Vigilante DoS.

Okay, more techy stuff here. I try to listen to Leo Laportes "This Week in Tech" Net(pod)cast at work every Monday. Sometimes with work things get behind and I don't have a chance to listen to it all on one day. I apparently missed this on Digg also but read this very well put explination to Revision3 going down.

http://revision3.com/blog/2008/05/29/inside-the-attack-that-crippled-revision3

I understand that there are copyright laws out there to protect the creative property of its creator or holder (as many copyrights are held by a company and not the artist). This allows them to sell, distribute and ultimately make money off of the creative property.

Napster, Bearshare, and Limewire type peer to peer offerings put a huge scare into the companies and their watchdog associations as people started distributing music over the internet. These programs and their respective developers have all faced highly publicised legal issues with the RIAA.

Now there is BitTorrent. Basically next generation peer to peer format to distribute very large amounts of data, with out the releasing party to burn up expensive bandwidth.

MediaDefender does something that I would do if I were a media company. Put out false torrents to limit the loss. But the turning around and sending a DoS attack on Revision3's system is wrong! If it had been Joe Computer Geek in some dorm room or the basement of his mother's home then he would have already been arrested! Is it because Media Defender has the backing of the heavy lobbying RIAA and MPAA as their clients that the feds are seizing all equipment from them? The FBI is looking into it, but DoS attacks have already been deemed illegal!

They say it was an accident, but also say that they fully use DoS attacks on other open trackers! They are admitting to breaking the LAW! Why are they even in business still?!?!?!?!?!? Okay the BitTorrent tracker has tracks to illegal copyrighted material, but to send a DoS is vigilante justice. Even though I catch a someone running out of my house with my laptop, I can't beat him to a pulp to the point he can't walk. I can make chase and try to get the laptop back, maybe even tackle and hold the guy down until the cops get there, but I can't beat him up. And there is no self defense here either.

I will be trying to follow this as much as possible as this has gotten on my nerves. The media has made BitTorrent and Peer-to-Peer = Illegal. There is illegal activity going on, sure, but illegal activity happens all the time utilizing a normally legal outlets.