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By John Borland, 23 April 2003 11:00

NEWS Madonna's website has been hacked by advocates of illegal file-sharing after the US singer attempted to discredit services such as KaZaA with a series of phoney files, all purporting to be versions of her latest album. Dummy files which looked like they were digital bootleg copies of her latest album American Life were placed on most major download services - hoping to put users off searching for genuine files. Anybody who downloaded the files were treated to a four-letter tirade from the Material Girl herself - asking "What the f*ck do you think you're doing?". Now hackers have apparently exacted their revenge, hacking the site and adding a page which reads: "This is what the f*ck I think I'm doing." The page also contained links to genuine bootlegged versions of Madonna album tracks. The site is back now, after being down for most of Monday and part of Tuesday. Madonna's war with hackers isn't unique, but it has been one of the consistent threads of the battles over online music during the past few years. Several other artists and groups that have complained about file swapping and have seen similar attacks. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been the target of repeated hack attacks during the past year, sending the site offline several times. Metallica, the hard-rock band that proved to be one of Napster's chief antagonists, had its site hacked at the peak of that controversy. Madonna's release of fake files into file-swapping networks is an increasingly common way of combating Net piracy, even if her own twist on the tactic has earned her more attention. Several technology start-ups have built businesses around duping downloaders this way. In Napster's heyday, these false files were dubbed "Cuckoo Eggs" by one group of independent piracy fighters. Madonna's publicist did not immediately return calls for comment, but told Reuters that the hack was genuine.