around that), as well as oodles of other sites, in response to the perceived attack on internet freedoms. That was one form of protest.

The next day, the founders of Megaupload were charged by US officials of violating piracy laws, accused of costing copyright holders over US$500m.

For those who don't know, Megaupload.com was basically a place to upload large files to let others watch - vis streaming - and download.

You may remember it as the place that let you watch a movie until the 74 minute mark, at which point you were confronted with a request for some kind of premium payment, resulting in utter fury from the end user.

The founder is very, very rich, according to his indictment. Very rich, presumeably, because the site could charge for premium services, without paying anything for the bulk of the content people wanted to watch.

While some sites chose to go down in protest at SOPA, the Megaupload case has triggered good old 2011-style attacks on some of those most keen on enacting tougher legislation, with the usual loose-knit band of LulzSec/Anonymous-linked Twitter accounts gloating about their success using the #stopSOPA hashtag.

One victim seems to be the US Department of Justice site, which is struggling to load, very slowly, after reportedly going down, most likely due to a Denial of Service attack.

The websites of high-profile copyright supporters such as the Motion Picture Association of America, Universal Music Group and the Recording Industry Association of America were also taken down.

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” supposed Anonymous operative Barrett told Russia Today.

Now, far from supporting overly stringent and arguably poorly considered legislation, I'm an advocate of an Internet which remains as free as reasonably possible. There are dinosaurs in the music and motion picture industry that must innovate, and it's not the job of the state to do their work for them by enacting laws like SOPA.

But I'm not sure this latest round of attacks is going to help this cause at all - in the minds of US legislators the arguments of a legitimate cause could well end up severely tarnished.

Follow @billcode