Anonymous this week managed to shut down the Irish Department for Justice website and the sites of several large financial institutions that are based in Ireland over a new piece of SOPA style legislation that is being passed.

Known as a statutory instrument, the current change in legislation that's being proposed does not require the approval of the Irish Parliament, and as such can be instigated with little or no obstruction.

Essentially the change in legislation would allow the companies to tackle copyright dispute claims with more free will, giving them more power and freedom to chase those in Ireland.

Anonymous, in retaliation to the legislation then attacked both the Irish Dep. of Justice and a number of financial websites using a Denial of Service attack which doesn't hack the websites concerned, instead it bombards the site with spam and traffic forcing it to shut down.

Do you think that governments should allow this level of freedom to chase down copyright disputes? Let us know via the comments box below...

Source: TechWatch