If you remember the movie and TV show, the “A-Team,” you’ll recall it was the story of a group of mercenaries who dispensed their own brand of justice when law enforcement couldn’t or wouldn’t act on behalf of a wronged party. Something very similar may have happened on the Internet in the last few weeks.

Back on September 10, 2010, the Indian firm Aiplex allegedly ran a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on multiple torrent websites that had previously ignored the requests of Aiplex’s customers (several Bollywood film distributors) to remove copyrighted material.

The normal thing to do here is track, warn and sue for non-compliance, and when that doesn’t work, you turn to the Justice Department.

Aiplex was reportedly paid by a Bollywood entity to locate, track and in the case of non-compliance, switch to plan B.  Plan B was the above-mentioned denial of service attack which intentionally flooded the websites until they were no longer able to function and offer the pirated material.

Is this legal?  We can hire private detectives to investigate a crime, but when it comes to enforcing the law, what can they really do unless they have been deputized by law enforcement agencies to act on their behalf?

If what is alleged is true, I seriously doubt Aiplex’s DDoS attacks were legal. On the face of it, it would appear to violate multiple international laws, and I seriously doubt they were empowered by any country to carry out such activities representing any country’s legal arm. What this appears to be is a case of “A-Team” Internet vigilantism.

Let’s look at this from the other side of the coin. Government usually takes a long time to do anything;  it’s not necessarily the epitome of efficiency and neither is the legal system.  So what do you do when your copyrighted material is being hosted illegally in a country that supports that kind of nefarious activity?

Do you respect the laws of that country? Do you wait for years for the gears of justice to move while losing millions in revenues? Or do you hire mercenaries to do the dirty work that your government can’t or won’t do? I can see both sides of the situation here; one side wants to do things by the book, while the other has already tried to do things the right way and is so frustrated by inaction that they take matters into their own hands.

What’s your take?

Regardless of its validity or legality, Anonymous took great offense to the alleged actions of Aiplex and crashed their website in response.

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About Leigh
If RJS employed “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” one could argue our very own Network Security Engineer, Leigh Reimers, just might fit the bill. Leigh is a black-belt karate master and former United States Army tough guy. At RJS, Leigh is a “jack-of-all-trades,” assisting with network administration and support on the off-chance he isn’t solving difficult security conundrums as a certified Sophos Advanced Sales and Technology Engineer.