Anonymous Seeks to Legalize DDoS Attacks

[Kinitawowi]

Nice try. But we all know that this isn't the same as standing on the pavement in front of a building with a megaphone and waving a placard; Abomination got it right in the first response, this is blocking off the building by chaining a dozen of you across the front door so nothing can move.

The biggest problem is that, as per usual, Anonymous has a point. How do you protest against something as intangible as a website? There's no equivalent to the pavement you can stand in front of; "internet retail as high street" suddenly discovers there's literally no such thing as a public space. Except maybe /b/.

 

[redknightalex]

There are so many problems with this from a legal stand-point only that I'm amazed this is even discussed. I'm no expert in legal law but at least I paid attention in my governance classes in college.

First of all, which I believe to be the most important, is the the Internet is not owned, ruled, or governed by the US government. Thank [insert higher power here] for that! The Internet, as it stands, is governed by no one which is what makes it so great and so prone to DDoS attacks. Therefore, even if the US government said, "yeah, this is totally protected!" it wouldn't be able to hold up in countries that care nothing for the First Amendment, like Iran or China. There's some international drama for you.

Second, when people protest peacefully, which is granted by a permit, they usually are not allowed to disrupt the normal lives of people not involved in the protest. Nor can they be violent or hurt businesses. A DDoS does both of these: it denies normal people not involved in the attack from accessing the site but it also hurts business in a very real way.

Third, protesting is, by definition of the First Amendment of the US, against the government and NOT the people. Unless they were only going to attack government websites that were non-defense/security related (good luck with that one!), then they would be protesting against the people and could not be covered by the "freedom to protest."

The whole thing is ridiculous. I like the idea of a force on the Internet fitting for freedom of the Internet, but Anonymous does not do this.

 

[gyroscopeboy]

The First Amendment doesn't mention freedom to disrupt and block access to buildings, but thats just a by-product of a physical protest. This, however, doesn't apply at all to the internet. Makes no sense.

 

[jklinders]

"With the advance in internet technology, comes new grounds for protesting. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage,"

"It's a silly idea with no hope of success, but it does actually have some grounding in legitimacy."



Both of these quotes are pretty cute. The Majority of DDOS attacks are fueled by botnets. Botnets are bunch of hacked machines that act on command to spam websites. Calling this not hacking or legitimate is laughable. Seems sometimes the editorial staff here is kinda on an Anonymous worship and forgives the crap they do to people's property too easily.

Blocking commerce on websites is also a form of economic terrorism. Legitimate my ass.

 

[Mike the Bard]

A DDoS attack is way different from traditional protests. If you are actively shutting out access to a website, whether own by a single person, a organization, or a company, you are denying them their first amendment rights by not permitting their views and opinions to be seen by others.

You can't claim projection under the first amendment when the sole purpose of a DDoS is to deny that right to other people.

 

[Pebkio]

Why would Anonymous care about something being legal or not? I'm just going to postulate a rule: Anytime The Escapist Magazine talks about Anonymous, they're wrong. Anonymous doesn't care if their actions are sanctioned by the government or not, they'd just do it, without wasting time on legal mumbo-jumbo.

That being said, DDoS attacks can't be compared to picketing because people can't just put a cardboard cutout of themselves on the picket-line and call it picketing.

The biggest problem is that, as per usual, Anonymous has a point. How do you protest against something as intangible as a website? There's no equivalent to the pavement you can stand in front of; "internet retail as high street" suddenly discovers there's literally no such thing as a public space. Except maybe /b/.

This is literally why there is an Anonymous. There are no systems that can really be put into place that would allow for legitimate protesting online without stepping on the rights of others. That's why a person, or a group of people, goes off and vandalizes the internet without caring about personal rights.

 

[Jopoho]

So if they petition fails, will they DDoS some government website out of retaliation?

 

[Xanadu84]

Yeah, First Amendment protects speech. It's protects the expression of ideas. DDoS have no actual message in the individual site hits. You might as well try to say that its not illegal to stab someone if you do so with a pen jabbed through a piece of paper that you are writing a pamphlet on. Whats going on it catagorigally different from, "Speech". The message comes from damaging something, which is not protected.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Wait a minute, I thought DDOS attacks were already legal. The Escapist (used to?) get(s) DDOS'd every Wednesday[footnote]I haven't noticed it happening in months, the servers may have finally been upgraded at some point last year[/footnote] because the servers couldn't handle the weekly Zero Punctuation traffic. It might sound disingenuous if you don't know how these things work, but that is quite literally a DDOS. It's just not being done intentionally.

You know what /is/ illegal, and rightly so? Using a botnet of hijacked computers to do your DDOS-ing for you. That's neither legal, nor cool.

[sub][sub][sub][sub][sub]Well, okay, it's kind of cool, but I was using it in the sense of "okay." [/sub][/sub][/sub][/sub][/sub]

 

[geizr]

The difference is that street protesters do not prevent access to facilities (it is illegal to do so, as far as I know) nor do they deface property in the progress of their protests (again, illegal, as far as I know). They only bring awareness to a particular issue. DDoS does prevent access, and altering the website of someone you have issues with is defacement of property. So, once again, I can not agree with Anonymous' stance on anything and find their arguments to be nothing more than the product of a delusional, immature mind. They just simply want to do whatever they want to whomever they want, whenever they want, and in whatever manner they choose. They do not speak for the people because they take no input from the people. They do not fight for freedom because they limit freedom for others. They will never, ever gain my sympathies, empathy, or support in any way. I know they don't care about that, but that just proves my point that they are not for the people; they are just for themselves.

 

[Deathfish15]

It's a silly idea with no hope of success, but it does actually have some grounding in legitimacy. The First Amendment declares, among other things, that Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," which according to the Illinois First Amendment Center [http://www.illinoisfirstamendmentcenter.com/freedoms.php] expressly provides the right of the public "to march, protest, demonstrate, carry signs and otherwise express their views in a nonviolent way." That, the petition contends, is exactly what Anonymous is doing with its DDoS attacks.

Original author, you are wrong. Protesting a business peacefully is okay, but the moment you chain yourself to the door and prevent people from entering said business it becomes something illegal that you can get arrested for. Instead, you can peacefully stand on the sidewalk, with picket signs. What Anonymous is doing is essentially chaining themselves to the doors and preventing people from entering the business, which is illegal. Please know the difference in these things prior to making an article with clearly biased tones.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I think its a bit different when yure keeping someone from viewing a website (and its not fair to expect everyone to know any "common" or "simple" backdoors to get around it). Even occupy movemen.ts cangt actively block a door and say no you can't go in there.

 

[Abomination]

It's a silly idea with no hope of success, but it does actually have some grounding in legitimacy. The First Amendment declares, among other things, that Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," which according to the Illinois First Amendment Center [http://www.illinoisfirstamendmentcenter.com/freedoms.php] expressly provides the right of the public "to march, protest, demonstrate, carry signs and otherwise express their views in a nonviolent way." That, the petition contends, is exactly what Anonymous is doing with its DDoS attacks.

Original author, you are wrong. Protesting a business peacefully is okay, but the moment you chain yourself to the door and prevent people from entering said business it becomes something illegal that you can get arrested for. Instead, you can peacefully stand on the sidewalk, with picket signs. What Anonymous is doing is essentially chaining themselves to the doors and preventing people from entering the business, which is illegal. Please know the difference in these things prior to making an article with clearly biased tones.

Just a random thing here... I'm not the OP. Wondering why I was quoted as the author.

On another note, picketing isn't exactly possible on the internet short of bombarding a 'shout box' or facebook/twitter account of a company with your greviences. A location that is visited by the public that public opinion can be seen on that represents the company in question. Creating a web page to protest a company won't be seen by those you're hoping on informing - the customers of the company... because not all will know about or go to your webpage.

I am not excusing Anon, but from a protesting perspective they do not always have a legal alternative. But that being the case that means they should not protest in that manner. They could, you know, get those Guy Fawkes masks - as has been strongly associated with their symbol - and protest the traditional way.

 

[lacktheknack]

If it's worth protesting over, it's worth protesting in person.

DDoS attacks can cause real damage. It won't be legalized for the same reasons (albeit smaller scale) that setting cars on fire won't be recognized as a form of legal protest.

 

[Abomination]

If it's worth protesting over, it's worth protesting in person.

DDoS attacks can cause real damage. It won't be legalized for the same reasons (albeit smaller scale) that setting cars on fire won't be recognized as a form of legal protest.

I always found that to be the most disgusting thing about the London riots. They're (supposedly) protesting the lack of jobs and poor economic conditions for the lower "class" by destroying small businesses' shop winows, stealing from said shops and setting random cars (that could belong to someone in their EXACT same financial situation) on fire.

 

[aceman67]

They'll get their 25,000 signatures, and then some.

These are the people who Made Moot time person of the year, while simultaneously making the first letters of the list spell out "Marble Cake Also The Game" (That's right, you just lost, and so did I, live with it. You got 30 minutes to forget now.).

These are also the people who gathered tens of thousands of people world wide to protest the cult Scientology (I was there in Toronto).

Will it happen? Will they get it legalized, I personally doubt it, but only time will tell, and if they do get the sigs they need (of which I am 100% sure that they will, in a matter days, if not hours) this petition will cross an important White House staffer's desk, and they'll have to respond to it regardless.

 

[Defenestra]

Eeeeh.

There's really no legal way to picket a website, as has been mentioned here. You can post nasty messages (which is only possible on places with comments sections or forums, is fairly easily removed, and may not even be acknowledged or affect the target in any way), you can troll them with some of the stunningly ill-conceived digital copyright laws kicking around out there (often not applicable), or you can DDoS.

Now, there are people out there who disapprove of protesting of any kind (Hi LysanderNemoinis!), at least when it's against things they don't want to see protested against. These people are wrong. Even unpopular opinions should be freely aired, and turnout for protests can make a good point as to just how many people are ticked off enough to get out there and wave cardboard, or camp for weeks on end while the police violate their own rules of engagement.

*Provided* the DDoS attacks are coming from computers actually owned by the people conducting the attack, then it too could be an accurate indicator of just how many people a given web target's owners have managed to piss off, while causing no more than a short-lived disruption of the site's operations.

 

[RJ 17]

While I see where they're trying to come from, DDoS really equates more to digital vandalism than a digital occupy protest.

 

[Jfswift]

I can kind of see where they're going with this but I don't agree with it. It's not the same thing as the occupy protest group. Those guys peacefully protested but didn't block my path.