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Red Hat Software Software Businesses Linux

RIAA Web Site Moved To Linux 188

Posted by kdawson from the circle-the-wagons dept.
xseedit writes "The RIAA has moved their main Web site www.riaa.com from IIS on Win2003 to Apache 2.2.3 on Red Hat. It appears that the move did not go smoothly as it resulted in an 8-hour downtime starting yesterday around noon, according to Netcraft. And the RIAA is still showing a 'temporarily under construction' page. They also moved their DNS from the small company that had been hosting them for the past 4 years, Tomorrow's Solutions Today (TST Inc.), to Mindshift Technologies. One can only guess what happened here, but the move seems to have been sudden and unplanned. They still haven't moved the riaa.org, riaa.net, and musicunited.org domains — those are still pointing to the TST nameservers that no longer accept queries for those domains. TST Inc. deserves credit, however. They seem to have managed to host the RIAA quite successfully for the past 4 years. Will Mindshift do a better job hosting one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world? I wonder if anybody at the RIAA or TST would care to comment on the reasons behind this sudden move. Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?"
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RIAA Web Site Moved To Linux More

RIAA Web Site Moved To Linux

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  • first post (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2007 @07:24PM (#19545353)
    I cannot conceive of a less interesting "story" than this one. Kudos, slashdot.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      But wait! Hold onto your nuts! there's more!
      It not appears that they are at Apache version 2.2.4, and not 2.2.3 as previously claimed.

      w0000000000000000000000w!

    • So... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Artifice_Eternity ( 306661 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:20PM (#19546475) Homepage
      It appears that the move did not go smoothly as it resulted in an 8-hour downtime starting yesterday around noon, according to Netcraft.

      NETCRAFT CONFIRMS: RIAA IS DEAD!

    • The funny thing is.... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      that they moved because the attacks were successful. They were obviously moved in a hasty fashion and that is why the site is under construction. All in all, the Windows site WAS wiped out.

    • Re:first post (Score:5, Insightful)

      by notnAP ( 846325 ) on Monday June 18, 2007 @06:57AM (#19549109)
      The journalism on /. is getting more and more questionable, to be sure.
      What gets me is the rampant speculation.
      Did the RIAA sue TNT? Did TNT sue the RIAA?
      Or did the RIAA pull their business because the Son of Satan - still a young lad and not yet able to lead the hellish forces and kick-start the end of days - is an intern at TNT?
      Who knows?
      But until we do know, let's just put anything up on the board. Drudge does it. Why can't we?

      Alas, sometimes I fool myself into thinking, just because they use the motto "News for Nerds..." this site actually tries to act as a news site instead of a blog (or a blog of other blogs).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      I imagine that whoever was hosting them got tired of the constant hacker and denial of service attacks. Would YOU want to be the poor soul in charge of security at a company hosting the RIAA or MPAA? Might as well wear a t-shirt with a target painted on it.

  • Hopefully, with GPL version 4 (Score:5, Funny)

    by catbutt ( 469582 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @07:26PM (#19545365)
    Evil organizationss won't be able to use Linux or other GPL'd software.
    • This is funny! Not a troll! Worth a good laugh, and therefore deserving of a few +1, funny mods. Mods: please don't take yourselves too seriously.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
      It's too bad that goes against freedom 0. Maybe we should amend that? Hehe...
    • Yes. Just like GPL3 was to prevent Tivoisation,
      GPL4 will be to prevent RIAAisation - RMS.
    • The FSF website specifically discusses the Hacktivismo license and concludes that it is unenforceable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by r00t ( 33219 )
      Nah, but they will have to set the evil bit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ajs318 ( 655362 )
      Getting serious for a moment, that's kind of going against Freedom Zero. Not sure RMS would approve of that ..... Freedom of Speech means sometimes having to listen to things with which you may not agree, and Freedom of Software means having to put up with people using your software who you'd rather weren't.

      Will there ever be a GPL4? Or will there be a law passed, in some little country somewhere in the world, which will guarantee Freedoms Zero to Three "across the board" in that country -- kind of lik
      • Once a law like that is in force anywhere in the world, we can be sure that software supplied through that country comes with the four freedoms in effect, even if not in intent.

  • My guess... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spiffyman ( 949476 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @07:27PM (#19545371) Homepage

    Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?
    ... Or maybe they just wanted a more secure hosting platform located with a provider who has experience with member-oriented organizations [mindshift.com]. There's always that possibility.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cp.tar ( 871488 )

      ... and since they have "one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world", they'd be pretty pressed to move to a more secure platform.

      Now, though, /. crowd faces a dilemma - who to root for?

      If RIAA keeps getting attacked and their site is down most of the time, maybe - just maybe - somebody at RIAA gets the message.

      If we wish the RIAA website a long and happy uptime, though, we can keep arguing that yes, Linux is more secure than Windows...

      Personally, I'd go with the long an

  • But... (Score:5, Funny)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @07:27PM (#19545373) Journal
    Does that mean they are violating 200+ Microsoft patents now? ...and lets not forget SCO...

  • Finally!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2007 @07:31PM (#19545389)
    I finally got to put a chalk mark in the PROs column of my RIAA scoreboard. Actually, I had to create a PROs column. Actually, it would be nice if they'd go back to M$ and I can go back to having only one column.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @09:30PM (#19546111)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Necroman ( 61604 )
      You are always welcome to startup your own Slashdot like site. You can even you Slashcode if you want to do it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The dupe next week will be even more meaningless.

    • Re:Uhh, okay. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Wescotte ( 732385 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @09:36PM (#19546147)
      I hate to sit here and be critical, but is this really "stuff that matters"? This is one of the most meaningless stories I've seen in ages on this site. After looking at the firehose and what doesn't get accepted, it amazes me that something this dumb can be posting material.

      The RIAA is Paris Hilton for nerds where even the most pointless story that is related to it gets too much coverage.

      • The RIAA is Paris Hilton for nerds

        That made me laugh. So true.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by RealGrouchy ( 943109 )

        The RIAA is Paris Hilton for nerds where even the most pointless story that is related to it gets too much coverage.

        The difference being that with Paris Hilton, the Paris-ites* are the ones blogging about it, whereas with the RIAA, the parasites are the ones being blogged about.

        *Attribution to TV's Craig Ferguson

        - RG>

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Atilla ( 64444 )
        that's right... the only difference is that nobody has crammed RIAA up someone's asshole yet.
    • For example, I posted something about this story:

      http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/06/04/ 213350.aspx [msn.com]

      and it got rejected. I can't fathom how that isn't better than this shit story.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by BlueTrin ( 683373 )
        I thought your story is interesting but it did not involve the :
        • GPLv3
        • Bill Gates
        • RIAA
        • MPAA
        • Ubuntu
        • Apple
        (delete the choices which do not fit here), so I preferred to vote for this uninteresting story.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by QuantumG ( 50515 )
          You forgot one: Google.

          If John Carmack worked for Google (instead of being perhaps the greatest games programmer ever) then it'd be front page material.
    • Seriously - this is like the Linux enthusiasts' 'E', with the latest gossip.

    • After looking at the firehose and what doesn't get accepted, it amazes me that something this dumb can be posting material.

      This morning my train was ten minutes late and when it arrived there wasn't enough room to squeeze on. After it left the station, an announcement came over saying that the next train would be delayed by another ~20 minutes because of a fault on the overhead lines. I drove to a station on another line and got a train which itself was running ten minutes.

      When I got to the city, there we

    • Re:Uhh, okay. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kimvette ( 919543 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:36PM (#19546557) Homepage Journal
      Actually, it does. RIAA, for all their crying about IP rights, is moving to Linux, which Microsoft claims violates 235 patents, and even insinuate that Linux might contain Microsoft-copyrighted code. If the RIAA truly cared about IP, they would steer clear of Linux for the sake of PR, regardless of increased security risks and licensing costs they incur by continuing to host on Windows.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jlarocco ( 851450 )

        Or, you could take a somewhat more optimistic view, and say that even though the RIAA are IP trolls, even they don't think Linux infringes anything.

      • Yes! It's not that we didn't already know about the RIAA. It's not that we needed yet more evidence. We know they're a bunch of extortionists, racketeers, blustering bullies, poisonous snivelers, rabid dogs, thieves, cheats, liars, slimy weasels, delusional whiny incompetents, and moronic hypocrites. Screaming about what victims they are as they bring devastation on anyone nearby. Pond scum.

        But I did expect the RIAA to stand fast with those who support intellectual property rights. I've observed tha

      • Actually, what TFA has failed to mention is the utter fact that the RIAA has paid M$ umpteen million US Dollars in cash (used, unregistered 10 and 20 dollar bills in a black nylon travel bag, for that matter) in order to pay for the use of M$ IP — whatever M$ IP might mean given the fact that most of the stuff M$ has been upcoming with in the past 25 years has been reengineered [wikipedia.org] from somebody else's inventions.

        Now TFA makes sense, eh?

      • I had actually just been wondering if this would ever happen. Since RIAA claims that artists have to be continually reimbursed for their work (going on eternity, now) in order to incentivize creativity, the fact that they recognize value with an operating system which is distributed freely shows their hypocrisy. The truth is, it doesn't matter if this was a conscious decision or not, the market demonstrated for them that there is value in freely releasing your work for sharing, redistributing, remixing, etc
    • It's rather simple. RIAA stories on /., no matter how trivial they are, generate page views and therefore generate more money thanks to banner ads. We play into /.'s biased and obvious "reporting" by clicking on RIAA headlines. We're just as much to blame as the "editors" of this web site.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by xs650 ( 741277 )
      "it amazes me that something this dumb can be posting material."

      It amazes me that anyone is amazed about dumb posting material on /.

  • Could it be? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2007 @09:31PM (#19546115)

    Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?
    Could it be the submitter of this article is simply engaging in random, mindless speculation?
     

    • Re:Could it be? (Score:5, Funny)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:10PM (#19546407)
      Could it be the submitter of this article is simply engaging in random, mindless speculation?

      I've been reading Slashdot for years now, this is the first time this happens.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by scwizard ( 941758 )
        Yes that is unusual, usually its the editor's job to add random mindless speculation :)

    • Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?
      Could it be the submitter of this article is simply engaging in random, mindless speculation?
      You must be new here... purely speculation on my own part. ;)

  • Really??? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Captain Murdock ( 906610 )
    I honestly can't believe this got posted. Everything in this description is pure speculation and the only link is to the RIAA website? I know Slashdot has a tendency to flip out over anything the RIAA does, but this is ridiculous. So their website has some downtime. Whatever. Slashdot needs some better filters for stories or something. Come on.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sepluv ( 641107 )

      I honestly can't believe this got posted. Everything in this description is pure speculation and the only link is to the RIAA

      It was clearly posted by the RIAA's marketing department in a desperate bid for a bit of publicity for their site. Protection rackets crave publicity because it helps them extort money and they just like showing off how they can get away with stuff (cf. the Mafia). Also, the poster [slashdot.org] is quite a new account with only one previous post (and he didn't link his name in the submission).

      (For the humour impaired, no, I don't really think they posted it; just trying to make the boring drivel that passes for a stor

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sepluv ( 641107 )
        It would be great if the submitter did work for the RIAA as his only comment on a story was "I use a...media streamer, providing access to your entire music collection wherever you are. This way I don't need to fill up my laptop drive and I can access my collection from anywhere...". Hmmm....clearly an "evil theiving pirate".

  • Hrm? (Score:2, Funny)

    by jrwr00 ( 1035020 )
    I wonder if they can sue the provider, if some body hosts music on there servers?

  • I wonder (Score:5, Funny)

    by NCTRNAL ( 780392 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @09:40PM (#19546199) Homepage
    Maybe they discovered they were running a pirated version of Win2K3, too bad they didn't become self-aware and implode upon themselves, greedy fucks....

  • This is getting frustrating .... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bizitch ( 546406 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:01PM (#19546351) Homepage
    I'm trying to see their groovy new website - I can't WAIT to learn all the cool new ways I can help to fight piracy! Gee i know that website is gonna be swell ... ..... but the website still just doesn't work -

    All I do is hit "refresh" over and over and over and over

    but nothing happens!

  • and I guess it messed up their server. My bad.

  • so are we supposed to... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:09PM (#19546399)
    The RIAA is using Linux...

      Control passes through the teeny tiny loops of slashbot's brain for a while
     
    ERROR: CANNOT DECIDE WHETHER THIS IS GOOD NEWS OR BAD

  • Here's a mistery... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tatisimo ( 1061320 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:17PM (#19546453)
    Why do they (the RIAA) have a "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" on their temporary page right now? I wonder...

  • as a Linux user (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I suddenly feel so dirty...
  • The RIAA trying to poison the anti-copyright (GPL, BSD, etc) stew... though unless they start toting it as proof of the failure of freedom and that copyright is needed I'll take it as a coincidence.

  • slashdotting (Score:5, Funny)

    by oztiks ( 921504 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:42PM (#19546605)
    I'm more then sure putting their link on slashdot is not helping their downtime situation.

  • Test before going live (Score:4, Informative)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @10:43PM (#19546607) Homepage Journal
    Um, how hard can a server migration be?

    Take snapshot of old server
    Deploy snapshot on new server.
    Test new server under simulated load.
    Sync new server with old server. Bonus if you can keep any web boards fully functional during the transition.
    Redirect DNS.
    PROFIT.

    Sure the details are a bit more complicated but for a single server or small farm that's the gist of it.

    If you plan it right and execute it right it should go without any hiccups.

    • Re:Test before going live (Score:4, Insightful)

      by totally bogus dude ( 1040246 ) on Monday June 18, 2007 @12:15AM (#19547107)

      Well, they were also moving platform -- I don't know whether their old site was static HTML with only a few simple scripts or something more complicated, but that can throw a spanner in the works.

      Their site currently has a message saying they're launching a new site, so I think it wasn't a simple migration. Of course, stuffing up the launch of a new site on new servers takes a special kind of ineptitude all of its own.

      If you plan it right and execute it right it should go without any hiccups.

      Sure, but they're a bunch of lawyers so they wouldn't have done any of the technical planning, and they're moving to different web hosts which means neither host particularly cares: one is the ex-host which doesn't want to waste time and money on a customer they've already lost, and the other already has their money and a contract which says "you can fuck us over for 6 months because it's too expensive to go somewhere else until that point"; and each is blaming the other for the fuck up, as per standard operating procedure.

      I'm probably a bit jaded, but it's been a long time since I've received adequate customer service from any of our suppliers, much less good service; but I guess that's inevitable when the only real point of comparison you can make between companies before actually using them for a while is price.

    • Take snapshot of old server
      Deploy snapshot on new server.
      Yes, but Linux doesn't support ASP. So they can't just copy over the old site, but have to rewrite it from scratch...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by upside ( 574799 )
        Bollocks. This has been around for years. It looks like one vendor, Chilisoft, has been snapped up by Sun [sun.com].

        • Bollocks. This has been around for years.
          You're right. And there is also Wine. And Qemu, Vmware, etc.

          But what would be the point of migrating to Linux if you're continuing to use the same old goat pasture software?

      • Take snapshot of old server
        Deploy snapshot on new server.

        Yes, but Linux doesn't support ASP. So they can't just copy over the old site, but have to rewrite it from scratch...

        Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Mono [wikipedia.org] have a pluging for apache that allows ASP.NET to run on *NIX/*BSD? Not trolling, I think it's possible, but I don't know if it's been implemented yet.

    • If you plan it right and execute it right it should go without any hiccups.

      My company does 3rd party technical support for many businesses in the area... And I'll tell you right now, once you start outsourcing things there's no such thing as planning it right. We're constantly running into unexpected snags around here...the trick isn't to plan it right, it's to deal with surprises quickly and effectively.

      There's always something the software vendor forgets to mention... Or mentions to the end-user, but i

  • They switched to Linux, so they're good, right?

    • No. (Score:2)

      by alizard ( 107678 )
      Even good things can be used for evil purposes, examples include the "coalition of the losers" among the Linux community, Novell, Linspire, and Xandros who've made deals with Microsoft.

      Simply enjoy the irony.
  • If I was looking for samples of the latest attacks, I couldn't think of a better site to host. I wonder how much they can sell their logs for to security companies?

  • Link to Netcraft (Score:4, Informative)

    by xseedit ( 901381 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @11:04PM (#19546739)
    In case some people want to see for themselves the Netcraft stats can be found here [netcraft.com] and to verify who owns a domain and what the authoritative nameservers are one should use whois [whois.net].
    Is this stuff that matters? Perhaps not for everybody, but some people may be interested. The P2Plawsuits [p2plawsuits.com] site to settle your case online instead of risking court was moved fast, but I wonder how many people would be willing to enter their credit card info on a site with an invalid SSL cert.
  • They're probably losing millions of dollars in revenue per hour with this downtime.

    Or possibly they aren't and don't care about downtime and even less on Sundays...

  • Nothing to see here (Score:4, Interesting)

    by totally bogus dude ( 1040246 ) on Sunday June 17, 2007 @11:49PM (#19546959)

    The RIAA likely doesn't know -- much less care -- what OS or web server is running their web site. Unless you're actually a hosting company, or a company somehow involved in web hosting such that it's worth the time and money to run your own servers, the platform is entirely handled by whoever is doing your hosting. You decide who's doing your hosting based on price and features; "Linux" or "Windows" is not a feature in and of itself. Even the security of it isn't your concern: that's a problem for the people running the servers that host your website to deal with as they see fit. You, as a hosting customer, rely on their expertise in that regard.

    So, pointless speculation about the deeper meaning aside, it seems they're launching a new site and moving to a new host at the same time. Only they don't have their new site ready (or it was ready, but then turned out to be broken so they're fixing it before trying again) before they moved. That's a bit odd, unless their old site had incorrect or damaging information on it and having no website was better than leaving that content up... but a big company mismanaging the move and relaunch of a website is hardly news.

    • That's a bit odd, unless their old site had incorrect or damaging information on it and having no website was better than leaving that content up...
      Or maybe the old site became goat pasture a leettle bit too often... And RIAA prefered having no site at all rather than what happened to the old shite all-too-often. But maybe a herd of goatse does indeed count as damaging information.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jimicus ( 737525 )
      The irony is there's plenty of hosting providers who advertise offering Windows as a hosting platform because it's "so easy to use" but don't actually make any aspect of the Windows desktop available, instead doing everything through a web-based interface which could be running on practically anything.
    • When you say RIAA does not care, you make the assumption that the RIAA is represented solely by management only making top-level decisions. However it's not true that only the web hosting company cares what operating system is on a server. In fact the web hosting company reacts to customer demand for either Windows or Linux operating systems. It is the web development team handling the sites that will decide which OS to go with on the server, and there are more considerations that just price, eg is the team

  • Nooooooooo... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jasquigl ( 950500 ) on Monday June 18, 2007 @12:54AM (#19547291)
    I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of kernels suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

  • Naah (Score:2)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
    Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?

    Naah, I feel freemasons must be involved somehow.
  • RIAA runs Linux!??

    How will they play DRM-protected music and video formats?
  • ...is that a desire for greater security was probably the motivation behind the move. If, as TFA says, the RIAA site is one of the most regularly defaced on the planet, then it makes a lot of sense that the people running it would want to try and make defacement more difficult. Cracking the site was probably trivial when it was hosted with IIS.

    Personally however, Red Hat wouldn't have been my own first choice, but a lot of web hosting providers do run it and I doubt the RIAA host their website in-house.
  • If using linux = communism, then the RIAA are a pack of commie bastards! I'm so confused now!!! =(
  • open source business model?

    My Winamp dines tonight!
  • Twas asked:

    They seem to have managed to host the RIAA quite successfully for the past 4 years. Will Mindshift do a better job hosting one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world? I wonder if anybody at the RIAA or TST would care to comment on the reasons behind this sudden move. Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?"

    Or, is this entire article just another excuse to beat up on the RIA

  • ...they got problems with that EULA and DRM things...
  • Why is this news?

    OP - go away.

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