I don't see a 1st amendment issue here personally. Not remotely. If I do not agree with how a store is doing business ethically, may I walk up to the front door, padlock it, and close it down for as long as I like or until the owner manages to find a pair of steel-cutters to break it off? Do I have the right to padlock the doors of companies that merely do business with said store? Of course not, yet this is precisely what this DOS was doing, except lets not forget that even the weapon itself is comprised of computing power often stolen from other people without their consent. Whatever point was being made could have been expressed with valid 1st amendment protection. Would it have been as effective? Depends on many things like the strength of the speaker's network, their communication skill, how effectively they crafted their message and supporting arguments, how well they were able to get their audience to engage, etc. But the bottom line is that they knew that by using the methods they did they'd get the easy publicity and exposure they wanted. Obviously illegal, obviously not constitutionally protected, and obviously effective, so they were fine with it. That was the calculation as I see it. Nothing wrong with that, some of the best civil disobedience leverages breaking the law in order to amplify your point, but please, -let's not pretend that this is protected speech.
I'm not sure I see it to be so clear cut. I agree with Omidyar on this point: As social structures and spaces move online, protest should be able to meaningfully exist in these new spaces. If not, we risk extracting tools that are critical to a free society. I am not saying that DoS with a botnet ought to be legal, but the degree of its illegality is a very important matter. Our internet is largely defined by private institutions with incredible power, power that often exceeds that of states. The DoS might seem asymmetric, but so is the effect of PayPal deciding not to transact Wikileak donations.As a society, our notions of free speech and protest must evolve since much of the public sphere is now online.
I agree with this 100%, I just do not see deciding to close a company for business along with that companies customers as protected speech, nor do I think the constitution should evolve to protect this. Of course, yes. I'm not saying throw the book at them. A lot of digital crimes have unbalanced, draconian punishments as it is. That is as wrongheaded as arguing that shutting a business down online is protected under the first amendment as long as you're doing it to make a point. Eh, I don't see the correlation there. Paypal choosing its customers in the manner it did is not close to illegal. Them getting DoSed was. And that's fine, btw. It was an illegal, asymmetrically powerful response to a legal and powerful asymmetrical action, hence civil disobedience. I'm all about it. My only point is that it's silly to warp the meaning of what constitutionally protected speech is in order to make your civil disobedience not disobedient anymore. I'm just not sure how you get from financially harming people that had nothing to do with Paypal's decision to saying that not only is that not illegal, but that it is constitutionally protected. A bridge too far for me. Edit: As an aside, if the DoS affected non-critical portions of PP's online presence, the issue would instantly become a lot more murky for me. It would be a lot more like speech countering speech than speech causing tangible harm to others not related to the target. Where Omidyar suggests "evolution" in the online sphere, I could see it taking shape more quickly here or in the laws surrounding the punishment of these attacks (specifically making them less draconian and the punishment more evenly distributed as he suggested). I still see the evolution making more sense as a reshaping of punitive measures...at least at first.As social structures and spaces move online, protest should be able to meaningfully exist in these new spaces.
but the degree of its illegality is a very important matter.
The DoS might seem asymmetric, but so is the effect of PayPal deciding not to transact Wikileak donations.
Off topic: theadvancedapes, Have you given any thought to the legal repercussions of a "Global Brain" and what type of new legal challenges it will bring?In contrast, our new media organization will have the First Amendment at its core, and will make very different decisions if faced with government pressure not to publish or retaliation after the fact.
-This is encouraging to hear. The key will be to hold on to these declared moral intents even as NewCo grows. "At it's core" is promising though.A denial of service attack is damaging and costly. Many of PayPal's customers rely on PayPal for their livelihood. An interruption in service can have serious consequences: those customers may lose income that may cause them to become late on rent payments, medical expenses, etc. These are serious impacts that must not be ignored. An attack on PayPal's servers hurts these vulnerable people far more than it hurts a multinational company.
-This is something that I don't think most people realize. PayPal at a corporate level was likely not hurt much by this protest. Financially it didn't do much to them, however I agree with Omidyar that the people using PayPal for their businesses were likely hurt. If the intent of the protesters was to hurt PayPal, then they failed. If it was to garner publicity and bring an injustice to light, then I think they succeeded.I believe justice requires leniency. In my view, they should be facing misdemeanor charges and the possibility of a fine, rather than felony charges and jail time.
This is pretty lenient. As our society progressively moves more and more online, having individuals assume the power of 6000 people becomes a pretty scary thing. I'm not sure a misdemeanor is much of a deterrent. That said, I'm not sure that prison is either. It's amazing how much our legal system is going to have to change because of the Internet. We are literally at the beginning of all of this still.
That is starting to look like a major aspect of my current research position and potentially a major direction of my PhD. At the moment the Global Brain Institute's main priority is coming up with "most likely GB scenarios" and all involve planning for a post-government and post-corporate planet of distributed, non-hierarchical intelligence. Bringing this world into existence will require reducing social and physical friction and increasing social and physical stigmergy to the highest degrees possible (as described by Francis Heylighen in "Accelerating Socio-technological evolution" a must-read IMO).Have you given any thought to the legal repercussions of a "Global Brain" and what type of new legal challenges it will bring?
If anyone else was looking for a link without missing pages: http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs.CY/0703004.pdf
Of course I am concerned. No one has figured out what rules and protections are going to apply to journalism and journalists in this new era. What even constitutes a journalist today? Can I set up a blogger account and have the same protections afforded to me as a investigative journalist from NYTimes? As ecib pointed out, rules are different in the digital world. People online are generally accepting of the DDOS attacks that happen occasionally as long as it is in the name of free speech or have a good tagline. Does that make it right? Of course not. But there certainly is a difference between padlocking the door and a DDOS. They should be treated as unique, the charges should be unique, the evidence should be handled uniquely, and the punishment should be unique. Unfortunately, the government is so far behind in even remotely understanding all this new fangled technology gibberish and the technologies are evolving so fast that I have zero hope they will ever catch up and be fair and productive. There was recently an article talking about how people should stop turning to technology to rebel against politics and instead get involved in politics to ensure changes. Unfortunately, political change is harder than learning how to hack in mommy's basement or installing the ddos cannon provided to you by Anon. All we can do for now is talk and hope that it'll work itself out. That is a pretty awful place to stand when you have people being arrested and tried unfairly and people getting emotionally and physically hurt from online interactions. But, having people that lack the knowledge try regulate the internet is even more terrifying. So I don't know. Am I concerned? Absolutely. Do I have any idea what can or should be done? Nope.Are you concerned about the freedom of expression of journalists or individuals in the digital era?