Re: NETSTRIKE 214.T contro la pena di morte - against death penalty

[lsi <lsi@lsi.clara.net>]

[: hacktivism :]

Folks,

No, I'm not objecting to the DDOS because it breaks the computer.
  Or because I sympathise with the website operator, organisation
or moral values of the operator.

I detest their views, but I am prepared for their right to express
them.

OK, so you only gagged them for an hour - it was just a LITTLE
rape.  No serious penetration - just some handcuffs and a little play.

The victim does not know this.

But more than that - if you resort to automated tools that do very
little (loadbalancing???) except fill the logfile (which can be fixed
with a single line of PERL) ... and PERHAPS prevent a few
taxpayers from using the services they have paid for ..... and
probably line the pockets of their IT contractors a little more...

...then you have done nothing to improve your argument.  You're
simply saying it over and over, to a machine that doesn't care.  And
you've wasted everybody's time and money, including your own,
your colleagues, and that of innocent bystanders.

This is not intelligent.

Yes it's true that my page's 4 years worth of onlineness has not
stopped the executions.  But this does not mean that it's not
working.  It's my hope that with time, momentum will grow.

I don't support the newspaper analogy.  Yes there is plenty of
"news" to skim past.  But the authors of those stories you're
skimming past are NOT prevented from speaking, AT ALL, which
which is what a DDOS attack does.  As a reader, you can
CHOOSE as to whether you read the article.  An internet user
attempting to access a DDOS'd site has no such choice.

It's purely and simply an attack on freedom of speech.

A "line" between this kind of hacktivism and Plain Old Bullying has
been drawn by some.  I can't see it.  Love does not use force...
ever.  It is asked does this mean that the end does not justify the
means.  The end is noble, the means ugly... there is never
justification for the use of force.

Nor do I draw a distinction between bot and script.  In the sense
used, the word 'script' is simply a euphemism.  A spade is a
spade.  And that is a DDOS tool.  Nor do I buy the "selective
attack" philosophy.  The word I get caught on is 'attack'.  Rifle or
shotgun really doesn't matter.

No, I'm not going to argue that one person clicking the same link
multiple times is less/more effective.  I'm arguing that the whole
concept of flooding a box is lame.

Put it this way.  I can't stand the Bushes, but MORE annoying
than THEM is not being able to speak.  I am happy to let them
speak as long as I am allowed to speak too.

This is surely the ultimate conclusion of DDOS wars.

What a strange game.  The only winning move is not to play.

> Worried about a DDOS war?  Me too!  I hope we win.

I have just answered this.  You won't - neither will your attacker.
It's a counter-productive waste of time.

> by
> you explaining it to us morons we will somehow > disavow this specific way
> of protest?

Yes.  I am doing the same thing with the morons in Parliament re:
death penalty.  Imagine if I started using weapons - I'd have BOTH
sides DDOSing me.

Yet to be discussed is the packet-monkey-see, packet-monkey-do
effect.  That is, if a young and impressionable hacktivist sees older
and supposedly wiser hacktivists doing DDOS, perhaps that young
hacktivist will devote more bandwidth to downloading the latest
version of Trinity, than they would writing the latest version of SSH,
or getting the bugs out of freenet.  What would you rather they do?

Finally, nobody has yet managed to state their strategy for getting
OUT of a DDOS attack.  That is, nobody has said what they'd do if
they piss enough people off and they start getting DDOS'd.
Perhaps this is denial, as in, not wanting to face reality?  I mean,
we can all have our own sites, but when they start getting
trashed... what are you gonna do????  Call the cops??? haha...

Face it.  If you don't want to get hurt, don't hurt anybody.

Do as you would be done by.

It's life's simplest rule.

When seeking new paths, ask, does it create, or does it destroy?

Joshua

"If you want to keep a man down in a ditch you must stay there
with him." -- Goethe
"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." -- Indira Gandhi
"Oh, it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannrous to
use it like a giant." -- William Shakespeare
"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they
are more deadly in the long run." -- Mark Twain

------------------------------
. ^               Stuart Udall
.~X\     stuart@cyberdelix.net
.~ \    http://cyberdelix.net/

..revolution through evolution


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