Wikileaks Internet Fight- Channers Hit Back

Marquis de Carabas said:
I am not talking about the transactions.
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lol

Other than effectuating financial transactions, the websites have very little to do with transmitting information.

I guess if you think the 'Welcome to Master Card!' boilerplate that are on the websites was the 'speech' that should be protected, then I guess you could argue that 'free speech' of the credit card company was impinged, but even then this was tangential to the objective of the DDoS attack, which was to interrupt the transactions.

If someone taking part in the DDoS attack had hosted a shell of the Master Card website, where you could view all the 'free speech' on there but not do any transactions, I suppose you'd be happy then?
 
IDB87 said:
How are they being hypocritical? They are enacting a boycott (and a poor one at that). They are expressing their right to boycott a company! :D
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A boycott is refusing to avail oneself of a company's products or services, and possibly encouraging others to do the same. A DDoS attack is not a boycott.

They are being hypocritical by disrupting legitimate communication in the name of free speech.
 
Captain.Sassy said:
I guess if you think the 'Welcome to Master Card!' boilerplate that are on the websites was the 'speech' that should be protected, then I guess you could argue that 'free speech' of the credit card company was impinged, but even then this was tangential to the objective of the DDoS attack, which was to interrupt the transactions.
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As I said above, I am not concerned about the motive. The effect of a DDoS is the disruption of communication.

Throw out any other red herring you wish, but if you can't offer an argument that attempts to show how disrupting legitimate communication is not an assault on the ideals of free speech, I shan't reply to you again.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
As I said above, I am not concerned about the motive. The effect of a DDoS is the disruption of communication.
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So you would call an online purchase 'free speech'.
?

How about playing an online video game? What about a radio controlled airplane- if someone does something to jam the signal that I'm using to control my RC model Sptifire, have they attacked my free speech?

These are all transmissions of information. They are obviously not 'speech'

I shan't reply to you again.
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Oh but I love shan'ties!

Weigh hey, and up she rises,
weigh hey, and up she rises,
weigh hey, and up she rises,
earlie in the mornin'...
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
As I said above, I am not concerned about the motive. The effect of a DDoS is the disruption of communication.

Throw out any other red herring you wish, but if you can't offer an argument that attempts to show how disrupting legitimate communication is not an assault on the ideals of free speech, I shan't reply to you again.
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I lurk a lot and generally find your posts to be pleasing to me (I think it might be a little arrogant to use a more objective term to describe them, such as reasonable and intelligent) but you seem to have gone off the deep end here, refusing to back down even partially from:

"A DDoS is the very antithesis of free speech"

which I had clicked reply on on page one but after logging in and following page two, I realised Sassy was making all my arguments for me...

I'll see if I can find one he hasn't used, but I'm concerned you might end up sticking me on ignore for attempting to disagree with you...

How about this one (however I think all the others from Sassy so far are still more compelling, so I hold out little hope).

What does a ddos do, what is the result - it is the prevention of a web server to serve up data bits...so being able to serve data bits must be free speech, as ddos is the antithesis of free speech, and therefore what it does must be preventing free speech.

How does a ddos work? By sending data bits at a web server. Sending data bits? Free speech? A ddos works by the mechanism of free speech.

The antithesis of free speech works by freedom of speech?
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
Further, I would strongly advise against anyone joining the "protests", not on any political grounds, but merely because voluntarily joining a botnet is just a stupid thing to do from a security standpoint.
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However, I did agree with this. Although you don't have to join an actual botnet, just use the LOIC program at the same time and target. However, it is still potentially illegal (not sure if the law means ddos via botnet or participating in a ddos, and the latter would be much harder to prove legally I would imagine IANAL tho).
 
Captain.Sassy said:
Credit cards are free speech?
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picture.php
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
As I said above, I am not concerned about the motive. The effect of a DDoS is the disruption of communication.

Throw out any other red herring you wish, but if you can't offer an argument that attempts to show how disrupting legitimate communication is not an assault on the ideals of free speech, I shan't reply to you again.
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You have implied but not stated that you ARE in fact arguing that making the text and images on the MasterCard site being unavailable count as an assault on the ideals of free speech, by disagreeing with counter that this wasn't the objective but collateral damage.

And if so, you have then refused to address his not all that unlikely hypothetical which circumvents this argument, and are arguing that something that causes collateral damage to something else when used for another objective is the antithesis of that something else, which sounds unreasonable to me...
 
by the way, I am not disputing that many previous anonymous ddos attacks have been with the direct and somewhat hypocritical objective (and effect, ok?) of preventing free speech, including the project chanology attacks,

But actually the ultimate objective is still to a) piss off the target and b) draw attention to their disagreement. But you don't care about motive and to argue that point we'll just end up in semantics arguments about the word antithesis its usage.
 
DreadNiK said:
I'll see if I can find one he hasn't used, but I'm concerned you might end up sticking me on ignore for attempting to disagree with you...
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Fear not. I never use ignore for that purpose, and seldom use it at all. Sassy is not on ignore. I simply don't see anything fruitful coming from further discussion with him on this topic, so I won't be discussing it further. There may be other topics I run into him on, though, that I feel are worth discussing, whether we agree on them or not.

Whether he would wish to do so is, of course, his own business.

How about this one (however I think all the others from Sassy so far are still more compelling, so I hold out little hope).
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Well, I don't find yours more compelling, but I do find it more interesting, at least.

What does a ddos do, what is the result - it is the prevention of a web server to serve up data bits...so being able to serve data bits must be free speech, as ddos is the antithesis of free speech, and therefore what it does must be preventing free speech.

How does a ddos work? By sending data bits at a web server. Sending data bits? Free speech? A ddos works by the mechanism of free speech.

The antithesis of free speech works by freedom of speech?
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I think you're getting a little too nuts and bolts here.

We could further reductio the absurdum and say that all speech involves the manipulation of subatomic particles, all attempts to disrupt speech involve the manipulation of subatomic particles, and wtf? How can free speech an its antithesis rely on the same principles?

On the normal old human level, though, a website is a tool for communicating information between its owner and its viewers. The information I am talking about here is the human level information, what a viewer reads, not the data bits that the processors translate into those images or sounds.

A DDoS attack is an attempt to disrupt that process, to prevent the viewer from receiving the information the site's owner intends. I really have a hard time understanding how this is interpreted as anything other than an insult to the ideals of freedom of expression. I am trying, though. I just don't get it.
 
Captain.Sassy said:
actually it's more like using a kryptonite bike lock to lock the doors of a bank
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No, no, he's right in my argument, I wasn't being specific to the situation. Your point is valid though. Not sure why he's questioned my reality though :P as


portlandatheist said:
Are you for real? This is analogous to shouting over somebody (or gathering a large group to shout over somebody).
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Yes. Again, what is happening there? The 'large group' is preventing someone's free speech? By doing what? Using free speech (doesn't have to be shouting, just enough people talking over them, i.e. exercising free speech). So again, they are preventing freedom of speech by exercising freedom of speech? This is a ridiculous idea. Yes, they can use freedom of speech IN THIS WAY to prevent freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that freedom of speech is the antithesis of freedom of speech...as that is clearly impossible.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
Sassy is not on ignore. I simply don't see anything fruitful coming from further discussion with him on this topic, so I won't be discussing it further. There may be other topics I run into him on, though, that I feel are worth discussing, whether we agree on them or not.

Whether he would wish to do so is, of course, his own business.
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Buddy... I'm like, right here.

This is super rude.



;)

We can agree to disagree on this one.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
A DDoS attack is an attempt to disrupt that process, to prevent the viewer from receiving the information the site's owner intends. I really have a hard time understanding how this is interpreted as anything other than an insult to the ideals of freedom of expression. I am trying, though. I just don't get it.
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Hopefully at least one of my other posts addresses this, but Sassy and I are equally confused as to what part of VISA, Mastercard and Paypal's websites are free speech in need of protection. We'd like the hypothetical answered too :)
 
DreadNiK said:
You have implied but not stated that you ARE in fact arguing that making the text and images on the MasterCard site being unavailable count as an assault on the ideals of free speech, by disagreeing with counter that this wasn't the objective but collateral damage.
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What I am arguing is that I view anything (legitimate) someone puts on their website as being speech worthy of protection, whether or not what I like is being said, who is saying it, or even its importance. Yeah, the "Welcome to Master Card!" banner Sassy referenced is speech. Yeah, it's trivial. But I am not comfortable with drawing lines about how untrivial something has to be to be worthy of protection.

As for disagreeing with the counter, I don't. I know they were after the transactions, and everything else was collateral to their motives. But it is a known collateral, and therefore I feel justified in judging them on it. If I steal all of someone's money to prevent them from donating to NAMBLA, I have still stolen all their money, regardless that my motive was just to keep NAMBLA from receiving a donation. If I take down a website to prevent it from conducting commercial transactions, I have still disrupted communication.

And if so, you have then refused to address his not all that unlikely hypothetical which circumvents this argument, and are arguing that something that causes collateral damage to something else when used for another objective is the antithesis of that something else, which sounds unreasonable to me...
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I didn't follow that, but I might have answered it above. Let me know.
 
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