WikiLeaks supporters struck back Wednesday at perceived enemies of the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange, launching hacker attacks against MasterCard, Swedish prosecutors, a Swedish lawyer and a Swiss group that froze Assange’s bank account. So-called “hacktivists” operating under the label “Operation Payback” claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing technological problems at MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks on Tuesday.

MasterCard said it was “experiencing heavy traffic,” but spokesman James Issokson told The Associated Press the company would not confirm whether WikiLeaks was involved. Issokson said MasterCard was trying to restore service Wednesday but was not sure how long that would take. The website’s technical problems have no impact on consumers using credit cards, he added. MasterCard is the latest in a string of U.S.-based Internet companies – including Visa, Amazon.com, PayPal Inc. and EveryDNS – to cut ties to WikiLeaks in recent days amid intense U.S. government pressure. The online attacks are part of a wave of support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity for the group, while the site’s Facebook page hit 1 million fans.

Source: Huffington Post

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A Swedish appeals court on Friday upheld a ruling against three men behind file sharing website Pirate Bay, cutting their prison sentences and raising the fine. The case was brought by Swedish subsidiaries of leading music and film companies, including Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Brothers as the industry continues to fight against the sharing of film and video over the Internet. “The appeals court, like the district court, finds that the service Pirate Bay has facilitated illegal file sharing in a way which is punishable for those who carried out the service,” the court said in a statement.

A lower court had last year sentenced four men linked to what is one of the world’s biggest file sharing websites to one year in jail and a fine of 32 million crowns ($4.57 million). The Svea appeals court said in a statement it had reduced the prison sentences by varying degrees, but raised the fine to 46 million crowns ($6.57 million). The new judgment related only to three men, Fredrik Nej, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom. The court reduced Neij’s sentence to 10 months, Sunde’s to eight and Lundstrom’s to four. A fourth man, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, was ill and could not take part in the proceedings, the court said. Despite the court proceedings, the website has continued to function. It says on the website that it is now run by a organization and is registered in the Seychelles.

Source: Reuters

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aAF released a new episode of HBO’s talk show “Real Time With Bill Maher”.

Ann Druyan, creative director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Project, and Richard Tillman, brother of Pat Tillman, are interview guests. Panelists: commentator Andrew Breitbart; radio talk-show host Amy Holmes; animator Seth MacFarlane.

Links: HOMEPAGE – TV.com

Real.Time.with.Bill.Maher.2010.10.01.HDTV.XviD-aAF
XviD | MP3 VBR | 550MB
NFO – NTi – SiNGLE FiLE DOWNLOAD

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Well, this is sad. Remember that french three-strikes anti-piracy law codename Hadopi? It got into real-world action! To quote Torrent-Freak:

“This week the controversial French three-strikes anti-piracy law Hadopi went live. Copyright holders are currently in the process of sending out tens of thousands of IP-addresses of alleged infringers to Internet service providers, and this will increase to over a million in a few weeks. The ISPs have to hand over the identities of the associated accounts to the authorities within a week, or face a fine of 1500 euros per unidentified IP-address.”

That sucks badly! Read rest of the story here. Feel free to post your comments and opinions.

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Members of the notorious 4chan image board have launched a coordinated a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against mpaa.org, the website of the Motion Picture Association of America. The attack began at 9:00 PM EST and is still ongoing. It only took eight minutes for the MPAA website to go down. According to an announcement posted on the Internet, 4chan members consider this a retaliation against film studios who paid an Indian company called Aiplex Software to attack torrent websites in a similar manner.Last week, Aiplex’s managing director boasted in the media that when websites refuse to respond to DMCA takedown notices sent by his company, on behalf of local and international film studios, his team resorts to DDoS.

“[…] We flood the website with lakhs [hundred of thousands] of requests, which results in database error, causing denial of service as each server has a fixed bandwidth capacity,” he said.

Aiplex was the original target in 4chan’s attack plans, but it was replaced with MPAA at the last moment, because the Indian company’s website was hit and taken down ahead of schedule by someone else.

“Rejoice, /b/rothers, even if it was at the hands of a single anon that it was done, even if ahead of schedule. Now we have our lasers primed, but what do we target now? “We target the bastard group that has thus far led this charge against our websites, like The Pirate Bay. We target MPAA.ORG!” the 4chan announcement said.

Instructions regarding what programs to use in the attack, where to get them from and what IP address to target were also included. 4chan is a popular image board that served as birthplace for numerous Internet memes. Its members have repeatedly proven that they can band together to harass organizations or individuals in numerous ways.

Source: Softpedia

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Well, there you go. Some guys managed to do it! Finally there is a solution to play “backup” games on PS3. This is not usual modchip method but, instead it’s just “plug and play” called PSjailbreak. You put in prepared USB stick which greets you with GUI and then select game to play. Simple as that! Compatible with older PS3 and Slim models. Read source links for more info.

Sources: Engadget, Redmondpie, Maxconsole

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Many of you probably already heard, but on June 7 Apple presented their new iPhone for 2010. The major changes can be found both in hard and software. The new iPhone will have a new 5 megapixel camera, a Retina display, an improved battery all in a new glassy body! The new OS, now called iOS 4, will be released on June 21. The new iPhone itself launches on June 24 in the US. Pre-orders start on June 15! Later Apple also released a new version of Safari. We’re now at version 5. One of the new things is the Safari Reader, this will allow you to read articles whilst hiding all other images on a website(if the website supports it). The podcast of Steve Jobs presentation is now also available. All links can be found below! I also wrote the main new features of the phone below the picture. I’m buying one, are you? Much more info can be found on Engadget, I kept this short

iPhone 4:

- 16 or 32 gb
- 5 megapixel camera ( 720p HD video) + LED Flash; Front Face camera
-Retina Display
-GSM/EDGE/3G/Bluetooth/Wifi b/g/n
-Gyroscope
-Improved battery
-new iOS 4 ( June 21)
-Pre-order starts June 15; US launch June 24; Launched in 88 countries by September 2010.

Links: Homepage – Direct Podcast Download – iPhone 4 – Safari 5

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