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You are not making an argument against his main point. Why is this different then a street protest in front of a store? The reasons, he's saying, that it shou

You are not making an argument against his main point. Why is this different then a street protest in front of a store? The reasons, he's saying, that it shouldn't be illegal is because it requires the consent of many individuals to work. If many individuals decide that they have a reason to disrupt a service, then they probably do. If you argue against this logic, then do you also argue against right to assemble? If not, then what is the difference in your view?

jackowayed 16y ago
A big difference is that when you protest in the streets, you take up one person's worth of space. So you need a lot of people to make an effective street protest. But when you have your computer support a DDoS, it's generating, say, a thousand times more traffic than you would if you were normally visiting that site. And you don't even have to do anything once you start it. I would argue that if you organized 10 million people to repeatedly refresh their page on a site, that would be ok. They're doing the same thing that people who genuinely want to visit the site do (opening the site in a browser). It would take a ton of people to be effective, and it requires recurring effort. But when you use the leverage that computers give to make it take orders of magnitude fewer people and no recurring work, it's too easy for a small group to be disruptive. If a few thousand KKK members used Anonymous's technology to DDoS the NAACP website, would you be ok with that?
iuguy 16y ago
To answer your question - Why is this different then a street protest in front of a store? Protesting in front of a store doesn't stop others from going in. WHen you take part in a Distributed Denial of Service attack, you are denying access to that resource for others. This is not an expression of speech, more a case of vandalism (or at least picketing and blocking people from getting through). For businesses that solely exist on the web, DDoS attacks can cause massive amounts of financial impact. While for the ideologically motivated this can be a big draw (as it may well encourage change in behaviour if picked up if enough financial damage is caused) the fact remains that there is a substantial difference between expressing your disagreement in volume and deliberately causing damage. The former should be absolutely protected. The latter should be (and is at least in the UK) absolutely criminal.

jackowayed 16y ago

A big difference is that when you protest in the streets, you take up one person's worth of space. So you need a lot of people to make an effective street protest. But when you have your computer support a DDoS, it's generating, say, a thousand times more traffic than you would if you were normally visiting that site. And you don't even have to do anything once you start it. I would argue that if you organized 10 million people to repeatedly refresh their page on a site, that would be ok. They're doing the same thing that people who genuinely want to visit the site do (opening the site in a browser). It would take a ton of people to be effective, and it requires recurring effort. But when you use the leverage that computers give to make it take orders of magnitude fewer people and no recurring work, it's too easy for a small group to be disruptive. If a few thousand KKK members used Anonymous's technology to DDoS the NAACP website, would you be ok with that?

iuguy 16y ago

To answer your question - Why is this different then a street protest in front of a store? Protesting in front of a store doesn't stop others from going in. WHen you take part in a Distributed Denial of Service attack, you are denying access to that resource for others. This is not an expression of speech, more a case of vandalism (or at least picketing and blocking people from getting through). For businesses that solely exist on the web, DDoS attacks can cause massive amounts of financial impact. While for the ideologically motivated this can be a big draw (as it may well encourage change in behaviour if picked up if enough financial damage is caused) the fact remains that there is a substantial difference between expressing your disagreement in volume and deliberately causing damage. The former should be absolutely protected. The latter should be (and is at least in the UK) absolutely criminal.