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So we have two groups of users established- the unlimited and the governed. This situation can be best illustrated by imagining a fake Gangster movie of the 1950s or so. The people who believe there are no law are the ?Gangsters?, and for fun, we'll say the governed are the ordinary ?People?. For even more fun, from now on, we'll consider the ?Police? the FBI- the people who come in when everything is in complete shambles (For example, if the FBI had to shut down a site promoting to kill a famous actress, etc).



The ?People? are always happy, having their parties, talking about things, and running stores. However, the ?Gangsters? always are wanting to move in on their territory. Why? Unlike old Gangster movies, in this case, there are very little reasons to explain this. Many ?Gangsters? feel it to be fun to harass other people. Some use it as a virtual punching bag to relive stress. Some just enjoy testing out hacking skills. There are many practical reasons (Such as the eBaumsWorld.com situation I'll explain below) but most end up being just ?For Fun?.

Now enter the ?Cops?. The ?Cops? in this situation have absolutely no reason to harass the ?Gangsters? as long as they stay within the limits. However, their job is to protect the ?People? from the ?Gangsters? when they are being persecuted. Make sense?

Now, let's throw in a real-to-life wild card. First off, the ?Cops? and the ?People? are nowhere near as smart as the ?Gangsters?. In the Internet culture, those who generally practice illicit skills generally get better and more adept. Therefore, the only thing the ?Cops? can do is hope to learn faster than the ?Gangsters?. It's as if not only do the ?Gangsters? know how to use the guns better, but they also make new guns every so often with more firepower.

So, what does this mean in real life? The lawless people end up having a distinct advantage over everyone and anyone. But are they bad? Not really. One hacker on his own can do damage, but unlike movies that present otherwise, it is very unlikely one guy can destroy bank records or the like. What the modern day attack requires is sheer people.


Now, let me move into my final part, where I explain the situation in the ?News?. EbaumsWorld.com has been a popular humor site for many years due to it's large cache of content and the ability to access it quickly and freely. However, for the last two years or so, it has been found that eBaumsWorld.com tends to gather content from other websites and post it with the now infamous ?Hosted by eBaumsWorld.com? logo. While the staff of the site claim that it is submitted via a (very inconspicuous and hard to find) ?Submit? form on their website, the timing of such postings come into question. So, obviously the websites that this content is stolen from gets rather angry.

Why do they get angry? There are multiple reasons. Mainly, people do not like having their work stolen and reposted without their permission. Just because a picture is posted on a particular forum does not grant Eric Bauman to go and download it for his personal website. The second and very important reason is that when this content is posted, it generates money. Because of the high cost of operation for eBaumsWorld.com, it has many, if not up to 10 ads per page. And this generates a huge amount of money daily. For one visitor to click something stolen and view it may reap up to $50 for the Bauman brothers.

So, essentially, it is the equivalent of Corporate Theft, only on the Internet, where ?There are no rules?. Then the last straw hit for popular website YTMND.com. When an original picture ?Lindsay Lohan does not change Facial Expressions? was stolen by eBaums very soon after posting, it was very obvious eBaumsWorld.com was reaping content only days after other sites contained it. And they were making money.



So, now to why this applies to the two categories. YTMND.com, 4chan.org, and SomethingAwful.com all contain huge user bases of primarily Category 2 Internet surfers. And as such, a lot of their visitors have advanced hacking and general harassment skills. Put thousands of members together against one website and what do you get? One hell of an attack on a single website.

EbaumsWorld.com really again falls under the ?People? grouping of our Gangster example. Because it is run by only two people, and the visitors tend to be the general public (Category 1) people instead of more frequent Internet users (Category 2), they have to defense other than the small groups they can amass to combat the problem. They have tried a few times already, but it has become blatantly obvious what can be done with sheer manpower and determination to one of the biggest humor websites there is.

What does this teach us from a third party standpoint? A lot. This is going to quickly usher in a whole new focus on the Internet. Now that some of the biggest websites on the Internet have, such ?Turf Wars? are now definitely going to be more prevalent. And with the advent of a new ?Internet Harassment? bill signed by American President George W. Bush, the ?Turf Wars? are going to be riskier and have more consequences that could mean real hard cash. Now, people can sue you if you make them sad on the Internet- definitely a problem. What will happen to simple jokes? What will happen to more offensive websites such as Annoy.com? Who knows. But we do know one thing- this will change the face of Internet Warfare forever.

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