14 DAY TRIAL // The Anonymous group has attacked the online operations of Ministry of Sound, a major independent record label, who's legal representatives are pushing for a court order, that would force ISPs to give it subscriber information.
Ministry of Sound is the largest independent record label in the world with an estimated revenue of over $125 million.
Earlier this year the company hired a a London-based law firm called Gallant Macmillan, to go after Internet users who violate its rights by sharing copyrighted material online.
Today after a scheduled hearing at London’s High Court, Chief Master Winegarten will decide whether to order Plusnet, a subsidiary of BT Group, to hand over customer details to Gallant Macmillan or not.
Anonymous, the group of hacktivists, which for the past two weeks has been leading a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) campaign against recording and film industry associations and other associated companies, planned to attack Gallant Macmillan's website on Saturday.
However, before the attack even began, the company willingly took its own site offline, probably to prevent causing problems for its hosting provider, like it happened when Anonymous attacked AFACT.
The group quickly changed targets and attacked the firm's client, Ministry of Sound instead. As a result, the label is likely to suffer monetary loss, because it sells music and other items online.
Ministry of Sound's website and online payment gateway were hit by the massive DDoS attack at 7 p.m. UTC yesterday and have already been down for over twelve hours.
The Pay-2-Play site operated by Gallant Macmillan to serve its campaign of threatening alleged copyright infringers with legal action unless they pay up, is also down at the moment.
It's worth noting that Anonymous previously attacked ACS:Law Solicitors and Davenport Lyons, two separate law firms, who sent similar letters on behalf of rights holders.
The attacks against ACS:Law have indirectly resulted in a data breach incident, which involved the information of thousands of UK broadband subscribers being leaked onto the Internet.