Civil disobedience usually requires that you perform your action openly and notoriously. Running a program in your home and using an alias hardly qualifies.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I never bought that civil disobediences needs to be committed in the open. Rather, I think that is just one of many forms it can take.
Example of it not being committed in the open, to no negated effect (and arguably greater effect): People anonymously posting "illegal keys" and cryptosystems for export on the internet for others to obtain. The often anonymous nature of their actions emphasizes how the current laws are absurd for being unenforceable when people with the right knowledge choose for them to be unenforceable.
Defending? No. Stating an observation that tyrannical institutions can use Anonymous as a pretense to arrest anyone with a computer. At least in the USA there is a shred of evidentiary requirement, but much of the world is not so lucky.
I suppose it's arguable that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of "Civil Disobedience". Perhaps it's more along the lines of "vandalism". Philosophically speaking, that is.
every act of civil disobedience can be construed as a more petty crime, if you squint. i believe gandi was guilty of loitering but that's not the salient part of his action, philosophically speaking.
Actually civil disobedience is the act of committing a crime for moral, ethical, or conflicting legal reason. And it is salient. The motivation is in part "to commit this crime I seek to prevent or change a worse crime". To say that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of civil disobedience is to say that they are motivated by a cause.
Personally, I have no idea what motivates Anonymous or if they feel morally obligated to act. It's just as likely that they believe they can commit a crime without penalty. The actions of the FBI are, in part, to deter future individuals from participating in Anonymous coordinated attacks by reminding people that they are not that anonymous and there are consequences to one's actions.
Gandhi, King and other activists all were willing to suffer the consequences of their actions. They were motivated by a principle higher than blind obedience after all.
If I break your window, that's vandalism. If I burn down your home, that's arson.
DDoS attacks I've seen have completely shut down some major sites and had some pretty significant second-order effects. There are real dollars and real problems created for real life individuals who depend on the availability of these systems.
You can justify it all you like but civic action doesn't justify what these people do. It's mob mentality at work and it resembles a riot more than anything else. Innocent people get hurt in riots and no self respecting individual should be involved in one. Virtual or otherwise.
You're trolling, correct? If PayPal shuts down for an hour, it loses a lot of money (transaction costs, administrative costs, paying idle employees, etc.). Not just them, but millions of their customers who rely on PayPal for their business lose out too.
There is no form of protest that does not affect other people and lost revenue is not damage. Your comment reads very mobbish.
You are free to disagree with the opinion of the DDoSers that PayPal punished Wikileaks because of close ties with a vindictive government and therefore deserved a tangible reaction, but you can't go arguing that people should only disagree with you to the extent that you are able to ignore them.
Seriously, you're defending DDoS attacks?