I've come across another website that was shut down because of both SOPA and PIPA. What the heck is PIPA?

PIPA is SOPA's sister - but with a better arse.

I just read the whole thing as:- companies with ageing business models who have been succeeded by technology (paper publishers, record companies, etc) want to turn off the internet.

I just read the whole thing as:- companies with ageing business models ... want to turn off the internet.

The Evil New Tactic Behind Anonymous’ Massive Revenge Attack
The hacktivist collective Anonymous is in the middle of a huge revenge spree after the Feds shut down popular filesharing site MegaUpload. But they're using an evil new tactic that appears to be boosting their firepower by exploiting people who simply click a link.

The Department of Justice, MPAA and Universal Music websites have all been taken down in the past hour, part of Operation Megaload, which is shaping up to be the biggest Anonymous campaign in months.

Here's one reason they've been able to muster so much firepower: Anonymous members are distributing a link that ropes internet users into an illegal DDoS attack against these websites simply by clicking it. The link is being shared widely on Twitter and in Anonymous chat rooms, often with no context except that it relates to Operation Megaload. I clicked it a few minutes ago because it was being spammed in an Anonymous chatroom and found myself instantly DDoSing Universalmusic.com, my computer rapidly pinging the page with no way to stop except quickly closing the window.

The link is a page on the anonymous web hosting site pastehtml. It link loads a web-based version of the program Anonymous has used for years to DDoS websites: Low Orbit Ion Cannon. (LOIC). LOIC rapidly reloads a target website, and if enough users point LOIC at a site at once, it can crash from the traffic. Juding from a Twitter search, the link is being shared at a rate of about 4 times a minute, mostly by Spanish-speaking users, for some reason. (Here's a link to the Twitter search, just don't click the PasteHTML link.)

The thing is, DDoSing is a criminal offense that could earn you 10 years in prison. With previous versions of LOIC, participants had to acknowledge the risk and press a button labeled "fire." But now, it appears some enterprising anonymous member has retooled it so that no input is required outside of clicking a link and leaving a window open.

This is completely evil and could lead to huge numbers of witless internet users committing felonies by clicking a poorly-labeled link they stumble across on Twitter. It also renders today's attacks largely meaningless. Anonymous' previous attacks had what political power they had because they were acts of conscious protest; participants knew what they were getting into. This recent round seems to be not much better than a Facebook worm. The safest thing now would be to avoid clicking anything to do with operation megaload or Anonymous—especially if it's a mysterious Pastehtml link.

exploiting people who simply click a link. . .Operation Megaload . . . being shared widely on Twitter . . . no way to stop except . . . closing the window.