Anonymous Targets the Italian Recording Industry Association

After hitting international, American and Spanish recording and film industry associations, Anonymous is organizing a coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the Federation of the Italian Music Industry (FIMI).

On Saturday, Anonymous announced that the group's new targets for Sunday and the beginning of this week are fimi.it, ifpi.it and pro-music.it, which are all hosted on the same server.

Fimi.it is the website of the Federation of the Italian Music Industry, a recording industry association representing 2,500 production and distribution houses.

The organization is also affiliated to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and operates pro-music.it, a website with information about copyright legislation and the distribution of copyrighted works.

"The Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI) is responsible for getting ThePirateBay blocked in Italy. Censorship is something used by fascists or dictators," the Anonymous group writes.

"Censorship is the opposite of democracy. With this act, the FIMI/IFPI is a threat to freedom. Everybody must realize that people will fight when they are oppressed, they will do whatever it takes to be free," it adds.

The group's DDoS campaign, dubbed "Operation Payback," began on September 17, shortly after news broke out that an Indian company called Aiplex Software attacked torrent sites on behalf of film studios.

Since then, its targets included the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Dutch Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland (BREIN) and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

Several UK-based law firms involved in copyright litigation, as well as the Ministry of Sound independent record label and Aiplex Software have also been hit.

Last week, the group launched attacks against the websites of the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) and the country's Ministry of Culture.