5 ms·
To echo a good question posed in the comments of the original article. "what is the digital equivalent of civil disobedience and protest?"
by eschulte 15y ago
To echo a good question posed in the comments of the original article.
"what is the digital equivalent of civil disobedience and protest?"
- 9999 15y agoHere's the thing with Civil Disobedience: you take a certain amount of risk when you do it. In fact, if there is no risk, there's little point in the "disobedient" action at all. So when these guys go to jail for DoSing a server, they've actually partially succeeded. Now when a majority of the populace cares that they've been punished for their actions, and believes the disobedience was a just action against an invalid law, then they'll have actually succeeded. Put another way (and translated into meatspace), environmental protesters don't win when they chain themselves to a tree to stop it from being cut down. They win when they are confronted by the authorities, hauled off to jail, and covered by the media, making people aware of their protest. Simply blocking access to the site and hoping there will be no repercussions is basically pointless.
- michaelchisari 15y agoSimply blocking access to the site and hoping there will be no repercussions is basically pointless. Not necessarily. Some civil disobedience is symbolic, as you describe, some is direct action. Some acts of civil disobedience have succeeded even though there have been media blackouts, mostly because the cost of continually arresting protestors who refuse to back down exceeds the downsides to negotiation.
- _delirium 15y agoMaybe LOIC is it? If one part of civil disobedience is sending the state a stream of low-level "law-breakers", it's relatively successful, because now the government is wasting time and resources arresting people who sent 5 megabytes of packets somewhere.
- groby_b 15y agoThis would be civil disobedience if they turned themselves in after committing what is considered a crime, to point out the unjustness of the law that makes it a crime. I didn't see Anonymous turn themselves in, did you?
- michaelchisari 15y agoThis would be civil disobedience if they turned themselves in That's not, actually, a requirement of civil disobedience, and never has been, historically. For instance, millions broke the salt laws of India, but only 80,000 were arrested, and I can guarantee that the remainder did not voluntarily turn themselves in.