I’ll let BBC tell this story, what little is known anyway… Wow, 4chan is effective. Snip:
Adult video-sharing list leaked from law firm
The personal details of thousands of Sky broadband customers have been leaked on to the internet, alongside a list of pornographic movies they are alleged to have shared online.The list, seen by BBC News, details the full names and addresses of over 5,300 people thought by law firm ACS:Law to be illegally sharing adult films. It appeared online following an attack on the ACS:Law website. The UK’s Information Commissioner said it would investigate the leak.
Privacy expert Simon Davis has called it “one of the worst breaches” of the Data Protection Act he had ever seen. The documents appeared online after users of the message-board 4chan attacked ACS:Law’s site in retaliation for its anti-piracy efforts.
The firm has made a business out of sending thousands of letters to alleged net pirates, asking them to pay compensation of about £500 per infringement or face court.
(…) The attack on ACS:Law is the latest in a number of high-profile attacks by piracy activists.
Last week, hackers temporarily knocked out the websites of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The attacks were declared on notorious message-board 4chan and were reportedly in retaliation for anti-piracy efforts against file-sharing websites.
Users of 4chan are renowned for online activism and direct action. “Operation Payback”, as it was known, was reportedly revenge for the MPAA and RIAA’s action against The Pirate Bay. The group has declared it will continue to target other sites involved in anti online piracy activity. (…read more, bbc.co.uk)
Image of super-hot porn geek Camille Crimson.
Not really. From what I’ve read, acs:law accidentally messed up and put a nice archive of all the information right on the front page of their website, where anyone could download them. (Someone had been putting backups in a location that could be accessed from the web, and supposedly when they took the site down after 4chan’s DoS attack it exposed a directory listing showing them.) That’s why all the Information Commissioner’s Office is making such a fuss about it.