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Comment by lukeschlather | Hacker News Reader

You might say that being open and notorious is required for effective civil disobedience, but this is clearly still civil disobedience. (And consequently criminal.)

Personally, I find nonviolent resistance perfectly defensible for a just cause. Why do you suggest it's indefensible?

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I don't buy your argument at all. For one thing, you can apply it to almost any instance of mob action against some other party. Is that really what you'd like to see?

I also don't buy your argument that it's nonviolent. By DDoSing a site, your interfering in the legal activity of the target and some outside party. Apply that same principle to the real world and you suggest that it's perfectly reasonable for someone to trespass into a commercial establishment, obstruct the interactions of patrons with staff, and otherwise use resources that are set aside for paying customers.

Since I depend on the availability of these sites, I'm not so enamored with folks who interrupt MY work just for laughs. I'm doubly irritated with people who call it "justified". That smacks of one-sided righteousness and anarchy.

If you believe in your cause, show your face. Make your case.

Troll.

everything you've posted here also applies to sit ins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in

the question of whether these guys should have been arrested is distinct from whether they're justified, which is distinct from whether ddos could ever be considered civil disobedience.

I don't think that analogy is fair. It's a denial of service. It's similar to going into an Apple Store or any other store, and blocking customer checkout registers, preventing customers from paying and receiving their goods. But instead of affecting 30 customers for that one store, you're affecting millions of customers.

but that's exactly what the greensboro lunch counter sit-ins were (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins). they went into woolworth's (the apple store of the day) and blocked service all day. I'm not equating the two by any means, but it does seem weird to say that civil disobedience is ok only if it causes just a small localized amount of inconvenience.

"civil disobedience is ok only if it causes just a small localized amount of inconvenience"

I never stated that. Personally, I believe it's far more efficient and more ethical to use a court system and support your representatives than disrupt a business illegally. We have courts and representatives for grievances.

Your youth is showing. There's a reason why sit-ins were used in America during the last century to enact change and the courts were part of that problem.

This.

Sit-ins were a LAST resort, not the first. There was a long, long history of unequal treatment and oppression by the state before non-violent resistance was used. More importantly, there was a consistent and protracted political movement that was also underway during the period in question. There was a dialog happening and resistance was used to "encourage" one party to stay in that dialog. Even then, it took almost the entire weight of the federal government to ensure the execution of the will of the political majority long AFTER the decision had been made.

Honestly, I think that making comparisons to the civil-rights movement in the US is just beyond the pale.

Anonymous is a mob; Pure and simple. It's an expression of a small, small minority of people that want to do damage and seek to cloak their actions in civic high-mindedness. I don't believe it for a second. The absolute lack of ANYONE willing to speak for them just proves my point. They embrace mayhem without accountability. Anarchy.

Who wants to live in that world? Not I.

You have a compelling argument.

The people who participate in sit-ins are IDENTIFIABLE. It's often the whole point that you show your face and identify yourself as an aggrieved party.

Furthermore, lots of those folks get arrested. It's exactly the point that you force the state to take you into custody and deal with you as a means of overwhelming them with otherwise law-abiding citizens.

SO...I don't agree with your assertion that it's the same thing. It's a manifestly different thing.

Would you still be against a group of people (non-violently) disrupting a business if that business illegally denied you service because of your race? Wouldn't you want the community to stand up for your rights?

I'm not defending the actions of the LOIC users, I don't think they are doing quite the same thing but it's close. If the balance of power is off then it is up to the community to try and put it back in place, as another commenter has posted one particularly successful method in the past has been the sit-in. Just as it's not ok for any mob to do whatever they want to a business, it's not ok for any company to do whatever they want to a community.

You're comparing apples and oranges, and using straw man attacks. PayPal did not ban them on the basis of their race. PayPal was perfectly within the law to do what they did.

Right. Paypal banned them because a 3rd party decided to use their privileged position working for the government to copy a bunch of classified files, and send them to Wikileaks.

Segregation was completely legal in many public and private sites. Those uppity kids breaking the law needed to get jail time for it.

The parent comment is using non-violence to mean the absence of physical violence which seem impossible to argue against. In the most common definitions of violence, DDoSing a site would be as violent as a large protest blocking traffic in the area.

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