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Why is it perfectly acceptable to inconvenience people from their studies? Man, this kind of attitude makes me want to encourage harsher penalties on people who
by Permit 14y ago
Why is it perfectly acceptable to inconvenience people from their studies? Man, this kind of attitude makes me want to encourage harsher penalties on people who pull this bullshit. You do your movement no favours when you inconvenience the same people you want on your side.
- wonnage 14y agoYou must not live in the US, as we have freedom of assembly here
- Permit 14y agoJust don't expect sympathy from anyone you've inconvenienced when that right is infringed upon.
- sethist 14y agoThere seems to be a common misunderstanding of what protest rights you have in the US. The first amendment does not give you the right to protest anything, at any point, in any manner that you want. In fact, the government has a duty to protect my rights if your protest in infringing on them. The Occupy movement is another group that completely failed to understand that fact. You are legally allowed to protest, but preventing someone from going to work or class is a quick way to get your protest shutdown. I don't think it is unreasonable to extend that same logic to DDoS attacks.
- leepowers 14y agoCivil disobedience is illegal by definition. DDoS attacks are illegal. Marching down the middle of the street is illegal. But are these acts immoral?
- sethist 14y agoIf they seriously infringe on the rights of other individuals, then yes I think they are immoral. Putting your own political motivations (no matter how righteous) above the rights of others is a selfish act.
- rprasad 14y agoMarching down the middle of the street is not illegal. Indeed, many fundamental cases of constitutional law note that the street is a "per se" public forum, i.e., the most public a forum can be, and is thus subject to the highest protections for speech. Marching down a street and merely disrupting traffic is thus quite legal, however, if your marching causes dangerous disruptions to traffic (i.e., accidents), then it is not.
- tedunangst 14y agoThe easy answer if you want to march down the street is you tell city hall and get a parade permit. Did anybody tell MIT and apply for a packet storm permit?
- aeonsky 14y agoYou can't assemble if it infringes on any one elses right to get to a public destination.
- leepowers 14y agoI'm not a member of any movement, Anonymous or otherwise. The point I was trying to raise: civil disobedience is disruptive by nature and will inconvenience and annoy - but it is far from immoral. Why should a DDoS be considered any differently? The methods of physical and virtual protest are different but their ends are the same.
- bzbarsky 14y agoBut methods matter, unless you want to argue that the ends justify the means. Which would be a bit of a stretch in this case, by the way, since the most likely ends range somewhere between nothing and causing a bunch of problems for people who have had nothing to do with this whole story.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- FireBeyond 14y agoYou must not have read the part about Aaron not actually being an MIT student at all - hence the trespass charges.
- subsystem 14y agoThe trespassing charges were dropped. He was indicted for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.
- FireBeyond 14y agoNone of which makes my point untrue. That he was not a student there. He may not have been charged with trespass, but MIT was not his alma mater, and thus owed him nothing in that regard.