Minecraftia Day Internet Blackout

The Minecraftia Day Internet Blackout (マインクラフト国の日のインターネット停電), otherwise known as the Seizure of Melee FLACs X, was a major hacking incident that took place on May 17, 2009. Melee FLACs X, a VidSpace channel that had more than 500,000 subscribers, following a DMCA notice from Nintendo of El Kadsre, was shut down after being accused of harboring copyrighted game music, with a large majority of it owned by Nintendo. According to the indictment, the channel was accused of taking away more than $200 million in revenue from Nintendo.

This caused immediate unrest among fans of the channel. In retaliation, hackers defaced Approach Software's website and the El Kadsreian version of Nintendo's website using SQL injection and launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against companies who issued DMCA takedowns on the channel. El TV Kadsre reported it to be one of the worst internet boycotts against intellectual property in history.

Background
Katsuo Nishihara, a Canadian-born computer programmer, founded Melee FLACs X on VidSpace in 1999 and was originally based in Kozankyo, Minecraftia. The channel provided extended music tracks for users to listen to. At its peak, it garnered over 1 billion views, had 500,000 subscribers, and was the 13th most-viewed channel on VidSpace.

Seizure
On Sunday, May 17, 2009, at approximately 1:30 PM PDT, the channel was closed by Nintendo and Approach Software due to allegations that the channel's founders were in violation of piracy laws. The allegations stated that Nintendo had lost more than $200 million in lost revenue from pirated music that the channel specialized in. The El Kadsreian Ministry of Culture retained the data for use in prosecution.

Nishihara, alongside his wife Yumemi and two others, were arrested in their duplex while they were celebrating Minecraftia Day in a suburb of Eirabourne, El Kadsre. This was from a request from the El Kadsreian Ministry of Culture. In addition, his computer and all his hard drives were seized.

Indictment
The indictment showed that key points of the channel's business model were of criminal intent. The executives of the channel had illegally downloaded copyrighted game music onto their iPods and MP3 devices. When the channel was launched, Nishihara had the importance of ripping game music from Nintendo ROMs and hosting the extensions on the channel.

Retaliation
The seizure caused a huge upset among fans of the channel, with some of whom who grew up listening to the extensions provided on the channel. Hackers retaliated by defacing the websites of Approach Software and Nintendo of El Kadsre, replacing the home page with an image of an angry Flandre Scarlet giving the middle finger accompanied by the text "All your base are belong to SPASDOT!" In addition, the hackers also launched massive distributed denial-of-service attacks against the El Kadsreian Ministry of Culture and other companies who had issued DMCA takedowns against the channel, including but not limited to Sega, Bandai Namco, and Square Enix.

Aftermath
El Kadsreian Ministry of Culture head representative Nina Abadjiev, who issued the request for Nishihara's arrest and headed the investigation into the accusations of copyright infringement, resigned from her job in late 2010 as a result of the fallout following the seizure of Melee FLACs X, stating "I have made a great mistake in the field of fair use". As of 2019, she is a spokesperson for RGN Holdings Ltd.

El Kadsre Special Security Committee agent Johnny Iwanaga, who carried out Nishihara's arrest, committed suicide in 2011 by overdosing on. In his suicide note, he apologized to Nishihara, his fans, and the gamer community.