RIAA Website Hacked
Posted by Adam Wallis on 08.30.2002
Though the Rebel Alliance was able to infiltrate the Death Star, the Emperor and his forces seem to have quickly recovered.
For the second time in a month, the RIAA website was hacked into. Rather
than a malicious or politically motivated hack that posted a pro-File
Trasfer manifesto in place of the RIAA website or disabled the site's
servers, the hacker(s) decided to instead post a parody of the RIAA website
in its place. Featuring the headline "RIAA willing to try alternative
approach to music-sharing services," there was also an apology for forcing
the shutdown of the Chinese mp3 site Listen4Ever and 20 or so Linkin Park
mp3s posted as an act of contrition. Astoundingly, those who downloaded them
reported that the mp3s were posted directly to the RIAA servers.
Wednesday's hack attack was considered by many a reaction to the RIAA's
support of an anti-peer-to-peer bill introduced last month by California
representative Howard Berman, which would allow the industry to legally hack
into or disrupt file-sharing networks. The Berman bill would allow copyright
holders to use software to impersonate several users at once, effectively
clogging the networks with bogus users and spoof files.
A picture of the hacked RIAA site can be found at:
http://minordamage.com/riaa_hack.jpg.
