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Anonymous, the group of activist hackers, claimed to have crashed the Justice Department website on Thursday in retaliation for prosecutors shutting down the popular file-sharing site Megaupload.com. "The government takes down Megaupload? 15 minutes later Anonymous takes down government & record label sites," the group wrote on its Twitter account. A Justice Department spokesman did not confirm whether the agency had suffered a cyber attack, but justice.gov was not loading as of Thursday afternoon.

Glenn Beck discusses the Big Brother aspects of PIPA and SOPA.

McLEAN, Va. –  Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws -- a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue. "This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment. The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations -- Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited -- of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was...

The Google logo has been blacked out today. Wikipedia, reddit, Mozilla and Twitpic are all blocking access to content. Even Star Trek icon George Takei has blocked his site. The moves are displays of cyber-protest against the heavy-handed and ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). From a political and public relations standpoint, this has already been a complete and utter failure for Hollywood and their formerly formidable lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America. Former Sen. Chris Dodd became the new CEO of the MPAA after he realized he would never be re-elected in his home state of Connecticut...

EXCLUSIVE: Internet sites on their SOPA-Strike may be conducting a blackout but Hollywood studios are conducting a boycott. I’ve learned that Hollywood studio chiefs individually and as a group are drawing a line in the sand on the piracy issue with the Obama re-election campaign and refusing to give any more donations. The blowup came after President Obama on Saturday dashed moguls’ hopes that he would remain on the sidelines in the dispute over the U.S. House Of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act. In a posting on the White House web site, three...

What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

Hollywood would use SOPA to make it possible for anyone to single-handedly take down any site on the Internet, without the action of a court, just because anyone with access to that site (say, a commenter) used it to link to copyrighted content. What does Hollywood think? That if they win this level of power, the Internet will stop happening in the rest of the world? ................... To paraphrase our last president, Hollywood hates your freedom. There, I said it. Hollywood is the Al Qaeda of content. It clings to an antediluvian notion of how media should be created and...

Free Speech: In the name of stopping online piracy of copyrighted material, some propose giving the federal government power to shut down websites without due process and control the greatest mode of free speech ever invented. Call them "sons of net neutrality," for while the Software Online Piracy Act (SOPA) working its way through the House of Representatives and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), are shrouded in seemingly worthy goals, they would grant government power it should not have and arguably pose a threat to our First Amendment rights. Online piracy is a real problem, and the...

If there's already a previous thread on this, I apologize. My question....what is up with Google dot com? What's with that big black square covering their logo on their search site? Am I missing something here?

There certainly hasn’t been any lack of attempts by the U.S. government — elected Representatives and Senators, and White House — to try to regulate/control the Internet in this session of Congress. It seems a new cybersecurity bill pops up at least once a week. The latest one catching all the attention is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261. SOPA is a beefed-up version of the failed Protect IP Act.... David Ulevich, an expert in Internet security calls the legislation “dangerous” for three reasons: 1) “there is no way to censor only illegal content without harming legitimate uses...

Congressional support for controversial online piracy legislation eroded dramatically on Wednesday in the face of an unprecedented online protest supported by tech titans such as Google, Wikipedia and Facebook. Several key senators withdrew their support from the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA), including Tea Party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), an elected member of his party's leadership. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who leads the Senate GOP's campaign team, said the legislation should be put on hold, while Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a sponsor and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, retreated from the...

Tell Congress: Don’t censor the Web Fighting online piracy is important. The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs. Too much is at stake – please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA.

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Don't worry, your Internet isn't running slow. Some of your favorite websites like Craigslist and Wikipedia have gone black for the next 24 hours in protest of anti-piracy legislation. If you have been trying to find the most correct answer on Wikipedia's English site about who won the Oscar for "Best Leading Lady" at the 1980 Academy Award this morning, nine times out of 10 you have realized the site isn't currently working. How about how many Harry S. Truman parks there are in the United States? Looking for an apartment for rent in the City of Hazelwood on Craigslist...

Sen. Marco Rubio said this morning that he is dropping support for a controversial Internet piracy bill, contending it is being rushed through the legislative process and could have "unintended consequences." His retreat comes on the day of a national protest (see above). Rubio wrote on Facebook: "In recent weeks, we’ve heard from many Floridians about the anti-Internet piracy bills making their way through Congress. On the Senate side, I have been a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act because I believe it’s important to protect American ingenuity, ideas and jobs from being stolen through Internet piracy, much of it...

For all the talk from some that SOPA was "dead," it appears it's alive and well and getting ready for its big re-entrance. Lamar Smith has just sent out a press release saying that he intends to resume the markup in February...

Do not try to look up "Internet Censorship" or "SOPA" or "PIPA" on Wikipedia, the giant online encyclopedia, on Wednesday. SOPA and PIPA are two bills in Congress meant to stop the illegal copying and sharing of movies and music on the Internet, but major Internet companies say the bills would put them in the impossible position of policing the online world. Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, now says his site will go dark for the day on Wednesday, joining a budding movement to protest the two bills. Google vs. China Watch Video Craigslist Censored? Watch Video China Hackers Stealing U.S....

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a...

US Crackdown On Web Piracy 'Shelved' 9:28pm UK, Monday January 16, 2012 US plans to legislate against internet piracy appear to have been effectively shelved after Barack Obama came out against it and Congressional leaders reportedly said a vote would not be held "unless there is consensus". The bill, popularly known as the 'Stop Online Privacy Act' or Sopa, had been hotly opposed by tech giants such as Google and Facebook. User-generated website Reddit had vowed to carry out a blackout on January 18 in protest against the bill, with Wikipedia possibly following suit. Today, California congressman Darrell Issa, who...