http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110930/02323316145/lawyer-accused-ddos-is-legal-form-protest.shtml

I can see the argument for this. If you were to fill a business physically and deny them access to customers and vice versa, what's the difference from denying access to a website or service? Of course there's a clear difference when you're pilfering data and releasing it into the wild.

9/30/2011 11:59:51 PM

IIRC, sit-ins, when they actually cause an obstruction that impedes the normal function of wherever they're camping out, are against the law, even if they're otherwise peaceful. I would think a DDoS attack would follow the same chain of logic.

Of course, as seems to be common with virtual crimes versus their real life counterparts, you'll get in a whole lot more trouble for the computer crime. For example, steal a CD and you'll probably get community service. Illegally download a CD and you'll pay thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars based on current civil court precedents.

10/1/2011 12:07:19 AM

a customer (or non-customer) being able to disrupt legitimate business traffic should never be legal - there's not a close comparison to picketing outside on the internet unless you count perhaps posting on a forum

10/1/2011 1:10:09 AM

Quote :

"Illegally download a CD and you'll pay thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars based on current civil court precedents."

I'd really like to see what precedents you're referring to, because, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever been made to pay exorbitant amount of fines when they have only downloaded something. Most, if not all of the multi-thousand dollar fines you hear about are due to P2P sites and the fact that you are uploading parts of the file thousands of times over in the time it takes you to download.

10/1/2011 1:30:18 AM

^ You're correct to a degree. AFAIK, in cases such as Sony vs. Tenenbaum or Capital Records vs. Thomas, actual distribution was never proven. So far, the courts, in decisions that fly in the face of civil procedure rules, have allowed the recording industry to assume distribution to have taken place just by virtue of them logging the defendant's IP address on a P2P network (e.g. bittorrent, guntella, etc...). It bullshit and still being litigated, but it's a real danger.

Look at http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ for an example of how depressing these lawsuits are.

I'll leave the recording industry topic alone now so as not to skew the intended direction of this thread.

10/1/2011 4:04:01 AM

physical services > web site services. You're wasting your time and not proving anything DDoS as a form of "protest".

DDoS my bank's website? ok i'll just drive there and walk in.
DDoS my news website? ok i'll just swing by and buy the paper on my way to the bank.
DDoS any *.gov website? ok.....

Sit in my bank and block me from getting in? I'll be pissed.

10/1/2011 11:45:02 AM

i can't remember the last time i walked into a bank

10/1/2011 12:42:14 PM

^ Niether can I. I usually saunter in.

10/1/2011 1:39:46 PM

I personally don't view DDoS as a peaceful protest.

How does the act of DDoS-ing something get your message out?

When you fill a business and block customers, the business owner has the right to refuse you service and have you removed by the police. When you DDoS, the business owner has no ability to "remove" you and restore his operations.

Another point is that the negative effects of a DDoS most likely aren't proportionate to the group instigating it, which in my opinion is different from a in-person peaceful protest.

10/1/2011 1:59:50 PM

Another thing to think about is that in a lot of cases it's practically impossible to limit the effects of a DDoS to just the one company you're trying to attack. When I worked for a hosting company, we would have customers get attacked all the time and it would take down networks that some of our other customers were on as well (or if the customer was on a VM with several other customers in the same piece of iron, obviously that's gonna affect other people too.)

If you want to continue the real world analogy, that would be like trying to physically deny people access to one store but setting up a roadblock into the entire shopping center that they are located in. Other companies that have nothing to do with the offending company will be negatively affected.

10/1/2011 3:44:39 PM

Theoretically yes, reality no.

10/3/2011 5:54:26 PM

Quote :

"DDoS my bank's website? ok i'll just drive there and walk in. DDoS my news website? ok i'll just swing by and buy the paper on my way to the bank. DDoS any *.gov website? ok....."

DDoS my email? go to post office?

BWHAHAHAHAHA flaws in your logic.

10/3/2011 6:37:22 PM

Let's just say that it takes a lot less than 44 cents to deliver each electronic message

10/3/2011 7:01:55 PM