Intellectual Property Law

Pirate Bay Opponents Hit by Denial-of-Service

By David Kravets

The website for a law firm that helped successfully prosecute the four founders of The Pirate Bay was up and running Monday after it came under siege by hackers during the weekend.

The MAQS law firm, with offices in Denmark, Estonia, Poland and Sweden, shuttered its site late Saturday, posting that its site “was currently under attack and we have therefore decided to shut it down until the attack ceases.” The siege, believed to be a DDoS attack, represented the third time in two months that hackers had attacked a website of those involved in The Pirate Bay prosecution.

A lawyer for the MAQS firm, Monica Wadsted, represented the Motion Picture Association of America during The Pirate Bay trial that ended April 17. The four defendants who founded the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker were found guilty of copyright infringement, ordered jailed for a year and fined millions.

The case, tried in Stockholm, is on appeal. Under Swedish law, the case was a joint civil and criminal trial.

The Swedish website for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, another group in the case, was defaced in February by hackers protesting the group?s involvement in the ongoing Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm. A hacked message on the homepage of the recording industry association’s website had urged Pirate Bay prosecutor Hakan Roswall of Stockholm to “stop lying.”

Last week, the IFPI site was hit again, this time briefly shuttered after succumbing to a DDoS attack.

See Also:

• Pirate Bay Judge Exposed as Member of Pro
• Prosecution Drops Some Charges Against The Pirate Bay
• Pirate Bay Renamed Beijing Bay After Olympics Tracking
• Anti-Piracy Group Not Amused Pirate Bay Has Its Domain — Update 1 …
• Pirate Bay Crew Defiant on Eve of Landmark Trial
• Amazon.com Tossed Into Pirate Bay Jungle
• Hackers Deface Aussie Censorship Board’s Website
• Content Industry Applauds Pirate Bay Guilty Verdicts

Full post as published by Threat Level on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).