Anonymous has launched a pair of operations in response to the takedown of the Megaupload.com site earlier today by the FBI and other authorities and continued support for the Stop Online Piracy Act by members of Congress. So far, the sites of the Justice Department, Universal Music Group, and several congressional sites have been affected.

The attacks began as Anonymous' Sabu called for people to boycot paid media in all forms and supporting torrent and file sharing sites. "This new, massive operation, will target on SOPA/PIPA in a way that the government was not expecting," he posted on Twitter. "We are going to starve the beast." In response to the arrest of Megaupload.com's founders, he said, "This is the governments way of saying: 'How nice of you protest SOPA/PIPA. But we still are in control.' Fuck this."

At just before 4PM CT on January 19, both the websites of the Department of Justice and Universal Music were made unavailable by denial of service attacks. Anonymous' Barrett Brown told RT.com that "It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.gov." Both sites are still down, and more attacks are being mounted; Anonymous members have now targeted the sites of the Motion Picture Association of America and the White House, and other government sites.

Additionally, in a wave of attacks labelled "OpDonkeyPunch" by Barrett Brown, the frequent spokesperson for Anonymous, the group is targeting Democrats in Congress who support SOPA, attacking their websites. Brown also published the fax machine phone number for Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, sponsor of SOPA.

In an email to Ars, Brown said that the intent of OpDonkeyPunch "is to show Democrats that they can't just slide through on this and escape notice, that we can do more damage to their fundraising ability than they realize." The efforts will include targeting the Facebook and Twitter accounts of SOPA supporters—not with attacks, but by posting messages to them.

Listing image by Photograph by Paul Williams