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How does anonymously damaging the property of those who hold beliefs you disagree with in any way consistent with those values? Further they aren't advancing a

How does anonymously damaging the property of those who hold beliefs you disagree with in any way consistent with those values? Further they aren't advancing an agenda they are harming one. I'm someone who agrees with much of what they advocate but everytime they "take action" I feel sympathy for that company.

wtallis 16y ago
What property is being damaged by Anonymous, and why does their anonymity matter to the assessment of whether their actions are right or wrong? The way I see it, aside from temporary business interruptions from the occasional successful DDoS, the only thing Anonymous harms are reputations. As to why their actions might sometimes be justified: most of their targets are (attempting to) abuse the legal system - most often by using copyright law for purposes that are harmful to the general public and beyond the constitutionally justifiable power of copyright law. Surely you can understand that when the legal system is part of the problem, it is sometimes necessary to resolve the problem with extra-legal means.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  There's a difference between "damage" and "permanent damage". If Sony has servers that are functioning correctly and Anonymous causes them not to function correctly than damage is being done. There is money Sony would have been making during that time that they are not making. As far as their Anonymity I didn't say anything about it making their actions right or wrong. The original post put forth "transparency" as a value Anonymous stood for and I was refuting that. By definition Anonymous people can't be transparent. As far as your other statements you prove my point. The parties Anonymous tends to attack are people who are working completely inside the law but Anonymous disagrees with the law so they take it out on the company. A perfect example of this is the Sony thing. Geohot set out to crack the PS3. Sony warned him not to by sending a cease and desist (we know this happened because he stopped his work for a while because of it). He continued to do it and eventually succeeded. Sony than sued him for doing it. In this case Sony is not abusing the law. They are suing in accordance with it. But Anonymous disagrees with the law so they are attacking Sony (for the record I also disagree with the law but I don't blame Sony for that I blame politicians) Finally your last statement is just scary. What you're basically saying is you have the right to break the law whenever you feel it's wrong. Extrapolate that right to everyone and you have chaos. Every person who feels society is unjustly weighted against them can rob a bank by that logic.
  - wtallis 16y ago
    It's quite a stretch to say that Sony is operating within the law in their anti-jailbreaking efforts. The current laws on the books are being interpreted in ways that have serious problems with the constitution, and we're a few Supreme Court rulings away from being able to call the legal issue settled. (And that doesn't even address the fact that Sony's lawsuit is going poorly for them.) Sony is not operating within the law so much as within the system. More importantly, it takes years for the legal system to deal with an issue even in the cases where it "works". Just take a look at the SCO case: they caused quite a bit of damage to the open-source software movement, and the company that chose to fight them is still in court and will never recoup their legal costs. Even if we do get a Supreme Court ruling 5 years from now saying that you can put whatever software you want on a piece of hardware you own, there's a lot of innovation being stifled in the meantime. The existing laws are not doing the job, and until they are fixed, there's a constant risk of bad precedents making it harder to fix things through the usual/proper/legal methods. You are also reading too much in to my last statement. I am not saying that it is always right to break laws in pursuit of your ideals, I'm just saying that it's not always wrong. Something being illegal is not on its own a good indicator of whether it is wrong.
    - TomOfTTB 16y ago
      But that's the point. I'm not saying Sony is right but they aren't clearly wrong either. The way a civilized society deals with that type of situation is through the courts not through hackers launching DoS attacks. As for your last statement I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the issue of the law automatically making something right or wrong. But if the law is wrong the entity you oppose is the government not the individual or company. Because individuals and companies are obligated to work within the system. Once you allow individuals to attack other individuals over disagreements its the beginning of the end for society itself.

wtallis 16y ago

What property is being damaged by Anonymous, and why does their anonymity matter to the assessment of whether their actions are right or wrong? The way I see it, aside from temporary business interruptions from the occasional successful DDoS, the only thing Anonymous harms are reputations. As to why their actions might sometimes be justified: most of their targets are (attempting to) abuse the legal system - most often by using copyright law for purposes that are harmful to the general public and beyond the constitutionally justifiable power of copyright law. Surely you can understand that when the legal system is part of the problem, it is sometimes necessary to resolve the problem with extra-legal means.

TomOfTTB 16y ago
There's a difference between "damage" and "permanent damage". If Sony has servers that are functioning correctly and Anonymous causes them not to function correctly than damage is being done. There is money Sony would have been making during that time that they are not making. As far as their Anonymity I didn't say anything about it making their actions right or wrong. The original post put forth "transparency" as a value Anonymous stood for and I was refuting that. By definition Anonymous people can't be transparent. As far as your other statements you prove my point. The parties Anonymous tends to attack are people who are working completely inside the law but Anonymous disagrees with the law so they take it out on the company. A perfect example of this is the Sony thing. Geohot set out to crack the PS3. Sony warned him not to by sending a cease and desist (we know this happened because he stopped his work for a while because of it). He continued to do it and eventually succeeded. Sony than sued him for doing it. In this case Sony is not abusing the law. They are suing in accordance with it. But Anonymous disagrees with the law so they are attacking Sony (for the record I also disagree with the law but I don't blame Sony for that I blame politicians) Finally your last statement is just scary. What you're basically saying is you have the right to break the law whenever you feel it's wrong. Extrapolate that right to everyone and you have chaos. Every person who feels society is unjustly weighted against them can rob a bank by that logic.
- wtallis 16y ago
  It's quite a stretch to say that Sony is operating within the law in their anti-jailbreaking efforts. The current laws on the books are being interpreted in ways that have serious problems with the constitution, and we're a few Supreme Court rulings away from being able to call the legal issue settled. (And that doesn't even address the fact that Sony's lawsuit is going poorly for them.) Sony is not operating within the law so much as within the system. More importantly, it takes years for the legal system to deal with an issue even in the cases where it "works". Just take a look at the SCO case: they caused quite a bit of damage to the open-source software movement, and the company that chose to fight them is still in court and will never recoup their legal costs. Even if we do get a Supreme Court ruling 5 years from now saying that you can put whatever software you want on a piece of hardware you own, there's a lot of innovation being stifled in the meantime. The existing laws are not doing the job, and until they are fixed, there's a constant risk of bad precedents making it harder to fix things through the usual/proper/legal methods. You are also reading too much in to my last statement. I am not saying that it is always right to break laws in pursuit of your ideals, I'm just saying that it's not always wrong. Something being illegal is not on its own a good indicator of whether it is wrong.
  - TomOfTTB 16y ago
    But that's the point. I'm not saying Sony is right but they aren't clearly wrong either. The way a civilized society deals with that type of situation is through the courts not through hackers launching DoS attacks. As for your last statement I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the issue of the law automatically making something right or wrong. But if the law is wrong the entity you oppose is the government not the individual or company. Because individuals and companies are obligated to work within the system. Once you allow individuals to attack other individuals over disagreements its the beginning of the end for society itself.