Lily Allen attacked by net pirates
Copyright activists have set their cross-hairs on UK pop singer Lily Allen, crippling her website in the latest of many attacks against anti-pirate pundits.
Lily Allen (Lily Allen... image by Benoit Derrier, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Allen's site went down a number of times this morning. The attacks against Allen appeared to be brief as users suggested targeting artists could generate bad publicity.
Allen received the ire of online pirates after criticising illegal file-sharing for the financial loss it visited on small artists. She has previously attacked the position of pro file-sharing artists including Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason. However, she shut down a blog that published anti-pirate statements from fellow musicians following a spate of heated criticism.
The singer is the latest of a string of victims attacked under the web-based Operation Payback campaign. Online users have launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the websites of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and a number of UK-based anti-pirate legal firms.
Attacks continue against the website of UK record label, the Ministry of Sound, and further targets will be posted on a Turkish website.
Users have established a Facebook Group page for Operation Payback; however, the social networking site has not said if it will take down the page or supply user details to law enforcement agencies investigating the attacks.