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Why is it perfectly acceptable to inconvenience people from their studies? Man, this kind of attitude makes me want to encourage harsher penalties on people who pull this bullshit. You do your movement no favours when you inconvenience the same people you want on your side.

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I'm not a member of any movement, Anonymous or otherwise. The point I was trying to raise: civil disobedience is disruptive by nature and will inconvenience and annoy - but it is far from immoral. Why should a DDoS be considered any differently? The methods of physical and virtual protest are different but their ends are the same.

But methods matter, unless you want to argue that the ends justify the means. Which would be a bit of a stretch in this case, by the way, since the most likely ends range somewhere between nothing and causing a bunch of problems for people who have had nothing to do with this whole story.

You must not live in the US, as we have freedom of assembly here

There seems to be a common misunderstanding of what protest rights you have in the US. The first amendment does not give you the right to protest anything, at any point, in any manner that you want. In fact, the government has a duty to protect my rights if your protest in infringing on them. The Occupy movement is another group that completely failed to understand that fact. You are legally allowed to protest, but preventing someone from going to work or class is a quick way to get your protest shutdown. I don't think it is unreasonable to extend that same logic to DDoS attacks.

Civil disobedience is illegal by definition. DDoS attacks are illegal. Marching down the middle of the street is illegal. But are these acts immoral?

If they seriously infringe on the rights of other individuals, then yes I think they are immoral. Putting your own political motivations (no matter how righteous) above the rights of others is a selfish act.

The easy answer if you want to march down the street is you tell city hall and get a parade permit. Did anybody tell MIT and apply for a packet storm permit?

Marching down the middle of the street is not illegal. Indeed, many fundamental cases of constitutional law note that the street is a "per se" public forum, i.e., the most public a forum can be, and is thus subject to the highest protections for speech.

Marching down a street and merely disrupting traffic is thus quite legal, however, if your marching causes dangerous disruptions to traffic (i.e., accidents), then it is not.

Just don't expect sympathy from anyone you've inconvenienced when that right is infringed upon.

You can't assemble if it infringes on any one elses right to get to a public destination.

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You must not have read the part about Aaron not actually being an MIT student at all - hence the trespass charges.

The trespassing charges were dropped. He was indicted for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.

None of which makes my point untrue. That he was not a student there. He may not have been charged with trespass, but MIT was not his alma mater, and thus owed him nothing in that regard.

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