Looks like Anonymous responded by shutting down justice.gov (justice.gov) and Universal Music (universalmusic.com).

Feels like everyone is losing.  Is it too late?

How is justice.gov "losing" from their website being hit by a few botnets? They don't use their website to sell t-shirts. Those sites are just static presentations. They are not crusial assets.

That's all Anonymous can do - attack second and third class assets...

That site functions more than a static presentation.  I'm sure very few people actually know what that site is capable of doing.

It is capable of logging the ip addresses of the script kiddies that use LOIC against it.

The war for the rights of creative content and to protect their abuse is here.

Let this be a warning to Google(YouTube), Facebook and other Big Data sites, the writings on the wall...

there went riaa.com too....

Question: What would have happened if New Zealand didn't agree to the extradition/rendition?

Oh Shit! I love MegaUpload!

Kudos to the FBI

i'll defer my question: What took so long!?

Unrelated news but how come a site that is all about "DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS" doesn't report the fact that the revolutionary MUVE MUSIC has surpassed 500,000 paid subscribers?

Revolutionary because it is bundled into an Android mobile phone service (unlimited music downloads, unlimited talk, text and data).  

And for a prepaid phone company that only has 5 million subscribers, 10% of their users are now on MUVE MUSIC.  It was launched nation-wide only 6-7 months ago.

Hey @Paradox, try reading the site more.  They have.

Read on a french news site(quick translation)

"The hacker collective Anonymous has annouced having shut down the websites of FBI, DOJ , UMG and RIAA in reply to the shutdown of megaupload"....

As usual, guns never solve anything, even in the digital world apparently.

I can't access RIAA and UMG websites this morning (10h10 GMT+1)..... FBI and DOJ were more reactive in solving the access problems.

"The sites for the Justice Department, RIAA, MPAA, Universal Music Group and potentially others were hacked"

Thought it was just a DDoS attack - were they actually hacked?

Nah, just a couple of botnets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet

"In classic SOPA fashion, the arrests and seizures were made outside of the US, but directed from inside the US.   That is, the arrests were made in New Zealand, according to early information, and MegaUpload is a Hong Kong-based enterprise."

Apparently the Megaupload servers are in the U.S, hence why they were legally able to be taken down. So, in answer to your headline question, "Who needs SOPA?", SOPA would have been needed if the servers had been located outside the U.S

But this is a global co-located server architecture?  But also the arrests were made in New Zealand, not US?

The servers are apparently located in Virginia.

Extradition between countries is not at all unusual.

interesting and pretty spot-on summation:  http://popuppirates.com/

It's time we faced and admiitted it. Our Republic has been taken over by a bunch of mafiosa thugs who do what they want regardless of the law.  The DA perjured himself in front of congress and is responsible for many US citizen and Mexican deaths through their "bothched" Fast and Furious guns for drugs operation in Mexico.  Our "President" signs away centuries of freedom like a thief in the night as the country was ringing in the New Years with the NDAA.  Little kids and up are groped by zombie powertrip crazy TSA pedofiles (highest criminal and pedo rate in service besides TSA).  And on and on and on.

I'm so glad Hollywood and Music Exec criminals (how much bailout did the magical Holy Wood receive?) are having their arses wiped by our supposed protectors........

The article title got it right.  But your article itself gets confused.

"In classic SOPA fashion", "But now, it's as if that never happened".

You're saying this bust is another symbol of everything people dislike with SOPA??  You're Very wrong Paul.

Google et al hate SOPA because it makes them responsible for policing pirates.  It makes Google liable for returning search results that link to a site which distributes pirated material.  What happened with Mega was the FBI, i.e. the people whose JOB it is to fight crime, did their own policing and engaged directly with the criminals - rather than scolding people who mentioned where the criminals work.

Megaupload didn’t have links to other sites hosting  illegal files. They Hosted them directly!  What this implies for the locker industry is a different matter, which is TBD.  That discussion - are online lockers legal or not, is not related to SOPA.  At least not the parts of the bill that are making Google and free speech advocates angry.

You're getting two separate issues confused together in your article.

As long as the agencies who are created to fight crime continue to do this type of crime fighting, there is a much weaker argument for the type of over-reaching, free speech restricting laws that SOPA is.

Money laundering is not free speech. Go pay a visit to your local library, borrow a couple of books. They will be so happy to see you there.

Money laundering?  Doesn't ignorant-troll have a bridge to crawl back under somewhere?  Why don't you get moving...

Kim Schmitz (born January 21, 1974 in Kiel, Germany), also known as Kimble, Kim Dotcom and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, is a German computer criminal and businessman who has generated much publicity during the dot-com bubble and was convicted of credit card fraud, computer fraud, insider trading, and embezzlement in its aftermath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz

Money Laundering has nothing to do with free speech. What the hell are you talking about?

The SOPA legislation limits our ability to publish info on the interweb.  Google doesn't want to get caught up in the "piracy war" just for telling people what the rest of the the web looks like.  That's why it's busted.

Megaupload were housing stolen goods and selling ad space on that house.  That's why they're busted.

The two issues are not related.  Stop being stupid and confused. Sorry- but same for the guy who wrote this article.

You are up for a big surprise when you find out that Google settled with the US government for ~$500 million in order to protect the companie's ten top people from jail time.

Google has settled with the Govt numerous times (as has facebook and microsoft).  I'm not surprised at all.

What's your point?

MegaUpload was doing nefarious acts and was brought down with out any need for the overreaching Sopa legislation.  That's my point.

FYI Great news coverage of Megaupload CEO here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-QLGQtEnPy0

Thank you FBI. Glad to see my tax money spent the right way. I am sure we will hear about more criminal cases once your techs go through all that data.

I am also glad to see that all Anonymous can do is attack a couple of websites with botnets. Big deal. Who needs to read RIAA's website, anyway? It's not like it's e-commerce. Those script kiddies are not really that dangerous. Who knows, maybe they will get bored at some point and go outside, find a boy/girlfriend.

These are modern-day political prisoners.

We elect a statist authoritarian with tolitarian tendencies and we are surprised by these actions by the FEDs???

Fortunately we will have the chance to remove this wanna be dictator from power this year.

You can see photos of the MegaUpload mafia gang here:

http://cryptome.org/2012-info/megaupload/0051.htm

Good coverage here of the CEO Kit Dotcom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-QLGQtEnPy0

The real reason? 

Competition.

You are actually suggesting that the FBI works for the Pirate Bay? Because that was MegaUpload's main competitor.

Quite a conspiracy you got there.

sopa sucks goats balls, now if you don't mid I'm gonna go watch free movies online

Besides mid, watch out for your bass and highs.

FBI MegaUpload Search Photos and Video

Kim Dotcom had a Mercedes jeep with "POLICE" written on the back plate...