Monday 14 March 2005

'Angry Young Hackers' bite back

While the marauding anti-piracy tag team comprising The Swedish Enforcement Administration and Antipiratbyran celebrated their long-awaited and extremely successful raid on Sweden's most distinguished ISP, Bahnhof, a multi-pronged revenge campaign gathered steam.

With youthful exuberance no doubt, the hackers angrily defaced APB's home page, plastering it with quotations extracted from the private correspondence of the agents responsible for the operation (which I should add was devoid of a cool-sounding code name). In particular, the name and personal contact details of the APB gaffer were revealed and the group expressed their desire to see the colour of his [Henrik Ponten's] blood.

Coincidentally I'm sure, the poor man has since been besieged by "SMS terror" and abusive phone calls, and has even been driven to seek the services of some hired muscle to guard his life. Clearly shaken by this unexpected turn of events, he commented, "When it's got to a point where they're ringing my son, I think it's gone absolutely too far". Nevertheless, he remained steadfast in his belief that he had been right to employ an informer to spy on Bahnhof; "We can't just stand there with our arms crossed while the industry is stolen from us".

Jon Karlung, the managing director of Bahnhof disagrees - he's a tad miffed that The Anti-Piracy Office chose to launch their attack on the company leasing the confiscated servers, rather than the 20,000 individuals who are believed to have used them to trade enormous quantities of copyright protected media.

It is has not yet been confirmed that Bahnhof employees were directly involved in exploiting the ISP's servers, though two members of staff have been suspended pending further enquiries. Karlung, outraged by "this witch-hunt", insisted that he does not condone piracy.

Despite the backlash, Ponten wagged a defiant finger at those who continue to flout copyright laws and promised more of the same in future, all the while gloating that, "the pirates out there are panic-stricken".

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