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Comment by makmanalp | Hacker News Reader

I'm hesitant to liken Anonymous to revolutionaries but to be honest, almost all revolutions were started in a "small group" that was relatively insignificant (that was unelected), and then grew in size and gathered acceptance.

Again with the due process and rules: do you think when the French people stormed the Bastille during the French Revolution, there was any semblance of rules or accountability? Hell no. It was the "naked use of force". Did it have bad consequences? Some. Did it have good consequences? I think you know the answer.

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Agreed, but I'd say an even better analogy is the Boston Tea Party. It was politically-motivated act of vandalism by a small group against a corporation.

History is written by the victors. All this fuss around payment systems and Amazon can remain as act of vandalism by pile of 4channers. I personally think they've chosen the wrong methods.

like trowing tea in the sea is super responsibly and grown up. I also bet it affected more the small businessman than the British gov

bye-bye karma :)

You've stripped away all the particulars in order to equate the overthrow of a multi-century monarchy with disruption of a few websites.

Yes, we've got two examples of 'disputes'. But that doesn't get us very far. Can you finish the analogy for me?

You are suggesting that the DDOS activities are indicative of an attempt to overthrow what in favor of what?

The French Revolution wasn't exactly an orderly process aimed at any coherent attempt to overthrow any particular thing in favor of any other particular thing. In fact, it was a huge mess. Much of the early French Revolution seemed a lot like an attempt to force a constitutional monarchy (like the English Magna Carta did), and a lot of the late French Revolution consisted of self-appointed dictators having people summarily executed, or trying to conquer Europe.

My point was that the properties of this small scale protest (or tantrum depending on however you look at it) that you deride are actually pretty similar to most other protests.

You suggested that it was similar to the French Revolution. In what way is it similar other than they both involved 'protest'? And if that is the similarity you were trying to make, then why confuse the issue by bringing in the concept of revolutionary war?

Is there a French Revolution version of Godwin's Law?

This is the third time in a short period I've seen Godwin's Law used as a way to discount serious discussion online. Are we really so uncomfortable with the concept of metaphor or the importance of remembering and analyzing serious events? We're discussing censorship, freedom, etc and 20th-century history is off limits?

I'm not trying to 'discount' serious discussion, I'm suggesting that comparing DDOS attacks on commercial websites to the French Revolution is not serious discussion.

Reaching for a Nazi analogy or a French Revolution analogy should be done sparingly and with careful consideration.

Now you are suggesting that I'm arguing that 20th-century history is off limits. This sort of wild over-generalization is the antithesis of 'serious discussion'.

Perhaps you think comparisons to something like the French Revolution are unjustified merely because the scope of the current turmoil is nowhere near as wide (yet), but all revolutions have to start somewhere. If the US goes for another two or three presidential elections without significantly affecting the patterns of increasing corporate control over politics and the post-9/11 erosion of civil liberties, we may find it easier to draw such comparisons.

One thing I think we can all agree on: if the next revolution comes any time soon (ie. next few decades), it will start online.

There seems to be a lot of confusion between the Wilkileaks disclosure and the DDOS attacks.

The disclosures can be debated within the terms of government transparency and public policy, but the DDOS attacks were all about a small group of private individuals attacking private companies because they disagreed with how they ran their business.

The two issues are related by a common party, Wikileaks, but other than that they aren't even in the same ballpark. My comments were about the DDOS attacks and not the Wikileaks disclosures. You seem to be talking about the disclosures.

What Wikileaks is doing is called journalism. I wouldn't compare that to revolution, even if they are both rare these days.

What Anonymous is doing is an attack, and its only justification so far is the attempted suppression of Wikileaks' journalism. Suppression of rights like the freedom of the press are among the best justifications for revolution. So, while the current DDOS probably isn't the start of a revolution, it is the kind of thing you would expect to see in the opening stages of a modern revolt in an industrialized society, before things get to the physical violence.

Freedom of the press is about protecting the press from the government. It is not about forcing private companies to run their businesses according to the diktats of small group of anonymous geeks.

Visa and MasterCard cannot act in isolation from the government: They form a duopoly that requires regulation, and they are subject to quite a bit of it. As felixmar pointed out elsewhere in the thread [1], they have gotten favors from the government that have been exposed by the very leaks at issue. It doesn't take actual evidence of a specific request from the government to establish that the government influenced their decision to change their minds about doing business with Wikileaks.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985128

Well wikileaks would not have the problems it does if the government would not have interfered.

The government stepped in and `advised` the private companies that it wouldn't be in their best interest to continue doing business with wikileaks. Even though nothing illegal on the part of wikileaks has been proved.

Taking away the freedom of press doesn't mean shoot the leader in the head and imprison all the rest.

If they manage to isolate you enough , they've succeeded in taking away your freedom.

The parallels aren't that far-fetched. During the early days of the French Revolution, everybody was pissed but no one could agree at what. Everyone wanted change, but no one could agree what that change should look like.

More pointedly, it was a time of great cultural upheaval. A slough of philosophers emerged, each advocating a worldview distinct from, but related to, the other. New ideas began to take hold, and a populace that was previously insulated against the spread of information began to be exposed to new ideas. Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu brought new ideas to the national dialogue, while dissatisfaction with the Three Estate system (monarchy, church, everyone else - government, corporations, everyone else) led to widespread unrest. All of this happened during an economic crisis where the irresponsible spending of the French Crown had all but bankrupted the nation.

Have a read for yourself. The parallels are there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution#Pre-revolutio...

Also, people were literally starving to death. In the words of my awesome European History teacher, "Happy meals were 18 dollars."

I think that makes a big difference. Nobody is going to start a revolution if they have enough to eat and a place to live.

I should have been clearer on the "20th-century" part, I meant that Godwin's law is used to question analogies to something which happened during the 20th century i.e. not too long ago.

Are you serious? "No due process, no rule book, no accountability, just naked use of force." You defined the terms, and were supplied with the French Revolution as an example.

You were the one who ran that horse into the ground, trying to insert gravitas that was never intended, so stop with the "Godwin's Law" rolling-of-the-eyes.

Gravitas? My 'terms' could be used to describe a bar brawl. There was no attempt to insert gravitas.

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