OllyBlog

Oh No! The Pakistani government has gotten to Stage6…and I wish it was the case because it would only last 2 hours.

No, what has really happened is Stage6 is shutting down, and after the email I just received, I feel, in the words of The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, ‘very depressed.’

So this is the full email sent to me about Stage6’s demise:

“I’m Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service. I’m writing this message today to inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you’ll be able to view and download videos until Thursday.

I know this news will come as a shock and disappointment to many Stage6 users, and I’d like to take a few moments to explain the reasons behind our decision.

We created Stage6 with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience. Stage6 began as an experiment, and we always knew there was a chance that it might not succeed.

In many ways, though, the service did succeed, beyond even our own initial expectations. Stage6 became very popular very quickly. We helped gain exposure for some talented filmmakers who brought great videos to the attention of an engaged community. We helped prove that it’s possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet. And we helped broaden the Internet video experience by offering content that is compatible with DVD players, mobile devices and other products beyond the PC.

So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that.

Now, why didn’t we think of that before we decided to create Stage6 in the first place, you may ask? That’s a good question. When we first created Stage6, there was a clear need for a service that would offer a true high-quality video experience online because other video destinations on the Internet simply weren’t providing that to users. A gap existed, and Stage6 arrived to fill it.

As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion of other sites delivering high-quality video), it became clear that operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer made sense. We couldn’t continue to run Stage6 and focus on our broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high-quality video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.

I won’t (and can’t, really) go into too much detail on those first two options other than to say that we tried really hard to find a way to keep Stage6 alive, either as its own private entity or by selling it to another company. Ultimately neither of those two scenarios was possible, and we made the hard decision to turn the lights off and cease operation of the service.

So that’s where we are today. After February 28, Stage6 will cease to exist as an online destination. But the larger DivX universe will continue to thrive. Every day new DivX Certified devices arrive on the market making it easy to move video beyond the PC. Products powered by DivX Connected, our new initiative that lets users stream video, photos, music and Internet services from the PC to the TV, are hitting retail outlets. We remain committed to empowering content creators to deliver high-quality video to a wide audience, and we’ll continue to offer services that will make it easy to find videos online in the DivX format.

It’s been a wild ride, and none of it would have been possible without the support of our users. Thank you for making Stage6 everything that it was.

–Tom”

So no more nice HD content from Stage6 or any place for that matter, so may as well download a crap load of stuff as quick as I can. First the hacking now this, this better not be a hacker, hacking the Stage6 email…

Just yesterday the more popular than god website YouTube was shut down for the lesser time of just over 2 hours, and caused outrage when rumours spurred that the country Pakistan was to blame.

The website YouTube had a video of Danish cartoons showing the prophet Muhammed in, and with Muslims being very shy…or just angry about everything that people make fun of in there religion, then this HAD to end in a war…on YouTube.

Geeks and time wasters alike were up in arms over the websites downtime, but it turns out it was only a mistake by several major ISP’s, who misinterpretation of the message that was leaked to the internet and then picked up by everyone else.

The rumore was that the Pakistanie internet services had hacked into YouTube’s IP tables would re-direct anyone who would stray onto the website.

I personally think that this is a compleat and utter load of BS! I mean, you cannot use a religon to block a website, just over the fact that one of your phrophets was shown in a YouTube movie, I mean if you think that is the offensive thing on YouTube then you haven’t seen the rest of the website, I think it is utterly pathetic, and recently the Muslim religon as a whole was been so stupid with some of its actions, that any slight thing that provke them they go off in a frenzy like a ticking time bomb.

I…I mean the BBC asked readers what they think about the block, and how disruptive it was.

“Terrorism, child pornography and torture related sites should be blocked and the owners and hosts prosecuted (if the host is overseas then block the host). the reasons for this are self evident.
If other sites should be allowed to be seen and if the governments disagree with the content then let them argue through reasoned debate but let us decide for ourselves.

I am fed up with the blocking of information deemed offensive to Islam or any other religion”

“YouTube - or any other site - only offends those that go and look at things that might offend them. What if it doesn’t offend you? Then you are being dictated to by some radical minority.”

Other country’s that have temporally blocked the website were Turkey and Thailand.

I asked the Pakistani PM what he thought about the websites absence and he said some word’s I could not understand.

This is a message to all the Muslims out there, “Don’t Worry Dear…it’s only a YouTube video!”

Recently the popular website, hosting HD, and SD content, aka Stage6 the thing that will crush YouTube like a bug when everyone has a HD camera and a good connection, recently was HACKED!

The hacker who go into Stage6, deleted all of the work for the auto re-updating video’s, and replaced them with a link saying “E*******swo**d.com, Follow this Link”

The hacker also used an auto-redirecting meta script, that when going to stage6, would auto-redirect you to a different website, some of which I’m not going to name.

2 day’s ago, a digg posted showed entitled “Breaking. Stage6 HACKED!” and so, a lover of Stage6, went to the site, and this is what you see.

Just click on the image to either comment, or see the damage.

One of the Stage 6 Staff put up a post about what happened.

“Hey everyone

so i was up in LA yesterday at the DIY video summit, great to see some of you Stage6-ers there, and i’m in this panel when i get an email about Stage6 being hacked. Thankfully i was busy enough not to be able to visit the site then. Our apologies for those that did. I heard it was being redirected to some awful stuff. We’ve been working hard to get the site back up and make sure its safe. Its getting there and we thank you in advance for your patience. One thing about this i did enjoy was reading all the comments about the event.”

One poster said that the way to get rid of auto-redirecting was to:

The hacker used meta-refresh to redirect the site…
to disable meta-refresh, just…* In Opera 9 (Win/Mac): browse to opera:config#UserPrefs|ClientRefresh, then deselect the option and restart Opera.
* Firefox 2 (Win/Mac): install the Web Developer’s Toolbar and click Disable → Disable Meta Redirects.
* In Internet Explorer 6 and 7: go to Tools → Internet options → Security tab → Custom Level button → Miscellaneous category → set “Allow META REFRESH” to Disable.

source: http://weblog.200ok.com.au/2007/02/meta-refresh-ge …

Also, to all who using Firefox 3 beta… just go to option > advanced > general and check “warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page”

People where treating the incident with much care, saying things like Stage6 doesn’t deserve this, and it doesn’t!

Yesterday at 1700 GMT I was attempting to log on to my Stage 6 site.
At this time, I was redirected to a sex site, and my firewall indicated a serious security breach from this IP 78.2.108.160. I traced this IP to Zagreb in Croatia.
Is there any connection with this hacker and the hacker who attacked Stage6?

More on the story later.