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McColo Takedown, Vigilantes Or Neighborhood Watch?
CWmike writes "Few tears were shed when alleged spam and malware purveyor McColo was suddenly taken offline last Tuesday by its upstream service providers. But behind the scenes of the McColo case and another recent takedown of Intercage, a ferocious struggle is taking place between the purveyors of Web-based malware and loosely aligned but highly committed groups of security researchers who are out to neutralize them. Backers claim that the effort to shut down miscreant ISPs is needed because of the inability of law enforcement agencies to deal with a problem that is global in nature. But some question whether there is a hint of vigilantism behind the takedowns — even as they acknowledge that there may not be any other viable options for dealing with the problem at this point."
I don't think notifying providers of illegal activity that they then act on is considered vigilantism. If the spammers don't like it, they should sue.
æeee!
And also can we get the obligatory "Your solution to SPAM fails to account for the following..." post?
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Vigilantism would be action like that employed by the Lad Vampire. This was just a bunch of experts asking companies to enforce their TOS.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
When you have no law, nobody with legal authority, vigilantes and posses will form to deal with issues. Human history is filled with evidence of this. Usually, the citizens demand a code of law to emerge from the chaos after some gross miscarriage of justice is perpetrated by an overzealous vigilante. The internet hasn't had that yet.
The internet is still in the stage where vigilantes mostly take care of it, and likely will be for some time to come. Certain nations lay claim to certain aspects of internet behavior of their citizens (we almost all agree that child porn is bad, for example.) But the more restrictive you get, the fewer people are in agreement. We'll never get the whole globe to agree on standards for porn, political content, religious content, etc., so it will be almost impossible for a Global Internet Police Force to arise.
I think the undefined-but-pragmatic status we're in will last quite a while longer, and the vigilantism will increase. Maybe the future will hold an odd-bedfellows agreement along the lines of the UK/USA spying deal. U.S. vigilantes will not be extradited for committing a good-faith takedown of a Russian spammer. And Russian vigilantes will not be extradited for taking down an American spammer.
John
Of course there's an element of vigilantism. This is the sort of situation that vigilantism is for.
Hopefully better ways to deal with the problem will come along soon. In the meantime, I hope the body count among innocent bystanders stays small.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I don't really understand, especially on a Web forum that decries most law enforcement actions as invasive to privacy and liberty, why private conduct aimed at correcting undesired private conduct is just assumed to be bad.
Does this "only the government shall administer law" doctrine apply to the civil rights movement? Greenpeace? Software piracy? Or just things we don't like?
One person's vigilantism is another's social activism.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Spammers are like Roaches. You can never quite kill them all off.
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
If the upstream providers had a service agreement that disallowed the use of their network for illegal activities, they can pull the plug any time.
Hey, in the late 80's when the first spammers showed up, if the administrators/ISP's didn't close they're account, they'd get kping/attacked and taken off line.
Then the 90's came, with the STUPID aol metoo'rs. All the sudden, money became more important then integrity. Spammers' had a heyday, and everyone was afraid of the lawyers. The Internet started to really SUCK (is there anyone left out there that remembers archie and ftp?).
Now, all the sudden some security researchers are working with the press to publish the sites that are the worst, and someone out there is screaming AHHHH Vigilantes! HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN!!
I read the first page, and concluded that the article writer is a bonehead. On to the next stupid slashdot article. This one didn't rate getting out of the firehosed.
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
So wait, you want net neutrality, but you don't like this so-called "vigilantism"?
Does. Not. Compute.
I'm sure the US government would love to help you (along with other private interests)
If I understand this right, the entire colo's link was taken down because they were hosting spammer servers. Fine and well for us I guess, but what are the chances some other, innocent folks were hosting servers there too?
I host a few web servers at a colo. I have no idea what my neighbors are serving up. If my sites were shut down without notice I'd be pretty unhappy.
Look it up...
Vigilantism, means, at the root, being vigilant. While it might be nice in theory to sit on your hands and wait for someone else to be vigilant on your behalf, we're doomed as soon as everyone takes that attitude.
If there's a guy in a tower with a machine gun taking shots into the crowd bellow, and some subset of the crowd has the ability to DDos, what would you want them to do?
--MarkusQ
As I understood, the colo in question was not shut down per se, it was simply severed from its internet connectivity as its upstream/backbone internet providers terminated their contract with them. Nothing special about that; business relationships are initiated and terminated all over the world every day.
Consequently, there was no "vigilanteism" in the strict sense as such, where normals citizens take the law in their own hands and act as if they had higher authority than they really have.
It was simply a case of concerned security researchers going to the upstream providers with evidence and saying "look what scum you do business with by providing connectivity, this is bad for the internet on the whole and it hurts your reputation", and the ISPs in question took action. If innocent customers of the rouge colo got hurt when the lines got cut, then they simply have to suffer the consequences of picking a bad host to buy services from.
Of course, if the proof the security researchers had gathered also proved that the shut-down colo in question had committed crimes, then the appropriate authorities need to be involved. But that is another chain of events, separate from the disconnection of the lines.
Yup, the good old days.
Back then, when google results actually returned something useful instead of 20 pages of useless links to price-grabber or experts-exchange.
Back then, when the newsgroups were still good.
Back then, when you could still post your picture of the Enterprise without getting on the wrong end of a law suit.
Back then, when most of the people online had an IQ in three digits.
Back then, when you could happily host a copy of the Jolly Rogers Cookbook without being called a terrorist.
Back then, when the total amount of useful information on the internet was exactly the same as it was today.
Back then, load times were measured in minutes not seconds... ..actually, forget the last one.
... don your bandanas and grab your molotov cocktails. This shit just got real.
No, not remotely vigilantism. Its not like someone went to these people and cut their fiber cable with a hacksaw - *THEIR ISP* turned them off, after it received reports of TOS violations and (presumably) investigated same. We should live in a world where all ISP's have and enforce anti-spam TOS, and actually investigate take action, as appropriate, when they receive reports of abuse, regardless of who the reporter is.
Whatever happens, and kudos to those that try, but the biggest responsible orginisation of SPAM is MS due to all the botnets that seem to infiltrate MS operating systems at will.
Since the '90s, various groups have labeled other groups as "internet scum" and targeted them for banhammers.
Sure, providers of child porn an, in France and Germany, stand no chance against the national police. But everyone else - American Nazis, spammers, 409 scammers where protected by law, and those advocating unorthodox positions like "sex with children is okay" or "gay fags don't deserve to live" are generally left alone by governments.
Like-minded individuals like to get together and fight what they see is an abuse of the net and/or an abuse of free speech. Right or not, the party that "wins" is usually the party with the most political and financial might.
If a small church group goes at it alone against a well-funded Neo-Nazi organization, they will go nowhere. On the other hand, if a large denomination spearheads a global effort to get a lightly-funded neo-nazi organziation kicked off their ISP under threats of boycotts, bad press, etc. the neo-nazi organization's web site will soon go dark.
Oh, it helps to have the ISP's and upstream's moral-compass on your side: If the Neo-Nazi's ISP and upstreams are very pro-free-speech, you may not get far no matter how much influence you wield. If on the other hand they aren't very pro-free-speech but are pro-racial-equality, then they'll help you find an excuse to terminate their contract or not renew it.
Back in the days early days of spam, a major spammer paid handsomely for a very friendly upstream provider. However, the pressure finally got to be too much and they gave him a non-renewal or 30-day termination notice under the "we simply no longer want your money" clause.
Ultimately, society will have to decide if your rights to say anything you want to anyone you want who will listen on your Internet connection is a right that can be negotiated away by contract. Note the "who will listen" clause - that doesn't cover spammers, but it does cover people spewing neo-nazi propoganda and the like to people who ask to hear it. It arguably doesn't cover "force fed" material like content that lives beyond the current session or affects your computer outside the browser, e.g. malware, or even "surpise" material like Goatse, unless you specifically made an informed decision to download such material knowing full well what it was.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I think we're all quite happy that the bastards are staying cockpunched after getting cockpunched by the takedown.
Yes, this especially applies to those that host spammers.
I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense. When there is rule of law, a person who ignores same and takes justice into his own hands is a vigilante. There is no rule of law on the internet. Therefore, strictly speaking, there can be no vigilantes.
Moreover, even if you're not as much of a persnickety douchebag as I'm being here, you're still forced to admit that this isn't really vigilantism: reporting to a provider that one of their clients is in breach of contract isn't "taking matters into your own hands," it's being a good netizen.
Let's examine this further: under some looser definition of "vigilante," examples of qualifying behavior include defacing offending websites, DoS attacks, threats of violence against SPAM purveyors, destruction of associated computer equipment, et cetera. All of these have in common that the "vigilante" is taking it upon himself to retributively violate the rights (or right-like constructs) of the offender in some semblance of justice.
It is from this violation that complaints against vigilantes stem, by most accounts: you have some rights, and they're considered inviolate except by the government (by which you somehow agree to be governed) just in the case that you violate a law. Having come to such an agreement, you find your rights abrogated by "vigilantes" who are not associated with the government and therefor whom you do not consent to enforce laws upon you.
It's pretty clear that even under this looser definition the above didn't violate any of the spammers' rights: that the spammers were violating their providers' terms of service was public information. Bringing attention to this public fact cannot be construed in any way to violate the rights of the spammers.
which has, unfortunately, not been used yet against malware, evilware, crapware, and spamware paths and evildoers.
not that I'm in favor of it, you understand.
just something a man's gotta do sometimes.
Most backbone contracts state that their services cannot be used for illegal purposes. Researchers pointing out to those backbone providers that the contracts have been broken doesn't strike me as vigilantism. Neighborhood watch gets my vote.
(WEBSTER) vigilantism ... the execution of justice w/o the Gub'mnt gunbarrel. . Hang 'em high. SNAP!
Viagra! Damn it... I knew I should have bought an extra months worth. I'm about to meet my Russian bride-to-be (still waiting for an email), and my Nigerian friend is going to send me some info regarding a business proposition. Not to mention that I've got to re-register with Paypal as there has been a security breech and my bank wants to confirm my password too.
I know! I'll forward this on to all my friends. They can pass it on too and maybe I'll get lucky.
---
consort banana security boat
incongruous athletics opportunity
several thousand ants incorporated
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Joe the (non-licensed)Plummer is the one that first contacted the media, by his choice.
Nonsense. Obama showed up for a photo op outside Joe the Plumber's house. Bad luck for Obama that Joe just happened to be a Republican, and the media doesn't like Republicans. Oh no, an unlicensed plumber. Why does a plumber need to be licensed to be a plumber anyway? (answer: to raise tax revenue). Completely irrelevant, shooting the messenger.
But I guess in your "only Fox News is biased" world, a citizen asking a candidate a question about his tax program (which the media never bothered asking) should be the focus of ad hominem attacks - rather than the media turning to Obama and asking, "yeah, what about that?"
But of course, the media is so far in the tank for Obama, that they defended him and became his advocates.
And liberals like you see no problem with that, because liberals don't believe in fairness - they believe in winning and advancing their agenda at all costs, even if it means politicizing the media, education, the courts, anything. By any means necessary.
It is easy to fix spam/spam bots:
1. Identify source of problem traffic.
2. Report problem formally to the ISP
3. ISPs is responsible for the problem.
3. ISPs notifies customer or downstream ISP responsible for the problem.
4. ISPs/customers who ignore reports are fined/disconnected until compliant
This is probably the only reasonable solution because it maps the hierachy of the internet to a corresponding hierachy of responsibility. The only reason it will not happen is politics. ISPs are huge telco companies and they will fight anything that causes them to lift a finger which might increase costs.
Think about the existing solutions and you will see how foolish they are when compared to a system that requires folks to actually take responsibility for their own traffic.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is were there any above-board customers of McColo? Sureley they weren't *all* bad?
Assuming there were, I feel for them. They have had the rug pulled out from under their feet, with (presumeably) no recourse and no way to get their data. You might blame them for choosing such a shady hosting company, but they probably had no idea.
... and celebrate the departure of our former spammer overlords. It is a small incremental improvement, but an improvement none the less.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'd wager that these researches are the type that think they're above the law, too good to sort through thousands of penis pill adverts and phony pleas to transfer thousands of dollars to anonymous, foreign bank accounts. They definitely had a chip on their collective shoulder.
I consider myself pretty laid back and accepting of just about anything... but there are things on the internet that just don't belong there. Be it videos of people being killed, pictures of pre-pubescent(*) children, viruses that screw up networks and spam that clogs up networks at will. If the net does not police itself, then the government will and it will go down hill from there. Can you imagine the FCC regulating content on the internet? China has already done this and Australia is starting to. (*) I make the distinction of pre-pubescent b/c even in the United States the laws vary about when and how someone will be considered an adult and I want to dispel the straw man of "Well... in some countries a 15 y/o is an adult so you're infringing on their beliefs." No where is someone 10 or under considered an adult. Yet there are people on the net who deal with sexual material of this age or under.
You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs. I for one, and sick of finding spam in my omlette.
When you are breaking the rules, you can't complain when someone takes your toys away. I feel utterly zero pity/sadness/whatever in regards to this. As far as I am concerned, spammers are at the utter bottom of the food chain. Damned plankton eaters.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Because there is no due process. Decisions can be arbitrary, uninformed, and ultimately unjust.
Well that is the risk you run in any human interaction, business or social. Are you suggesting that all human conduct be governed by law, a la 1984? The simple truth is that life is not always going to be fair and just; sometimes it's arbitrary. We just strive to ensure that our government and laws are not.
The only way to restrict someone from doing something should be through the law.
Nonsense. There is also shame, honor, morality, ethics, social norms. By this logic, Rosa Parks should have been thrown in jail and stigmatized, as well should all of the "screw the DRM, software should be free" down/uploaders. And those activities are/were technically illegal. Should we give more deference to private conduct that is illegal (e.g., civil disobedience in the civil rights movement) than private conduct which seeks to uphold the law?
If you saw a little girl being strangled, would you intervene, or just call the police and wait? OK, I can guess your answer. So there are situations when "vigilantism" is permissible? Or will your dogma run over your karma?
Besides there is a tort system which regulates private conduct that steps over the line.
By your logic, what's to prevent the spammers in this case from targeting their opponents for disconnection from the internet?
The law, which you so value. Spamming is regulated and DDOS attacks are criminal.
The law often allows what honor forbids. - Bernard Joseph Saurin
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Hey, you kids, get off my internet!
--
.nosig
And in any event Joe asked a reasonable question and got a reasonable answer.
Don't forget, "and savaged JtP for his temerity in challenging the One." I know more about Joe's background after the media pounced on him than I do Obama's background. The media reflexively and viciously attacked JtP with irrelevant (and often untrue, when they reported that he claimed he made $25K/yr, rather than he had hoped to after purchasing his boss's business) ad hominem attacks, as if the status of his plumber's license or his tax bills are relevant to a pointed question a candidate's stated policies.
More people learned about Obamas tax and he probably got more votes as a result.
Right, the "95% of working families tax cut." Uh huh. Too bad nowhere near that amount of "working families" even pay taxes (many already pay no net taxes, or make a net profit on tax day, known as the Earned Income Tax Credit). But yes, appealing to class warfare and offering people ice cream that others will pay for is very popular.
"The government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul."
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
But at least we're getting a brief break while they enjoy their 15 minutes of infamy - I've seen some network operators who reported 90% drops in their email load who'd initially wondered if they'd just broken something with the other work they were doing that day.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
if someone breaks into my house and I blow his head does that make me a vigilante ?
You bring up an excellent point. In response, I have edited my google.xml search file (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\google.xml) thus:
Old values:
New Values:
You seem to be under the impression that the two are somehow mutually exclusive. I am both pro free speech and pro racial equality. Allowing someone to spew their hate speech doesn't mean you support it. The answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. The alternative is the government deciding what is acceptable or not, which ultimately is used to everyone's suppress rights.
An example. Some douchebag yanked a 'pro troops' sign out of a kids hands and tore it up. His response to someone asking him about free speech was, "that's hate speech, it's not protected". I'm the first to admit this is an extreme example and didn't involve the government, but the extreme tends to become the law in these kinds of situations. Besides, the Will of People is supposed to guide the government - at least in theory. A side note, my reaction to what that guy did would have been to kick the living shit out of him.
-- Will program for bandwidth
>
I don't buy this line. Tell me why Mastercard + Visa could not, with an anti-spam TOS on their vendor accounts and a few honeypots, shut down ~99% of spam, globally, in two weeks?
Forgot to add the probable location for the xml file in Linux: /usr/share/firefox/searchplugins/google.xml
This edit causes "-site:experts-exchange.com -site:pricegrabber.com" to the end of each google search performed from the search box next to the address bar.
As always, for anyone trying this, make a copy before editing, in case something goes wrong.
You will need to restart Firefox (at least under Windows) for the change to take effect.
*sigh*
That should read 'This edit causes "-site:experts-exchange.com -site:pricegrabber.com" to be added to the end of each'.
It's going to be one of those days...
Boss: "Minion! Go find us web hosting!"
me: "Yesssss, maasssssssster!"
me flips through a few pages of adverts, picks one, goes back "HEeeerrrrrr, massssster!"
Boss: "Hmmmm.... McColo! I like the sound of that! Sounds like an Apple product! OK, get us loaded up there sparky, and make it snappy!"
Yeah, right. It's called "due diligence", and if you don't do it, your setting yourself up for trouble. So, what's the FIRST thing I look at when selecting a web host? Is it their stock prospectus? - I'll look at that, but not first. Their SEC 10Q? I'll look at that too, but not first. Nope, FIRST I look in News.admin.net-abuse.sightings. Then I go looking for off site hosted foura for that ISP and see what others have to say about them. Then I start asking about NOC details - staffing, times, power back up, cooling backup, hot sites, warm sites, cold sites, redundant routing (confirm on Looking Glass), all sorts of stuff I'd put in but I just got a page so I have to go... anyway, "innocent" customers of McColo getting knocked off line? It's a pain, but if they really are "innocent", then they can host elsewhere easily.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
... because liberals don't believe in fairness - they believe in winning and advancing their agenda at all costs, even if it means politicizing the media, education, the courts, anything. By any means necessary.
As if this isn't true of conservatives...
I'm not disputing your claim, I'm disputing its relevance: the conceptual basis of the two words are identical.
And as for DDosing a guy with a guy, that would be very effective; I don't know how to do it, but if there were some action that could be taken by a group of people to collectively render the gunman ineffective (causing him to miss, or his gun to jam, or whatever) that would be exactly what was needed.
--MarkusQ
Hi Whiteox,
What a fun forum you have, and what a simple idea!
I promise to be a contributor here and look forward to meeting all of you.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
Just look at the 20th century as the most recent example. Way more people have been murdered, inside their own nations, by their own police and military than by "vigilantes". In fact, state sponsored violent terrorism is the number one threat to people in general, it is an even larger number than people killed by outside nations in wars, or during "normal" sorts of crimes. Vigilantism and getting killed or hurt as an "innocent bystander" is way, way down the list of threats. Being specifically targeted because of politics or convenience by your own officials or getting killed in warfare via the dubiously named "collateral damage" is just more common. The "official" law is much more dangerous to people than the unofficial and ad hoc "vigilante law".
Who made you Judge Judy the Executioner?
Arguments like this just further convince me that the majority of Americans fall into the center politically, and those that pick fights like this are just so far to the side of their fence and sooo full of anger, they've become wackjobs.
Ultimately, society doesn't get to make that decision. Consider software like Tor and Freenet, and sites like Wikileaks. Anyone who wants to share information can always do so with people willing to look hard enough for it. Society, at most, can make it somewhat more difficult to get access to information, at least until the necessary technology becomes more widespread and mainstream.
However, that argument applies primarily to "pull" mediums like the web, not "push" mediums like email. If spammers want to put up a hundred thousand websites attempting to sell something, let them; they don't take up any resources other than those the spammers pay for. However, when they send spam email, they take up other people's time and resources, and that needs to stop.
It's called suppressive fire.
So we have people saying that dealing with a problem in the ONLY manner possible is "vigilantism"? Just how is that? Vigilantism is doing something on your own when there are other legal options available.
Methinks some people just don't like seeing ANYONE held responsible for their actions, no matter how despicable those actions are.
The liberal mindset truly sucks.
If there were any, I'm sure that they have a service contract with McColo, which they can bring up in court when a class action lawsuit against them starts. Your service contract states that you will provide my site with connectivity with a certain maximum amount of downtime. Since you've allowed my site to get cut off from the Net at large for so long, you have violated terms of the contract and must pay. Would be irony though, if these same spammers who caused them to get cut off due to their own illegal activities also join in on the class action...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
When will this happen - will it happen - has it already happened?
Indeed, when Usenet spam first turned up, it usually tried to get people to send an email to order various Windows software.
Lots of people were diligently educating those spammers about how futile that is, by sending them emails with complete GNU distributions -- both source and compiled for various architectures, since you can never be sure which hardware they might have. Alas, a couple of years later the spammers stopped putting email addresses in their advertisements and switched to web instead.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Sorry I couldn't be bothered filling it out.
Your post advocates a
() technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. your idea will not work. here is why it won't work. (one or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) no one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) it is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) it will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
() users of email will not put up with it
( ) microsoft will not put up with it
( ) the police will not put up with it
( ) requires too much cooperation from spammers
() requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
() many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) laws expressly prohibiting it
() lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) open relays in foreign countries
( ) ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) asshats
( ) jurisdictional problems
( ) unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
() huge existing software investment in smtp
() susceptibility of protocols other than smtp to attack
() willingness of users to install os patches received by email
( ) armies of worm riddled broadband-connected windows boxes
( ) eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) extreme profitability of spam
( ) joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) technically illiterate politicians
( ) extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) outlook
() botnets
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
() ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
() any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) smtp headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) blacklists suck
( ) whitelists suck
( ) we should be able to talk about viagra without being censored
( ) countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) sending email should be free
( ) why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) i don't want the government reading my email
( ) killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
furthermore, this is what i think about you:
() sorry dude, but i don't think it would work.
( ) this is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) nice try, assh0le! i'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Laws should, first and foremost, reflect the collective will of a society. You cannot enforce laws that are passed against the collective interest of a society or against its moral standards.
For reference, see copyright.
On the other hand, if you ignore an activity that is perceived as illegal by a sizable majority of the population, a vigilante group is born. I tend to think that humans are basically lazy beings. As long as someone else takes care of a problem, they don't really want to go out of their way to do it themselves. When a problem becomes unbearable for them, they start taking matters into their own hands.
Good or bad, that's up for debate. Generally, I think on /. there is a sizable majority in favor of this kind of vigilantism. I guess few people here really like their spam. We might think differently in other matters. So whether vigilante action is good or bad depends on your point of view.
Generally, I'm not really in favor of people taking the law into their own hands. So, if anything, this shows that we, as a society, do want more laws and more enforcement in this matter. We want spam to be fought, and it will be fought. The governments may now decide whether they want to keep the power in their hands or let people take over.
Usually, governments don't really like to share their power monopoly with anyone, though. So maybe they should finally get their act together and pay more than just lip service to fighting spam.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All I know is that before the shutdown, I was hitting 400-500 spam messages a day. After the count is closer to 150-170 a day now. Please continue.
No one meted out extra-legal justice -- all that happened was the extremely-belated enforcement of contractual provisions. The term "vigilantism" has been bandied about for years by spam-supporting organizations like the DMA as a way of shifting the argument. That attempt should of course be wholly rejected, as it is obvious from first principles that nobody on the 'net is under any obligation to provide services to anyone else absent a contractual agreement; thus, for example, refusal by X to accept Y's mail is merely assertion of X's control over X's own resources. The same reasoning applies in this case; there is no positive obligation on anyone's part to continue to passively accept abuse from another network.
Shame about this
A side note, my reaction to what that guy did would have been to kick the living shit out of him.
you sounded fairly sane until that bit.
Given that someone could easily die if you 'kick the living shit out of them' (one punch is sometimes enough; or a sidewalk/head impact), you're saying you're willing to kill someone, and also risk the death penalty or life imprisonment over a grabbed and ripped up piece of card.
Get help before it's too late.
Either society (e.g., your local friendly government) provides laws to enforce these matters, or the mob (e.g., thee and me) shall handle the matter.
Your call.
Meanwhile, you see me shedding no tears over either of these bastige outfits. They can sue and be damned.
The current state of the Internet is comparable to the "wild west" in the U.S. of the late 1800's. Many people have settled the land and governing bodies manage certain areas of the landscape, but there is little in the way of law enforcement. Much like those times, many people (and companies) are left to self-governance, and self-defense (aka Vigilantism) to protect themselves and their possessions (physical or logical).
Until true "law enforcement" is established and practiced people/companies will not have much choice but to defend themselves, even if the defense includes going on the offense.
about there rights. There is no grey area here. These people are well known and involved in illiceit activity that preys on the ignorant. Did you see the story about the women that gave 400,000 dollars? Yes she is stupid, but just because your stupid doesnt give anyone the right to take advantage of you. It amazes me that we always get into this so called grey area. The fact of the matter is that most spam comes from 10 well known sources. Like I said before. Firing Squad. I will happily pull the trigger and sleep very soundly after doing so.
If the countermeasures taken were legal, then how is it vigilantism? It's more like social pressure, or people refusing to let their property be used in ways they disapprove of. That's not vigilantism. It's the kind of non-governmental community action that allows freedom to exist instead of every tiny bit of our lives being micro-managed by a big-brother government.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Okay, so they have to go find a provider which doesn't protect scumbags. At most there is a little data loss and inconvenience in setting up with a new provider. If I were selling legitimate goods out of a tinny house I wouldn't be complaining if the police raided it and it was shut down. Similarly one should be careful who you host with.
You bring up an excellent point. In response, I have edited my google.xml search file...
Mod Beav007 +5 "Bloody Useful" please.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
after some gross miscarriage of justice is perpetrated by an overzealous vigilante. The internet hasn't had that yet.
Yes it has - if you include 'governments' under the definition of 'vigilante'. Ask the citizens of China, Iran, Australia, and the USA - all of whom are the victims of unjust meddling with the internet.
you had me at #!