Hmmm... it seems like the FBI decided to go after some low hanging fruit. People using Low Orbit Ion Cannon are probably not the brains of the operations. And arresting a bunch of people who have no influence probably gives validation to the message of anonymous and lulzsec.
Getting served by the RIAA or MPAA was far from inevitable. Also, your parents can't serve your jail sentence the same way they can pay your legal settlements.
I think it worked really well. Think about who used Limewire 8 years ago, and who uses BitTorrent now. I think swaths of people stopped pirating after the RIAA suits.
I think Apple and Amazon has had a bigger impact on pirating than any lawsuit. Most people seem to forget that the average price of a CD back then was $16-20. You could get the new albums for $10 but most of the back catalog stuff was priced way above what the market would bear.
Now, with subscriptions, better pricing models, and streaming you have access to more music than you could possibly listen to in a lifetime. The lawsuits did have an impact, it made people more selective and secretive about their activities. Instead of torrenting off public trackers people went to private trackers, newsbin, or LAN sharing (the last option was especially big on university campuses).
Why download a song when u can do a quick search and listen instantly to whatever? I havent downloaded anything in years and use youtube on my desktop and iphone(pandora, last.fm, vevo and others too).
A civil suit requiring a long string of evidence where the likely worst outcome is a fine is not the same as criminal felony charges that could carry jail time and result in a felony record for the rest of your life.
Criminal charges definitely require a higher level of proof but for these examples I think that a conviction is more certain.
In the file sharing case consider what they need to prove: they need to establish that a file not only looks like it contains infringing material (e.g. a copy of a movie) but that it actually does. They need to prove that the defendant willfully downloaded the file at a particular point with the intention of violating copyright, which requires identifying the user via IP and establishing that the particular defendant's computer was using that IP at the time the transfer took place. In many such cases the defendant's computer has not been seized and can't be used as evidence.
Now look at the case for a LOIC DDoS prosecution. On the one hand you have the evidence from the targeted site, which consists of server logs, router logs, and ISP traffic logs which (as above) can tie the defendant to the DoS incident. On top of that you likely have IRC logs of the organization of the DoS, these even more uniquely identify the defendant since they include information unlikely to be duplicated on another user's computer. Also, because this is a felony criminal case it's likely that the defendant's computer's have been seized. That provides an additional depth of evidence, such as if the computer's have LOIC installed, if they still have local IRC logs which can be tied together with other evidence, etc. Additionally, a DoS attack has an unusual signature in that it represents a lot of upstream traffic from a client, there will be evidence of that signature in the ISP's logs and on the client computer itself (cached dns entries, up/down traffic data, etc.)
On the whole I think the DoS case is likely much easier to prosecute than the file sharing case, despite the higher burden of proof.
They need to prove that the defendant willfully downloaded the file at a particular point with the intention of violating copyright
No, all that is needed to prove is "making available". Even if you ripped your legally purchased CDs, and then installed Kazaa, which then detected the mp3s on your computer, and then began sharing them, without your knowledge, you would still be liable.
Infringement really has nothing to do with intent unless you are attempting to argue fair-use.
The temporary DDoS attacks really aren't their main concern, however. The infiltration of companies and dumping of their data is a much more serious risk. Given that this all took place in 2010, we'll see if they arrest anyone from LulzSec in a year or so. My guess is no. I have no doubt that the NSA could probably track them down if they wanted to, but that's way outside their scope of interest, and the FBI just doesn't have the capability.
It might do that, but it won't make very much difference. Who brings down sites: a couple of people with LOIC or hundreds of people with LOIC and a handful with actual substantial botnets under their control.
IMO, these arrests will deter some, as intended. I think it'll also motivate coders/hackers to write more sophisticated tools--maybe something like bittorrent + TOR + LOIC, maybe with an installer fired off from an email attachment that'd only work if the user opened up certain ports.
