[eternalban]

> If I was CEO of Cloudflare, and I and my employees were being harassed, doxxed, threatened by an online mob, I'd have done the same. Never mind taking a principled stand, it's not worth being involved in the first place.

Fair enough. But this CEO was blowing clouds in our face that they took this action because our legal system is not up to the task!

It's so sad that Mr. Prince apparently can't afford having a competent legal team to explain to him the concepts of "Rule of Law", "Due Process", "Courts", "Judges", "Juries", "Evidence", and all that other [quaint!] aspects of our (broken!) "traditional legal system".

[Karellen]

If you are walking down the street, and see one person kicking the shit out of another, dial 911 to report it, and are told that the police will be there in 5 minutes, is it vigilantism to step in and break the fight up, or try to physically restrain the attacker? Given that the victim might sustain a severe or life-threatening injury in that 5 minutes?

Would stepping in be an indictment of "rule of law", "due process", "courts", "judges", "juries", "evidence", and support a claim that our traditional legal system is "broken"?

If you perceive an imminent threat to a third party, and have reason to believe that it might take the police too long to respond (simply because they can't be everywhere, all at once, and if they turn up ASAP guns blazing then that's how you get SWATting), do you think a good citizen should just look on and conclude that said third party is just having the worst day today, and it's a shame nobody could have prevented it?

[salawat]

Was that person getting physically kicked the shit out of?

I see exchanges of meta-information, recognized by courts of law to be public, and hear nothing of actual physical violence.

You do not, however go, and put someone in a sleeper hold, or call a construction company to come pull out the chunk of sidewalk a fight is occurring on. Also, if you have someone going and publically antagonizing another group, the general approach is inform LE, and caution the one on the receiving end to keep their head down.

If all they do is make themself more of a target, no amount of legal system or police force will protect them. If they scale their being a target beyond their capability to defend themselves from those that would target them, well... Society tends to self-correct through violence, in case you hadn't noticed. Learning "where thine chicanery will not be tolerated" is kinda part of the whole surviving in civilization shtick.

Mind, I've been on the recieving end of that Good Samaritanism. I pay it forward every chance I get. If you think I didn't learn to take care of myself better though, you're barking up the wrong tree.

[timmytokyo]

I don't get it. Why does Prince require a legal team to explain to him the rule of law? Everything he has done in this matter has been within the letter of the law.

[eternalban]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32707821

"A little bit geek, wonk, and nerd. Repeat entrepreneur, recovering lawyer and former ski instructor. CEO & co-founder of CloudFlare."

And oh my God. He is "recovering lawyer".

This is what he concluded with:

"Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than free speech, in order to have a more robust conversation with frameworks that have an appeal and applicability across nearly every nation and government."

So this exactly the reasoning of those (bad? good?) cops that beat suspects in alley, or conduct search on private property without a warrant.

And this cop then turns around and says:

"Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than your civil rights"

The term for this type of action is Extrajudicial -- possibly our recovering lawyer remembers that from law school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_punishment

To repeat, Cloudflare has every right (afaik) to just say "bad client, we don't want you". This CEO however chose to frame this as some sort of civic virtuous action necessitated by alleged failings of our "traditional legal systems".

[edit]

[cluedos]

The statements made by any company representative responding to PR crisis shouldn't be taken as the unvarnished truth. The purpose is reputation management, dampening negative publicity before it overwhelms, while hopefully minimising long-term reputational damage.