Anonymous takes down FBI, DoJ, MPAA, RIAA in MegaUpload revenge

World most dangerous hacktivist group Anonymous has taken down FBI, Department of Justice (justice .gov), MPAA, RIAA in revenge, shortly after the U.S. Department of Justice repossessed the domains of MegaUpload, MegaVideo, MegaPorn and an array of other popular filesharing websites.

Anonymous announced on Thursday that it knocked out the websites of the FBI, U.S. Department of Justice, and several entertainment industry sites as retribution for anti-piracy efforts by both the government and the entertainment industry. The group said it was the largest attack ever, with 5635 participants involved in bringing down these sites.

Why Anonymous taken down FBI, DoJ, MPAA, RIAA in MegaUpload revenge

The so-called denial of service attacks that overwhelmed those sites with junk traffic came less than an hour after the Justice Department announced the takedown of the Mega sites, along with the arrest of former hacker and Mega founder Kim Dotcom and six others, who are being indicted on charges of copyright infringement and money laundering.

The raid on the Mega sites, which were massively popular among Anonymous’ young, copyright-flouting contingent of the Web, come just as the Internet is mobilized for protest against Hollywood’s copyright regime. Wednesday marked a largely successful day of protest against the copyright-enforcing Stop Online Piracy and the Protect IP Act, with Reddit, Wikipedia and other popular sites going dark in protest of the bills. The Department of Justice’s raid on the Mega sites just a day later must seem to many in the anti-copyright movement as a retaliatory move aimed at showing that even without SOPA or PIPA, law enforcement can take action against sites that Hollywood accuses of copyright infringement.

Universal Music, for its part, added itself to Anonymous’ target list in a recent legal spat with the Mega sites. After Mega’s recently appointed chief executive officer and hip hop producer Swizz Beatz assembled a team of celebrities including Kanye West, Will.i.am, Alicia Keyes and others to appear in a promotional video for the company, Universal issued a takedown notice to YouTube. Despite not owning the rights to the song, YouTube nonetheless removed the video, sparking a lawsuit from Mega.

With Mega’s execs now detained in New Zealand and likely awaiting extradition to the U.S., the sites seem to have become rallying point for Anonymous’ anti-copyright activists. “Support [The Pirate Bay], Torrents, Magnets, Megaupload and its alternatives. Support file-sharing. Legal or not. It is our right,” wrote one prominent hacker within Anonymous who goes by the name Sabu, in the midst of a string of tweets calling for a boycott of Hollywood and record labels. ”The entertainment industries will see that they can not simply censor us for the basis of profit.”