I am here Lois
I do not think for one second that Witchboy has any involvement in these hackings, he has no motive, and neither does any other 'pirate' for that matter. It is a possible scenario that some sites may simply shut down or ‘give up’ after such attacks, this would not be of any value to the ‘cause’. It would also be quite futile for a ‘pirate’ to attack or pretend to be attacked for the sole purpose of blaming TSR, TSR have been quite adept at shifting the blame with smoke, mirrors and the occasional use of a pawn, and they will continue to do so until they make another mistake that can not be covered so easily.
It would serve more of a purpose for them to attack TSR, although TSR have claimed such attacks have happened, NO damage was ever done in any of these supposed attacks. This is a perfect example of the theory expressed here where hackers attack themselves with no actual damage being caused.
Some of the attacks were made using the same ‘paid for’ proxy server as used by Thomas and Atwa. No one knew about the server details until after the hacks, Witchboy and everyone else outside of TSR would have had no way of knowing it.
It has occurred to me that the randomness of the latter attacks could be a case of mis-direction, if we go back to the attack on MTS, on the buggyboo account, the motive was quite clear, as the attack was solely to remove evidence of the theft of her work by a TSR FA. Recent attacks however, are quite random, with no clear motive, which could point to these being scattered attacks to hide the true intended victim(s) and the motive behind it.
Tom and the team have been behind a similar website hacking in the past, unrelated to the freesite/pirate movement. It was a hacking seen by them at the time to be of benefit to TSR, although the end result did not work out quite how it was intended to. This attack is not of my concern, and I am certainly not going to put my neck on the block, so to speak, to give details on something I do not care to be involved in.
Tom, Johan and the team know exactly what I am talking about. It was around this time that a post appeared on a certain hacking site, one of the posts that has recently been discussed somewhere here. Tom brought our attention to the post, and among other things, I had major concerns that he saw it so quickly after it was posted, it was as if he was already hanging around that site for a response to a certain something else posted..? I spoke to Calalily about this that night via PM on LJ and aired some concerns, before I got a reply, my LJ was deleted by a Swedish IP, traced to TELIA MOBILE NETWORK SERVICES, in Stockholm.
Tom, weeks later, commented he thought that one of the posts ( The one asking for Pescado to be hacked ) was made by the person that TSR had hacked because the site owner would have thought he was hacked by Pescado. I have always been in two minds as to whether that was really the case, or whether Tom was covering because he made that post himself. As for the post asking for TSR to be hacked, I had put that down to a misguided kid seeking revenge for the initial post. Regardless of who posted what, which is not really important, my point is that TSR have hacked in the past, for reasons they saw as justified and I fully believe they would hack again. My only reservations are how many of them are involved this time, and what are we being mis-directed from.