I don't see why civil disobedience should cease to be civil disobedience just because it's on a computer.
I think a better analogy might be a sit in. If you occupy all the seats in a restaurant, I think it kind of qualifies as a meatspace DOS. I guess the difference is that in civil rights sit ins of the 60s, the people sitting in actually wanted service.
I guess the digital analogue would be a bunch of people requesting permission to donate to Wikileaks, rather than permission to load the page. It seems the subtle difference is that civil rights groups actually wanted the service that they deny to others, while anon wants a service different from the one they are denying to others.
I guess its up to individuals whether they think the difference is significant.
A boycott is only effective if the disgruntled group has enough population to affect the business of the target. There in lies the problem with a DDoS attack. It is not a symmetrical response. A small group of people could execute such an attack, while the majority of actual customers may not have an issue with their actions.
When it comes to oligopolies, the usual rule of corporations as private, independent entities that can do whatever they please, goes out the window.
Must they also offer service to companies with bad credit or a history of fraud?
That said, Paypal is not making nearly enough on transaction fees to cover wasting a single minute of a lawyer's time. If there's even a chance of there being legal issues with an account holder, it's almost certainly in their business interest to end that account.
There doesn't even need to be explicit conversation between government officials and Visa/MasterCard for there to be a conspiracy; it's more of a matter of a gentleman's agreement to cover each other's backs.
I don't like that they've denied them service, but I believe it is and should be perfectly legal for them to do so. Can you explain why you think it should be illegal?
A market that's guarded by a couple of monolithic entities with similar interests is not open, and without credit card transactions a lot of international business is essentially impossible. I believe that's too critical an issue to be left to the whims of corporations.
The situation would be very different if we had dozens of easily available credit card providers who would take our money with no hassles. Whether you consider that a failure of the states or the corporations is no the issue at hand. The problem is one of assigning too much power to aisngle entity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott
> Under a 1921 ordinance, 156 protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus, including King. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail.
It's all in how you spin it.