AllThingsD.com

Yet now that the attacks have subsided, it’s time to see them for what they are: Nothing more than a blunt instrument that accomplishes nothing constructive.

As of today, only one of the Web sites attacked by the hacker troupe Anonymous is still apparently affected, and that belongs to the Universal Music Group recording label. It currently displays only a message saying “The Site is under maintenance. Please expect it to be back shortly.” Others that had been attacked yesterday, including the sites of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America all seemed to be operating normally.

Thursday’s attacks, which have been described as the biggest action yet organized by Anonymous, were launched in apparent revenge for the FBI’s arrest of several people associated with the file-sharing site Megaupload.com over suspicions of online piracy. Taking place against the backdrop of a wider, more civil protest against anti-piracy legislation currently before the U.S. Congress, the atmosphere around the attacks has been politically charged.

As Molly Wood of CNET put it, the #OpMegaUpload attacks — coming as they did on the heels of Wednesday’s peaceful anti-SOPA protest — seem like an “unsettling wave of car-burning hooligans that sweep in and incite the riot portion of the play,” spurring equally unsettling reactions from the powers that be.

Many outlets have portrayed the attacks as “hacks,” implying that someone had picked a lock in order to commit some kind of sabotage. But the tactic used — a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack — is more aptly compared to a blunt instrument, requiring neither skill nor knowledge, only large numbers of willing participants who team up to swarm a site with more requests than it can accommodate and thus overwhelm its ability to function normally.

The adjective “willing” is debatable, and perhaps inaccurate. Anonymous was able to generate such impressive numbers with the operation — it claimed more than 5,000 participants — by spamming a link in chat rooms and via Twitter that, when clicked, triggered a tool used to launch the attack. People tricked into following the link are given no context or information, and so may or may not have any idea that they’re participating in the execution of a crime.

For the record, it is illegal in the U.S., the U.K., Sweden and other countries to launch and participate in a DDoS attack like the one Anonymous organized. As anyone who has observed the evolution of Anonymous (and its various affiliates using the names LulzSec and AntiSec) should know, the FBI arrested 16 people last July, many of them charged with participating in a DDoS attack against PayPal in protest of its shutting down an account used by WikiLeaks.

In 2009, a New Jersey man was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for launching a DDoS attack against the Church of Scientology. And in 2010, a 23-year-old Ohio man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for launching DDoS attacks against several prominent U.S. conservatives, including the author Ann Coulter, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly.

Records like that suggest to me that DDoS attacks never accomplish anything that the people who organize and carry them out attempt to do. At most, they inconvenience the people who visit and operate the targeted sites for a few hours, until the attention spans of the attackers shift elsewhere. They also generate headlines that are forgotten by nearly everyone except the targets, and sometimes law enforcement.

And so it will be this time. Mark your calendars, because the Megaupload revenge attacks will spur a series of arrests later this year. Some of those arrested will be people who didn’t know they were committing a crime. And that certainly won’t help Anonymous’ image. Nor will it further a single bit of what passes for the Anonymous agenda.

BoomTown has not been much of a fan of Facebook fan pages, finding most of them sterile affairs with empty marketing messages and little in the way of real life.

But things are actually hopping if you click over to the one, located here, created for JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who went loco after an encounter with a belligerent passenger, opened the emergency inflatable slide and got out of Dodge.

The JetBlue (JBLU) employee got out of jail just last night and still faces charges for his dramatic actions, which could be stringent.

But his Internet life is looking good.

The Slater Facebook fan page, which has garnered 81,856 “Likes” since it was made yesterday, is the perfect example of what social networking is–chock-full of lively comments, homemade photos and topics, such as one titled “Holy Chute!”

I personally liked many of the photos, such as the one above, which has the caption: “The story of one man who’s dealt enough nuts to nuts.”

Two others are below.

YouTube is also seeing Slater-inspired actions, mostly in the form of original “take this job and shove it” ballad videos, four of which you’ll find below.

And finally–and, of course–Slater gets a Taiwanese CGI treatment from New Media Animation that is pretty priceless.

Enjoy:

BoomTown is back from the woods of rural New York and was thrilled to find this waiting for me: Lindsay Lohan getting the wacky CGI treatment by Taiwanese “news” outfit Next Media Animation.

Lohan is out of jail, after 13 days of incarceration, and is now in rehab–all of which is covered here, along with other examples of the unstable actress’s greatest hits.

So, how much do I love the image of her chugging a purple martini whilst driving Herbie the Love Bug into a palm tree?

As much as I like being jacked back into the matrix after a week away!

Enjoy:

You can read a confusing release from the supposed acquirer, Global Gaming Factory X, here, and an equally confusing post from The Pirate Bay’s operators, here. And The Pirate Bay guys, who are supposedly looking at a big fine and a jail term, say they didn’t actually own The Pirate Bay but will get some of the profits from the sale anyway and will use them to finance an “Internet project.” Etc.

Oh! And the Pirate Bay’s new owners say they can’t promise that copyright holders are actually going to get paid. Here’s Global Gaming CEO Hans Pandeya in the Financial Times:

However, Mr Pandeya said the company would not be able to compel any filesharers to pay content owners. “We are trying to create a different model that addresses the needs of the different parties. However, it is up to them if they want to participate,” he said.

So it’s understandable that Hollywood and big music are mute, or close to it, on the deal. Because it’s difficult to say exactly what the deal is. I was able to extract one statement from the IFPI, the international music trade group. Here’s chairman and CEO John Kennedy:

“We don’t know the details and there are many questions to ask about how this will work in practice, but we would be delighted if this resulted in the Pirate Bay turning into a legitimate licensed service.”

But let’s be honest: There’s no way The Pirate Bay is going legit. And if it does, it won’t be The Pirate Bay, but something else.

Instead of being a massive site that attracts a huge audience that wants to devour free content, it will be a small distributor of licensed content, and the masses will flock somewhere else for their free stuff. Because they don’t want licensed content, even if it’s legal and/or better quality. They want free stuff.

The movie studios and the labels should be able to pat themselves on the back, gently and cautiously, for getting The Pirate Bay’s current owners to more or less abandon the site.

The problem, as they’re well aware, is that The Pirate Bay was only a directory that sent users to “torrents” that allowed them to gobble up as much pirated stuff as they want. And shutting down the Bay doesn’t mean the torrents are gone. And it doesn’t prevent other directory sites from popping up, whack-a-mole style, all over the world.