WeaKnees

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WeaKnees in an online retailer based in Los Angeles, California, specializing in TiVo brand digital video recorders (DVRs). The company was founded in 2001 and sells custom, high-capacity DVRs, as well as hard drive upgrade kits allowing an end user to increase the internal storage capacity of a TiVo DVR.

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[edit] History and business model

WeaKnees was founded in 2001 by Michael Adberg and Jeffrey Shapiro, who met at the University of California at Berkeley. Started as a side-venture in the garages of its founders, WeaKnees specialized in the niche do-it-yourself customer who wanted the TiVo DVR technology but found the entry-level models to be underpowered when it came to recording capacity. WeaKnees also began selling TiVo DVRs with the increased capacity already installed for customers not interested in performing the assembly themselves.[1]

WeaKnees now offers upgrade options for a variety of DVRs, including those from ReplayTV, DIRECTV and Scientific-Atlanta.

[edit] Distributed denial of service attack

WeaKnees was the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack during the Fall of 2003. During the two week-long attack, access to the retailer's online store was effectively blocked, resulting in more than $200,000 in losses for the company. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the crime, and eventually, as part of the United States Department of Justice's Operation Web Snare, "federal authorities in Los Angeles...brought 12 cases against alleged cyber criminals and intellectual property offenders...,"[2] and prosecuted multiple individuals for the DDoS against weaKnees.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Time Magazine, Wired, and The New York Times
  2. ^ DOJ press release

[edit] External links

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