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Comment by coderdude | Hacker News Reader

Excellent. How dumb do you have to be to try and DDoS the homepage of a major credit card company from your personal computer using a downloaded tool? Script kiddies or not, the law is the law. I'm glad to see them get popped for this. I can't stand all that Anonymous crap -- they've redefined what it means to be lame. This should hopefully set an example for anyone else that decides to do some vigilante work of their own. LOIC, give me a break.

"We are Anonymous. We are legion. We are no one. And everyone."

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The anonymous DDOS attacks were obviously stupid and pointless. I think what you are missing is that these people are primarily teenagers who really don't know how to engage in social change in a productive way. In fact, I'm an adult, and I don't know how to engage in social change in a productive way. I'm smart enough to know that participating in a DDOS attack is counterproductive, but I'm also smart enough to know that sending Amazon and Paypal an email telling them I disagree with their decision making is also pointless. Do you have any productive suggestions for human individuals wishing to exert pressure on the decision making processes of large corporations? Also, do you believe the attitude "the law is the law" is correct for individuals living in countries with highly repressive governments? I have a lot of empathy for these misguided youngsters, and I hope someone figures out more ethical and effective ways for people who want to contest corporate ethics to do so.

You're defending the wrong kind of people. I understand the empathy for misguided youth, but these kids (and adults) knew that what they were doing was illegal. They were proud to engage in these acts because it was "cool" for them and their little /b/ buddies. They aren't the repressed political activists you're making them out to be. Besides, look at where they're from. They're not citizens of some third world nation with an oppressive regime in power. The laws they broke aren't unjust by any stretch of the imagination. They simply hopped onto a bandwagon with a bunch of other script kiddies and got popped for it. Don't light a candle for them.

Besides, citation needed on the claim that they were just confused and wanted to enact social change but just didn't know how. That's not typical of your average Anonymous devotee.

Yes, let the trolls and fake accounts people are creating solely for this thread have their way with this comment. I can spare it.

And people, stop complaining about my "the law is the law" remark as though it must be some unwaivering principle of mine even in the face of unjust laws (of which none are present in this situation).

> Yes, let the trolls and fake accounts people are creating solely for this thread have their way with this comment. I can spare it.

You're losing it. You need a non-trivial amount of upvotes to downvote a comment. You're not being downvoted by fake accounts.

You also haven't provided any productive suggestions for human individuals wishing to exert pressure on the decision making processes of large corporations. Should we take this as a statement that you don't believe those exist, or that you don't believe those should exist?

You're right about the down votes. That's my bad. I know of no productive means by most people's definition of productive. I always say the same thing, and that's to write your senators or the equivilant in your government. What more can be done? Certainly not attacking and defacing private property based on what you read on the Web. People who defend these acts or play the devil's advocate are only fueling the attitude that is getting these people in trouble.

> What more can be done?

That's the whole crux of this. If all of your legal recourses for changing the law don't work, sometimes, you have to move to illegal ones. morality != legality. This obviously requires a lot of thought, a preparation to deal with the consequences, and a serious commitment. But sometimes, it's worth it.

The issue at hand is people damaging private organizations that chose to not do business with another private organization. Not fixing messed up or unjust laws. Not fighting a faceless government. Simply attacking a business they don't like for not doing business with an organization they do like. That's what's being defended here by the people arguing against my points.

It doesn't matter if they're private organizations or governments. It's about the power relationship. I won't get into 'corporate america blah blah blah,' but I'm sure that you can see that in this role, MasterCard plays the same role the government does. There's a certain level of responsibility that comes into play when you're a gigantic credit card company that's different then when you're a mom-and-pop grocery store.

What amazes me more is that the tool they are using isn't all that anonymous - the article references a paper describing this (here: http://www.simpleweb.org/reports/loic-report.pdf).

Surely any 'hacker' worth their salt wouldn't use their home PC for this kind of rubbish.

>the law is the law

Tell this to MLK Jr.

Note: I am not comparing these teenagers to MLK Jr., I am just pointing out that this is a terrible principle.

Political protest is always slightly dangerous. And I feel the sit-in analogy is pretty apt.

But seriously, "the law is the law" isn't a great argument. Sometimes laws are bad. They need to be changed. Yeah, you can expect to serve some jailtime for doing civil disobedience, but that doesn't mean that they're stupid, what they're doing is stupid, or anything else.

You can still hold that opinion for other reasons, of course.

>law is the law.

Okay, square.

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