You are talking about people having their machines infected and taken control of, to then participate in the DDoS, I assume?
That WOULD be hacking. Not of the DDoS target - but of the machines used. That's a different story though.
As for "Netflix dies if amazon is attacked" - well, this is true with physical blockades too. If you block access to one business, many nearby business will also be affected. Especially in things like malls.
While this analogy dies hold some water it fails on one simple point. Get arrested for a sit-in and you will be fined a hundred bucks and be sent on your way. Get arrested for a DDoS and you better enjoy your next five years in prison, as well as a ban from using cell phones for another ten years.
The punishment is way, way, way out of proportion.
I always said I like what they are trying to do, but the way they do it is like shooting themselves in the foot. Like you I never supported any of their methods.
...but they appear to have a bloody good point, and that's annoying. DDoS is a non-intrusive "attack". It doesn't involve hacking, stealing passwords, using worms, backdoors, anything.
The occupy analogy actually HOLDS. It's a non-violent, non-intrusive, and non-destructive denial of service. It's a hell of a lot more benign than pro-lifers physically pushing and insulting people outside abortion clinics.
I have to ask myself: why is DDoS worse, than 100 people locking arms to keep people out of a business while singing and chanting? The inescapable conclusion is that it is not. It just happens to be branded as illegal. It's different from a physical protest, and different scares old people - but it's not really any better or worse, and certainly no more dangerous. Quite the opposite in fact. Far less danger is posed by a DDoS than an actual physical demonstration that always runs the risk of derailing into violence.
Can't we make it the Bureau of Bureaucracy instead? "Bob" just sounds so much friendlier, and it's all about soothing the general public and making them feel safe after all...
It's pretty interesting really... I just saw the film "Breaking the Taboo", which deals with the war on drugs. Feels much the same as the war on terror really, or the war on copyright infringement. They all have a few similarities: they all work towards the creation of police states, cost billions, hurt a lot of people - and in the end seem to have no measurable positive effect what-so-ever.
It's taken 40 years to even begin to question the effectiveness of the war on drugs. I wonder if the politicians will learn from this, and rethink the approach they take on terrorism and copyright infringement. I really hope we won't be stuck with these issues for 40 years as well.
Waging war on your own population, and treating everyone as a criminal until proven innocent, is never a functional solution.
Option 1: Telling them
1) Send the DMCA takedown notice to remove illegal content.
2) Megaupload complies.
3 There's no case.
Option 2: Not telling them
1) Flat out lie to Megaupload: Ask them to assist in a criminal investigation by NOT removing illegal content.
2) Flat out lie to the courts: Get a warrant on the accusation of hosting the illegal content you asked them NOT to delete.
3) ...
4) Profit!
There's words for option 2. "Legal" is not among them.
There was an option 3: investigate Megaupload without breaking the law, fabricating evidence and lying to the courts. That's the issue.
The key thing to remember here is that going after solitary stealthy individuals is HARD, and going after the poor bastards who run very visible companies or websites is EASY.
Neither government nor big business wants to chase after hundreds of millions of actual criminals (and I use the word in the loosest sense), when they can simply go after the 100 big service providers.
The law may in most countries still hold the individual responsible, and the service provider innocent, but that's merely semantics... Megaupload, Piratebay, SurfTheChannel -pick a country and it's the same all over- screw the law; go after the providers for "conspiracy!"
Mark my words, it's just a matter of time before the letter of the law says a provider is directly responsible for all of the actions of the users, and even search engines will be criminally responsible for automatically finding and indexing illegal content. It's not going to help anyone, or stop "piracy", but it is going to happen none the less.
They really do have their heads that far up their bums. It's inevitable.
While I can't speak for the rest of Europe (and note that if you thought US states had big differences in law - you don't even want to know how different the laws are in the relatively recently formed EU) but in Sweden, lending is certainly not illegal. It's not illegal to lend and borrow films, books, movies, paintings, cars, etc.
It's just not.
Not that there aren't some trying to change all this, but at least they haven't succeeded yet.
Are you seriously comparing a couple of computer admins on PCs, a bit of bandwidth and a few servers with the cost of running the presses of the new york post?
Your talking about the power bill? Compared to what, the power requirements of a massive industrial printing complex?
An office compared to a factory?
The internet connection, compared to 250 trucks running shuttle traffic all night?
The cost of, hell, let's assume they are incompetent and need 50 computer techs, and we are comparing their wages with 250 teamsters in trucks, the printing crew, the paperboys and the mechanics?
Comparing The price of software licenses and PC hardware to buying and maintaining 100-ton printing presses?
So a paper has to be printed, paper and has to be bought, machines must be maintained, rents have to be paid, papers have to be shipped, paperboys must be paid... and somehow I can get a paper in my mailbox for what? A dollar a day? How much of that money has ever been "profit"? I always suspected it was "little to none", and that the profit actually came from the advertising - and as such the change to digital shouldn't be a problem: you get 1 dollar less for the paper, you pay one dollar less to print and distribute it.
You know, after looking at the chart in Steve Buttry's article, it sort of reinforces this creeping suspicion that I've had for a while:
Newspapers aren't in decline due to freeloading readers, but rather the newspapers' complete and total failure to collect payment from the advertisers. Somewhere along the line, the corporations seem to have said "online advertising is worth less than print advertising" and the papers just went slumped down and said "ok..."
As a result, it's now the readers who are expected to pick up the slack, to pay the full price, despite the fact that the papers no longer have printing and distribution costs. (Sounds like pay-per-view, and buying games as digital downloads, doesn't it?)
Does this sound about right, or am I just being overly cynical?
Think a few years of "I'd link the article, but it's illegal." comments on blogs, websites and search engines -as well as a drop in traffic- will change their mind?
I remember reading somewhere on techdirt that "you can patent a plow, but not the concept of plowing". Call me crazy, but isn't that EXACTLY what's going on here? They aren't patenting knives, protective gloves, automated butch-o-matics... They are patenting the concept of cutting a piece of meat. How the hell did that get through the patent office? What are they smoking over there, and can I please have some?
"That is, young people in these countries were not prepared to give up without a fight wide-ranging access to the kind of culture that had been denied to their parents' generation because of Soviet censorship, and to which they now had access despite their continuing economic disadvantages. And so they took to the streets."
That says it all really. The population in the former soviet block remembers, and know first hand what it's like to not have all the rights we take for granted, and they are willing to fight to defend them.
We on the other hand... "the west", we have grown lazy and silent, become too trusting of our governments and our industries and just flat out assume they have our best interests at heart, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We could all use a healthy dose of dictatorship to rekindle our fire for protecting our rights.
While the idea of using case insensitive passwords may be questionable (is questionable in my opinion, as it's at least up to the users if they wish to use upper case letters or not), there's far worse things going on around the net.
There are for example some major places, that shall remain nameless, that feel 6-letter passwords are just fine and dandy, as long as they contain at least one upper case letter and one number - but at the same time they decide to reject 20+ long lower case password because it's apparently "insecure" in comparison, which of course is a load of dingo's kidneys.
The obsession with special characters in passwords stems from the old days when passwords were 8 letters or shorter. In todays day and age you are much better of with "greenthumbtreehuggerpetflies" than "1eE4ad", not to mention that your strange little word-riddles are a lot easier to actually fucking remember... Of course, you have to use "Gr33nthumbtreehuggerperflies" instead because you have to use numbers and caps, and that makes it slow to type and much more annoying to remember, even when you do the obvious leetspeak letter replacements.
Will it be too late for them? Honestly, who cares? They can all crash and burn as far as I'm concerned; we used to call that a free market.
What concerns me is, will it be too late for us? Can we undo the damage done to the society? Can we get our rights back? Can we get our privacy back? Can we get due process back?
What ever happened to "common sense" and "critical thinking"? Are people actually so fucking stupid as to look at a random twitter account and just assume it's true?
How about we don't make incorrect tweets illegal, but instead teach critical thinking and common sense in schools? I mean... seriously?
On the post: Anonymous Launches White House Petition Saying DDoS Should Be Recognized As A Valid Form Of Protest
Re: Re: Re:
That WOULD be hacking. Not of the DDoS target - but of the machines used. That's a different story though.
As for "Netflix dies if amazon is attacked" - well, this is true with physical blockades too. If you block access to one business, many nearby business will also be affected. Especially in things like malls.
On the post: Nokia Running A Man In The Middle Attack To Decrypt All Your Encrypted Traffic, But Promises Not To Peek
hack:
3 b. To gain access to (a computer file or network) illegally or without authorization
Unless Nokia are openly and actively informing ALL of their customers of what they are doing...
On the post: Anonymous Launches White House Petition Saying DDoS Should Be Recognized As A Valid Form Of Protest
Re:
The punishment is way, way, way out of proportion.
On the post: Anonymous Launches White House Petition Saying DDoS Should Be Recognized As A Valid Form Of Protest
Re:
...but they appear to have a bloody good point, and that's annoying. DDoS is a non-intrusive "attack". It doesn't involve hacking, stealing passwords, using worms, backdoors, anything.
The occupy analogy actually HOLDS. It's a non-violent, non-intrusive, and non-destructive denial of service. It's a hell of a lot more benign than pro-lifers physically pushing and insulting people outside abortion clinics.
I have to ask myself: why is DDoS worse, than 100 people locking arms to keep people out of a business while singing and chanting? The inescapable conclusion is that it is not. It just happens to be branded as illegal. It's different from a physical protest, and different scares old people - but it's not really any better or worse, and certainly no more dangerous. Quite the opposite in fact. Far less danger is posed by a DDoS than an actual physical demonstration that always runs the risk of derailing into violence.
On the post: Department of Homeland Security Unable To Define 'Homeland Security'
Re:
On the post: Department of Homeland Security Unable To Define 'Homeland Security'
Re:
On the post: Department of Homeland Security Unable To Define 'Homeland Security'
It's taken 40 years to even begin to question the effectiveness of the war on drugs. I wonder if the politicians will learn from this, and rethink the approach they take on terrorism and copyright infringement. I really hope we won't be stuck with these issues for 40 years as well.
Waging war on your own population, and treating everyone as a criminal until proven innocent, is never a functional solution.
On the post: Megaupload Tells Court That DOJ Deliberately Misled Court In Getting Warrant
Re:
Option 1: Telling them
1) Send the DMCA takedown notice to remove illegal content.
2) Megaupload complies.
3 There's no case.
Option 2: Not telling them
1) Flat out lie to Megaupload: Ask them to assist in a criminal investigation by NOT removing illegal content.
2) Flat out lie to the courts: Get a warrant on the accusation of hosting the illegal content you asked them NOT to delete.
3) ...
4) Profit!
There's words for option 2. "Legal" is not among them.
There was an option 3: investigate Megaupload without breaking the law, fabricating evidence and lying to the courts. That's the issue.
On the post: Megaupload Tells Court That DOJ Deliberately Misled Court In Getting Warrant
Re: But it's the law
Neither government nor big business wants to chase after hundreds of millions of actual criminals (and I use the word in the loosest sense), when they can simply go after the 100 big service providers.
The law may in most countries still hold the individual responsible, and the service provider innocent, but that's merely semantics... Megaupload, Piratebay, SurfTheChannel -pick a country and it's the same all over- screw the law; go after the providers for "conspiracy!"
Mark my words, it's just a matter of time before the letter of the law says a provider is directly responsible for all of the actions of the users, and even search engines will be criminally responsible for automatically finding and indexing illegal content. It's not going to help anyone, or stop "piracy", but it is going to happen none the less.
They really do have their heads that far up their bums. It's inevitable.
On the post: Copyfraud: Copyright Claims On CDs Say It's Infringement To Loan Your CD To A Friend
It's just not.
Not that there aren't some trying to change all this, but at least they haven't succeeded yet.
On the post: NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working
Re: Re:
Your talking about the power bill? Compared to what, the power requirements of a massive industrial printing complex?
An office compared to a factory?
The internet connection, compared to 250 trucks running shuttle traffic all night?
The cost of, hell, let's assume they are incompetent and need 50 computer techs, and we are comparing their wages with 250 teamsters in trucks, the printing crew, the paperboys and the mechanics?
Comparing The price of software licenses and PC hardware to buying and maintaining 100-ton printing presses?
What have you been smoking?
...can I have some?
On the post: NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working
You know, after looking at the chart in Steve Buttry's article, it sort of reinforces this creeping suspicion that I've had for a while:
Newspapers aren't in decline due to freeloading readers, but rather the newspapers' complete and total failure to collect payment from the advertisers. Somewhere along the line, the corporations seem to have said "online advertising is worth less than print advertising" and the papers just went slumped down and said "ok..."
As a result, it's now the readers who are expected to pick up the slack, to pay the full price, despite the fact that the papers no longer have printing and distribution costs. (Sounds like pay-per-view, and buying games as digital downloads, doesn't it?)
Does this sound about right, or am I just being overly cynical?
On the post: Google Asks Germans To Protest 'Pay To Link' Proposal As It Comes Close To Becoming Law
Somehow I doubt it.
On the post: So Long And Thanks For All The Turkey Patents
On the post: Why Was It Poland That Led The European Revolt Against ACTA?
That says it all really. The population in the former soviet block remembers, and know first hand what it's like to not have all the rights we take for granted, and they are willing to fight to defend them.
We on the other hand... "the west", we have grown lazy and silent, become too trusting of our governments and our industries and just flat out assume they have our best interests at heart, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We could all use a healthy dose of dictatorship to rekindle our fire for protecting our rights.
On the post: Blizzard Sued For Trying To Make Accounts More Secure
There are for example some major places, that shall remain nameless, that feel 6-letter passwords are just fine and dandy, as long as they contain at least one upper case letter and one number - but at the same time they decide to reject 20+ long lower case password because it's apparently "insecure" in comparison, which of course is a load of dingo's kidneys.
The obsession with special characters in passwords stems from the old days when passwords were 8 letters or shorter. In todays day and age you are much better of with "greenthumbtreehuggerpetflies" than "1eE4ad", not to mention that your strange little word-riddles are a lot easier to actually fucking remember... Of course, you have to use "Gr33nthumbtreehuggerperflies" instead because you have to use numbers and caps, and that makes it slow to type and much more annoying to remember, even when you do the obvious leetspeak letter replacements.
On the post: Draconian Downloading Law In Japan Goes Into Effect... Music Sales Drop
Re:
What concerns me is, will it be too late for us? Can we undo the damage done to the society? Can we get our rights back? Can we get our privacy back? Can we get due process back?
On the post: Fake Sandy Tweets Spark Widespread Debate About The Limits Of Free Speech
How about we don't make incorrect tweets illegal, but instead teach critical thinking and common sense in schools? I mean... seriously?
On the post: Supreme Court Puzzles: How There Can Be Oversight Concerning Warrantless Wiretapping If No One Can Sue?
On the post: How A Drone Might Save Your Life
Re: Re: Plenty of application
Leave it to AT&T and Sprint to try to shut the idea of emergency communications down.
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