>I find it's always useful, when determining the legitimacy of a given political tactic, to assume that it's being used by someone we hate rather than someone w

>I find it's always useful, when determining the legitimacy of a given political tactic, to assume that it's being used by someone we hate rather than someone we like. So let's suppose the Westboro Baptist Church gets up one morning and decides to target businesses owned by gays. If they do this via sit-in, then they can probably only target one business at a time, and they have to sit around all day getting jeered at. But if they do it via DDoS, they can take down businesses at their leisure. >These are both illegal and illegitimate forms of political protest, but the DDoS is potentially much worse than the sit-in. I believe you overestimate the power of DDoS. Lest you forget: well over 1000 people were involved in the attacks. This is just the 1000 most notorious. If the Westboro Baptist Church had thousands of adherents, they could indeed take down many businesses via sit-ins. However, they only have a few. It takes a lot of people to voluntarily DDoS a large website. Perhaps several thousand. This is enough to shut down a whole lot of restaurants.