Online Vigilantes, Or "Crowdsourced Justice"

destinyland writes "The Chinese credit the 'human flesh search engine' for successfully locating 'the kitten killer of Hangzhou' from clues in her online video. But in February, the same force identified a teenage cat-abuser in Oklahoma — within 24 hours of his video's appearance on YouTube. 'Netizens are the new Jack Bauer,' argues one science writer, and with three billion potential detectives, 'attempts to hide will only add thrill to the chase.' But China's vigilantes ultimately turned their attention to China's Internet Propaganda Office, bypassing censorship of a director's personal information using social networks, including Twitter. The author suggests there's a new principle emerging in the online world: 'The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.'"

Comments

So the Internet is like....

[Anonymous Coward]

...the Terminator of electronic communication tools?

Re:So the Internet is like....

[Captain Splendid]

So the Internet is like ...the Terminator of electronic communication tools?

"It cannot be reasoned with" - yeah, sounds about right.

Re:So the Internet is like....

[Stealth Captain]

No, this is the terminator of electronic communication tools.

Re:So the Internet is like....

[Minwee]

"It cannot be reasoned with" - yeah, sounds about right.

PC LOAD LETTER'? The f--- does that mean?

Re:So the Internet is like....

[Anonymous Coward]

Paper Cassete("PC"...) out of paper. "Load Letter" size paper to print.

To be sure, it's pretty opaque, but that's pretty much what it means.

Re:So the Internet is like....

[beav007]

And ah-1 and ah-2 and ah-"whoooooooooooooosh"! Your geek card will be liberated from you at the door.

Re:So the Internet is like....

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Internet does not forget or forgive and cannot be stopped." Thats the new fascism right there. Fuck that crap.

Beware

[Anonymous Coward]

The interwebs cannot be trusted.

Internet? Or Terminator..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds about the same...

No

[Junior J. Junior III]

This is less about the vigilantism of the Crowd, and more about the utter stupidity of [some] criminal/deviants.

Stupid criminals shoot video of their crimes. Incredibly fucking stupid criminals put the video on youtube.

Re:No

[JumpDrive]

Man don't tell them that.
I was hoping this would be a good way to get rid of half of those kitten killing crap moderators.

Re:No

[moderatorrater]

Why can't it be both? The criminals are indeed stupid for shooting a video of their crime, and even more stupid for posting it on the internet for the world to see. But does their stupidity mean that the faceless masses on the internet can harass them until they lose their jobs or scrawl death threats on their doors? Those stories are nothing more than a return to anarchy and lawlessness dressed up as something noble by the article. The only story with redeeming qualities is when they found the name of an official that was bragging about his ability to censor the internet, but you'll notice the end result of that story wasn't anywhere near as dramatic as the others.

Re:No

[panthroman]

The internet-justice connection is also about making information easily accessible to the public. And sometimes the public know what the police don't.

Ted Kaczynsky was identified by his brother somewhat due to his reversed (though also correct) use of the phrase 'you can't eat your cake and have it too.' I imagine many aspects of a crime could be identified through that kind of esoteric data, if only the right people saw it.

Re:No

[Ethanol-fueled]

But that was a written letter from one man to a family member.

Over the internet, we see mannerisms and memes spread virally, evolving and being adapted by the collective. Good luck tracing internet vernacular to its sole originators.

It's also possible that mannerisms and memes emerge concurrently because they're just part of the zeitgeist, the time is right. A seemingly non-related example would be that the two-handed tapping guitar technique was used by Queen's Brian May years before Eddie Van Halen used it. Though EVH is credited for inventing it, it just gradually emerged concurrently because "the time was right".

Re:No

[jeffmeden]

Those stories are nothing more than a return to anarchy and lawlessness dressed up as something noble by the article.

Vigilantism is the backlash against lawlessness; in this case the lack of a justice system capable of convicting and punishing sadistic animal abusers has been corrected by a band of on-line judge/jury/executioners. To say that it's the height of civility is a stretch, but 'lawless' it certainly is not either.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about also posting to MySpace. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10251862-93.html

Re:No

[DJRumpy]

I disagree. This is no different than laws designed to deter individuals from performing unacceptable acts. Peer pressure can be a socially acceptable conditioning tool. The end result is the same. If these online vigilantes help capture said criminals then it harms no one. If the go beyond that and in turn break the laws, then they should be dealt with accordingly. That doesn't mean that all vigilante acts are inherently wrong.

Re:No

[Ironica]

But that was a written letter from one man to a family member.

No, that was a Manifesto which was directed at the entire world. The right person saw it and realized it was written by his brother.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing the lawlessness with injustice. They're acting without a regard or respect for the rule of law, and likely committing their own crimes in their actions.

If a bunch of people were to say "Hey, Jeff Meden is actively encouraging criminal behavior! Let's find him and chain him to his stove for five days as punishment!" would you consider that lawlessness? They're just trying to punish bad behavior that the legal system can't deal with, so that makes it okay - right?

Re:No

[plover]

Don't worry about it. Stupid criminals can be shown a sign that says they're being videotaped, and that the video tape will be used as evidence against them in the case of a crime. They can be told in the morning that the video cameras are watching. They can be shown the TV monitor displaying what the camera shows. They can sign a document stating that they have been informed of the video equipment used to monitor their activities. They can even see the video camera domes above their heads.

And that afternoon, they commit a crime under the watchful eye of the very camera they were warned about.

We're talking about the dumbest of the dumb here. These are people caught in the pool filters of the gene pool, but haven't been removed yet. Don't worry, they will essentially catch themselves for us.

Re:No

[hedwards]

Tell that to the black and Jewish victims of lynching in the south. Yes, in many cases vigilantism can be a form of law enforcement. The problem though is that when a group of citizens answers to no one the potential for abuse and stepping beyond law enforcement is definitely there. And while many of those lynched had committed capital offenses, most hadn't.

Yes, in the two cases cited it seems to have worked out in the interest of justice, but they could just as easily have found somebody that wasn't guilty.

Re:No

[jeffmeden]

So, from TFA, what crimes were committed in the course of the vigilantism (besides petty vandalism and/or some fairly nebulous harassment)? Furthermore, who is to say that vigilantism is explicitly the committing of crimes in the course of a 'lawless' quest for justice? You make a good point that there is an awful fuzzy line between ipso facto 'lawless retribution' by vigilantes who feel the justice system has failed, and true lawless behavior in the absence of any justice system. I prefer to cling to the belief that there exist enough decent people and enough gaping loopholes in the democratically appointed justice system that there is room for vigilantism that is not in itself lawless. That being said, I would still much prefer the traditional justice system.

Re:No

[S7urm]

Not sure if you are writing this from a country besides the US, but here, vigilantism is not met with a lack of punishment for the offender. It is illegal to enact certain "justices" outside the realm of law enforcement. However to compare a group of people finding an animal abuser (which is also a precursor to human abuse/murder/serial killers) to people in the South lynching "dem #$%^#$ers" is flaimbait at best.

For one thing, you deny justice to a group of individuals for too long, they WILL take it into their own hands, two how do you think laws and values and morals came into being? It wasn't just plopped down to us like Prometheus and Fire....three I ask you, "SO WHAT?" I think if a crime is commited, and I can respond to it in a way that will prevent further loss of life, realty, property, et al. before anyone else can, then I will. You'll notice that in cities like New York it is now a CRIME to ignore a crime in progress (Good Samaratin law) There is a reason for that, people like those in this thread who think vigilantism has no cause in society. I say to you that the LACK thereof is a big factor in our complete slide into a pit of hedonistic, self aggrandizing filth that is our current state of affairs, and that when people don't take a stand for what they feel is right (or against what is wrong) then you merely have a group of good people doing NOTHING to change the course of events (see the US during the beginning stages of either World War) Pacifism is not the answer, nor will it ever be, just read a history book for more reasons why.

Re:No

[soren202]

Depends, is there a youtube video of it?

Although, in all seriousness, it's not technically a lawless system, it's just that it works by different laws.... that is "don't abuse animals" and "if you do, don't tape it".

I'd feel sorry for anyone that got the collective hate of the internet, but, at the same time, they're abusing animals, and then posting it on the internet. They pretty much deserve what they get, considering the circumstances.

Besides, the internet has an attention span measured in days, at best. If anyone's really feeling harassed enough, they can just ride it out for the ~ a week it'll take for people to get bored with him.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it precisely is lawlessness even if it is a reaction to lawlessness. It may in some sense be considered "just," but it's certainly not legal--at least not in the legal tradition followed in the United States. Unless these vigilantes have managed to codify their own law and have pretensions to forming their own state, they are only pursuing their own subjective sense of retribution because our law operates through a formal legal process where defendants have, you know, civil rights.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

As a bystander, it seems to me that there is confusion here about what constitutes vigilantism.

Generally, it is OK, and even public spirited, for an ordinary citizen who observes a crime to investigate it (within what is lawful of course) and report it to the appropriate authorities. There are times when it is appropriate to detain offenders by force, although one needs to be careful here. But certainly if I as an Internet user found myself able to recognise someone mistreating an animal in a uTube video, I would certainly report it to the relevant authorities

What is not usually regarded as OK as then proceeding to apply a punishment for the crime, and this is what is usually referred to as vigilantism, for instance the lynchings in the South as were referred to.

Re:No

[soren202]

you're thinking /b/

NSFW... although, if you didn't know that, you probably shouldn't be on the internet.

Re:No

[soren202]

Sry, Replied to the wrong post

Re:No

[TubeSteak]

Tell that to the black and Jewish victims of lynching in the south. Yes, in many cases vigilantism can be a form of law enforcement. The problem though is that when a group of citizens answers to no one the potential for abuse and stepping beyond law enforcement is definitely there.

You set up a beautiful straw man argument and knocked it down...
But harrassment and social ostracism are in no way equivalent to a lynching.
Not even death threats and bricks through the window rise to that level.
You have a point in there, but your hyperbole saps it of any meaning.

Yes, in the two cases cited it seems to have worked out in the interest of justice, but they could just as easily have found somebody that wasn't guilty.

So give us an equal number of counter examples. It can't be that hard.
Or even better, find some non-anecdotal statistics that supports your otherwise overhyped assertion.

I've only heard of a handful of cases where crowd-sourced justice misidentified the perpetrator and yet you can find endless threads on the internet (car forums are especially fruitful) where vigilantism peacefully named and shamed the guilty.

Re:No

[quanticle]

I agree that peer pressure keeps us from doing many things that are unethical but not illegal. However, I do think that scrawling death threats against someone is a little bit more extreme than saying, "Hey! That's a pretty rotten thing to do."

Re:No

[Ex-MislTech]

The law is made by the ppl for the ppl, the current system is being warped and abused for various things
for benefit of corporations and ppl that contribute to get ppl their postions.

When the ppl cannot get justice as accorded under their constitution, they will take these steps.

The government are those who represent the ppl and are beholden to them, not the other way around.

The thing is if this continues to work well expect it to take a step up.

Re:No

[Capsaicin]

Stupid criminals shoot video of their crimes. Incredibly fucking stupid criminals put the video on youtube.

Isn't there an issue here that many of these "crimes" are committed explicitly for the purpose of posting a video of it on youtube?

Re:No

[trytoguess]

No. Vigilantism is backlash against moral outrage. Yes in some cases it had a good cause. In other cases it tried to stop blackie from having consensual sex with whitie. There is nothing inherently moral about vigilantism; it's all about appeasing emotional desires. Never ever treat it as a good thing.

Re:No

[sFurbo]

I've only heard of a handful of cases where crowd-sourced justice misidentified the perpetrator and yet you can find endless threads on the internet (car forums are especially fruitful) where vigilantism peacefully named and shamed the guilty.

No, you can find endless threads were the person who seems to be the bad guy is named and shamed. You don't know the entire story, you don't even know if any of it is true, or just something made up by his competitors (or whoever). If there isn't a balanced system to take care of the cases, you can't be reasonably sure the bad guy was found, which is not justice.

Now, I'm sure that in a lot af the cases, the guy who was found was the bad guy, and vigilantism does point out places where (the public think that) the justice system should do more, but it isn't doing justice.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, just what is justice? Isn't is really like morality? I.e. Entirely subjective.

See, me personally, because I'm a very misanthropic individual, I think that the execution of that cat killer is an entirely just and appropriate response. The life of that Cat counts for more than the life of any human being, IMO.

However, I'm not delusional, and I understand that most other people don't think the same as me, and may well believe that executing the cat killer is not a just and appropriate response, but is (pardon the pun) overkill.

So, I ask again. Just what, *exactly*, is just justice? Can it be defined with a single, universal, all-encompassing definition?

Personally, I don't think it can.

urm...

[grub]

'human flesh search engine'

RedTube?

.

The Author

[Niris]

"The author suggests there's a new principle emerging in the online world: 'The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.'""

So the author came up with that? Seriously? Pretty sure that's been a main line (well, at least a version of it) for the groups for a long while.

Re:The Author

[SpooForBrains]

I am reminded of this.

Re:The Author

[Anonymous Coward]

The Simpsons said it more eloquently, I believe:

"We've given the word 'mob' a bad name!"
- Dr. Hibbert

This is really just mob justice but 'On the Internet' (tm). Sometimes mob justice is right... sometimes it's wrong. But either way it's powerful.

Re:The Author

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its somewhere in the ebaums code:

Anonymous is Legion.
Anonymous does not forgive.
Anonymous does not forget.

Re:The Author

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it sounds a lot like Anonymous to me.

Re:The Author

[Goaway]

Also, the internet forgets in about a week.

Re:The Author

[geobeck]

Also, the internet forgets in about a week.

Forgets what?

Re:The Author

[Goaway]

Why are all these words on my computer?

Re:The Author

[shutdown -p now]

Forgets what?

Who forgets what?

Re:The Author

[FiloEleven]

Except that they would probably have written "Evar."

Re:The Author

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

Also, the internet forgets in about a week.

Forgets what?

Forget you!

Re:The Author

[Requiem18th]

I'm pretty sure he did expect us to notice.

Re:The Author

[soren202]

you're thinking /b/ [4chan.org]

NSFW... although, if you didn't know that, you probably shouldn't be on the internet.

Re:The Author

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh

Re:The Author

[Anonymous Coward]

You just broke rules 1 and 2!

I have a very bad feeling about this

[Presto Vivace]

it is not a good thing,

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[internerdj]

I also have a very bad feeling about this. If it is ok for kitten killers then it will be ok for whatever topic X society doesn't like as long as there is enough of society to make an impact in their personal lives.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[QuoteMstr]

I'd rather not live in a society in which 51% can arbitrarily sentence the other 49% to death.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[MozeeToby]

The author of the article doesn't get it

Fortunately, human flesh search engines don't end the lives of their victims, like the witch-hunts or lynching of the past.

No, they just make it impossible to ever live a normal life ever again. They ruin your career and alienate your friends and family. They force you to live through humiliation and shaming every day, often for weeks or months at a time.

All based on a single, often easily fabricated, piece of evidence. That isn't justice, it's just a mob being a mob and harrassing other people for the fun of it.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[internerdj]

The examples in the article didn't even need that much. It could have been as few as a few hundred who tracked these people down and the results were the targets losing their reputations, jobs, etc. It is a scary scary thought indeed. Every reasonable human should always keep in their mind that if they wish to be treated above average as a majority, they must accept being treated equally below average when they are the minority. If you wouldn't want to lose the amount of life/liberty/pursuit of happiness you want to push on someone else, then you shouldn't try.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[stephanruby]

I don't like it either. Now that they're going after the Chinese internet censor, they're likely to be completely unstoppable after that. Who will be next then? Internet censors in Australia? The history revisionists in Japan? Fox News? It's a slippery slope I tell you. They're going after the easy targets first, and then they're slowly ramping their way up to include everyone. It will be complete anarchy.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they just make it impossible to ever live a normal life ever again.

How is that any different than going to jail and having a criminal record follow you around?

They ruin your career and alienate your friends and family. They force you to live through humiliation and shaming every day, often for weeks or months at a time.

Welcome to the life of any ex-convict. While the mob way was definitely the incorrect way to do this, all the people mentioned in the story got exactly what they deserved. Killing kittens, cheating on your spouse, etc should be cause for you to have to get humiliation and shame from others.

All based on a single, often easily fabricated, piece of evidence.

And yet in none of the cases mentioned where the pieces of evidence fabricated.

That isn't justice, it's just a mob being a mob and harrassing other people for the fun of it.

Yeah it couldn't be because these people did something bad and someone else thought they should be punish. No, it was clearly just all fun and games.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[geekoid]

Same problem with any Vigilante justice.
Except Batman.

Considering how biased large groups of people can be and the fact that their belif becomes so entrenched into who they are and with no checks in place, innocent people will get killed.
You see then in Homeopathy, Anti-Vaccines, Acupuncture and a mess of other belief systems.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Random2]

Welcome to the American legal justice system?

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Presto Vivace]

It would be easy enough to for the real kitten killer to point the finger at someone else to divert attention. Mob justice is injustice.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

All based on a single, often easily fabricated, piece of evidence.

And yet in none of the cases mentioned where the pieces of evidence fabricated.

Just because evidence does not look fabricated, does not make it real either. I could be a VERY good fabrication.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[scubamage]

You obviously haven't been to law school, through a corrections course, or seen what happens to people who have ever been convicted of a crime. There's a reason we have higher recidivism rates than nearly any other country on earth. We destroy the lives of our convicts, often off of shreds of evidence that are flamboyantly paraded by charismatic lawyers while denying evidence that could change the verdict because of legal technicalities. Good luck getting a job if you've been convicted.

These groups only really pursue people who do one of two things - 1) try to make information that is free unfree (the antithesis of the internet), and 2) do things so abhorrant that they rouse the majority to action against them.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they just make it impossible to ever live a normal life ever again.

How is that any different than going to jail and having a criminal record follow you around?

Going to jail is the result of a rigourous process designed to attempt to prove your guilt. Mob justice is the result of a bunch of people assuming you're guilty.

They ruin your career and alienate your friends and family. They force you to live through humiliation and shaming every day, often for weeks or months at a time.

Welcome to the life of any ex-convict. While the mob way was definitely the incorrect way to do this, all the people mentioned in the story got exactly what they deserved. Killing kittens, cheating on your spouse, etc should be cause for you to have to get humiliation and shame from others.

But the ex-convict at least got a fair trial. These people did not.

All based on a single, often easily fabricated, piece of evidence.

And yet in none of the cases mentioned where the pieces of evidence fabricated.

But how long until we start having innocent victims due to fabricated evidence? It's much easier to fabricate evidence for a lynch mob than to fabricate evidence for a criminal trial.

That isn't justice, it's just a mob being a mob and harrassing other people for the fun of it.

Yeah it couldn't be because these people did something bad and someone else thought they should be punish. No, it was clearly just all fun and games.

A lynch mob is still a lynch mob, even when they're after the right people. One of the problems is that lynch mobs all too easily go after the wrong people. Another problem is that, rather than a punishment that fits the crime, lynch mobs issue a punishment that fits their rage. That is not justice.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[the_humeister]

I'd rather not live in a society that thinks impaling a kitten through the eye socket with high heels until the kitten dies is considered a good thing. Fortunately, I don't and neither do most people.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[MozeeToby]

The difference between this and a convict is that the convict was found guilty in a court of law. Say what you will about the fairness of the system, but at least the convicts got a chance to tell their side of the story and have the evidence judged. You don't know the facts about any of these cases and while some may be pretty clear cut (torturing animals on video) others aren't nearly so much simple.

Take the woman who committed suicide 'because' her husband was cheating on her. How many men cheat on their wives every year? Do they all deserve to be harassed daily, fired from their jobs, and scorned by their friends? Even if their wife is chronically depressed and has been distant and unloving for years? For all you know, the guy's wife regularly beat him with a stick.

Take the girl who very, very selfishly whined about the earthquake in China. Does she really deserve the same punishment as a convicted criminal?

Finally, just because no one has fabricated evidence yet doesn't mean that it won't be done in the future. That's like saying "Well, the government didn't abuse its warrantless wiretaps this time, so we'll let them keep doing it". It's short sighted and negligent. Just because this threat to privacy comes from the mob instead of the government doesn't mean it should be any less concerning.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[hmar]

I think the GP's point was not what happened in these cases, but what is on the other side of the door that is now opened.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

You already live in such a society or have you not noticed that 0.0001% or less of the population can arbitrarily sentence to death any percentage it chooses? And it ranges from governments who claim to fight terrorists to terrorists who claim to fight governments with a few other mass murderers and psychos thrown in for statistical deviation.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Steauengeglase]

Deep down I've always had a sneaking suspicion that has always been the real goal of political parties.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[PitaBred]

Easily fabricated? Surely you jest. They recognized backgrounds and shoe styles, then traced it to online accounts to find the kitten killer woman. How in the hell is that in any way "easily fabricated"? The Internet justice movement may be a bunch of vigilantes, but it's very fucking well-informed vigilantes. If something doesn't smell right, someone will say so and there will be a huge discussion of it. I'm much less afraid of Internet vigilantes fabricating shit than I am of my government fabricating evidence of, say, WMDs.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Best stay out of California then.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Ironica]

No, they just make it impossible to ever live a normal life ever again.

How is that any different than going to jail and having a criminal record follow you around?

They ruin your career and alienate your friends and family. They force you to live through humiliation and shaming every day, often for weeks or months at a time.

Welcome to the life of any ex-convict. While the mob way was definitely the incorrect way to do this, all the people mentioned in the story got exactly what they deserved. Killing kittens, cheating on your spouse, etc should be cause for you to have to get humiliation and shame from others.

Leaving aside whether that is appropriate punishment or not...

I hope most people see the difference between a conviction in a court of law and Internet mob justice. While *these* people may be unequivocally guilty, there are no rules, no checks and balances in place to ensure that the next person is. There's no innocent until proven guilty, burden of proof, right to representation, or rules of evidence. There is what people believe to be true, and the actions they take based on it. If their belief is misguided, or doesn't happen to be in line with law (for example, if an Internet group decided to ruin a woman's life because she had a perfectly legal abortion), then you've got a big problem on your hands.

The rules are there to protect everyone... especially the innocent who are accused anyway. It happens every day. Circumventing the rules may provide a certain visceral satisfaction, but it doesn't serve the greater good at all.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[QuoteMstr]

And our goals are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to recognize that killing kittens is wrong, but that that widespread vigilantism greater wrong.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Banichi]

"Democracy can be defined as two Wolves and a Sheep deciding what to eat for dinner."

I am perfectly happy living as part of a society in which I can try to convince any Wolves to order a Pizza, instead of a society where I have no say at all.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Minwee]

Neither do I. That's why I carefully studied all of the evidence available and have identified "the humeister" as the culprit. No, don't ask to see the evidence I used, it's all secret. But you can trust me, as I am held to the highest standards of professional conduct required for "some anonymous person on the Internet". Look, I have a video camera so you know I'm telling the truth. Be sure to round up all of your friends and storm "the humeister"s home tonight at sunset. Remember to bring plenty of torches and pitchforks.

Would you really rather live in a world where everybody listens to people like me?

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[geminidomino]

Maybe, if the sick fuck wasn't so stupid as to RECORD it and put it on fucking YOUTUBE.

Sick and Stupid. Calls for darwination.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[twidarkling]

Another problem is that, rather than a punishment that fits the crime, lynch mobs issue a punishment that fits their rage. That is not justice.

There's a large portion of the population in Canada that suggests the current punishments for serious crimes aren't justice either.

http://www.canadiancrc.com/Newspaper_Articles/Edmonton_Journal_Revisiting_Canadas_infanticide_law_12NOV06.aspx

A story about how people were pissed off that a mother received second-degree murder for killing her kid. If you poke around, another mother got 5 years house arrest.

But at the very same time, you'll see people getting pissed off about people getting low jail times for crimes of killing adults, but with similar circumstances, ie. extreme emotional disturbance. How is that justice?

Remember, the only reason a jail term is considered justice is because a bunch of people a long time ago said it was. If we were a society with a system of punishment that was based on repayment to the community through service, with ostracism as a penalty for refusal, throwing someone in prison would strike us as barbaric.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[MozeeToby]

Yes, it would be almost impossible for someone to buy the same pair of shoes (using cash of course) and sneak into someone's backyard while they are at work. It's not about the vigilantes fabricating evidence, it's about someone fabricating evidence against someone they don't like. If they were crafty enough, they can even 'help' the vigilantes along by supplying key information at the right times. It's just like putting child porn on your enemies computer; all too easy compared to the amount of damage it can do.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Lurker2288]

No, the reason a jail term is considered justice is because we, as a society, agree to abide by certain rules with the understanding that the protection afforded by those rules is offered to all members equally (though I don't need to point out that this is an ideal). If you don't like society's rules, either work to change them, or leave society.

If somebody wrongs me, I might want to punish them far beyond what society considers a just punishment, but if I expect the benefits of the justice system in the future, I'd better abide by it now. You don't get something for nothing.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[kalirion]

Plus just because there haven't yet been "netizens" who get offended enough to actually commit murder, doesn't mean it won't happen.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[smellsofbikes]

This is just an extension of Internet flaming into RL. People who feel passionately about something, and think they have a decent chance of remaining anonymous, have a strong incentive to screw up someone's life.
Consider a few months back when someone posted the RL address of a spam king and people promptly flooded his house with tons of mail-order catalogs and magazines. (But most slashdotters seemed to approve of that...)

Justice involves a non-biased judge and written laws. Mobs aren't about justice, even if what they do sometimes seems attractive.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

for the lulz

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[jafiwam]

That list looks like rational cleaning up and destroying of garbage to me. You need to pick a better list if you want to scare people I think.

99% of the time people that get mobbed by Bchan or whatever else soundly deserve it. Word crafters who are able to steer and fool a mob into doing incorrect action are few and far between, and it would take tremendous effort by a lot of people to pull it off. So, _false_ accusations rarely gain legs and go.

That's why crowd-sourcing works, the people with the truth or the good information can be weighed by everybody, who then each makes their own decision based on the truth and whatever half-truths are there. And given real information with solid backing won't take the crap too far. Look at any example of the Troofer movement in any Slashdot or Fark thread for examples of this.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Locke2005]

As long as I'm always in the 51%, I don't see the problem.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Presto Vivace]

Yeah, we are in Darwin awards territory.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[hplus]

Only, it really sucks when they publish you and your wife's SSNs before they figure out that they have the wrong guy. Sure, they apologized after the fact but that is a small consolation, IMO. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/01/anonymous-hac-1/

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[amicusNYCL]

No one listens to people like you in the world we currently live in, and there's no reason to assume that would change. You might notice the ubiquity of [citation needed] around the net, which is a good thing that people are finally mindful of. Lack of evidence doesn't get you very far. The examples in the story all had evidence to go on, and they all shared evidence with each other until they figured out who was responsible. That's the power they're describing - the power of a group of people to instantly combine their individual shreds of evidence to form the true picture, and to do it quickly. The fact stands that still no one cares about anonymous cowards.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[amicusNYCL]

How exactly is that different from being framed in our current justice system? Vigilantism doesn't open the possibility for framing, that's a part of what we have now.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[amicusNYCL]

Finally, just because no one has fabricated evidence yet doesn't mean that it won't be done in the future.

Just because we haven't been attacked by giant space hamsters doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Just because the second coming of Jesus hasn't happened doesn't mean that it won't happen in the future. Just because no one has shit out their mouth doesn't mean that it won't be done in the future.

In addition to ending perceived online threats, we should also prepare our space hamster defenses, make sure we're looking busy for Jesus, and invent a handy face diaper.

Maybe the status quo needs to be shaken around periodically. We all enjoy a high level of perceived anonymity and immunity from things we say and do online. Maybe it's a good thing that periodically we're reminded about reality.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[cthulu_mt]

Batman would be forced to save the perp from Catwoman's justice.

Duh. Read a book some time.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Omestes]

By forcing an innocent person to kill a kitten?

Seriously, these morons RECORDED themselves killing kittens. Its not like there is a big mystery over who actually did it.

I have no problem with this, no one got hurt, and making someone lose their job for doing something disgusting is perfectly fine with me. Its not like they were lynched or anything serious.

Okay, you go to a fast food restaurant, and you see an employee wander out back and beat up a bum. Would it be wrong for me to go talk to his manager and call the cops on him? Even if he got fired?

Most reasonable people would have no problem with this. But just because its on the internet its now "scary".

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just kitten killers who fall under the crosshairs of Anonymous. Not too long ago, some guy in Georgia posted on /b/ which eventually resulted in faxes to a certain school warning them that one of their students had a picture of a man taped inside her locker, and the man was planning on having sex with her.

Before you get your flaming torches, please take into consideration that the girl was 16.

Before you get your pitchforks, please look up the age of consent in Georgia. (No, it's not 18 everywhere in the USA; that's just the legal age to shoot porn.)

Yeah... the guy got personal armied because he was going to have sex with a girl who was, in fact, of legal age.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[sckeener]

mod parent up.

Sex offenders have it too rough in my opinion. Take this article about a bridge in FL. All the sex offenders live there because of all the various zoning restrictions forced them to live there. The article even discusses one woman about to move under the bridge:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/fred-grimm/story/964528.html

and before anyway says we should just kill sex offenders or mutilate their body parts, remember two things

1) there are plenty of innocent people convicted of crimes, example being all the criminals being exonerated by DNA evidence years after they were sentenced. Then consider some people had zero physical evidence used against them and have no hope of such a retesting....my father was convicted on the word of a 3 year old and nothing else.

2) We need to give criminals reasons to keep their victims alive and unharmed. We don't want the concept of "may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb". If we make their lives too unbearable they are just going to go to extremes after all, what more can be done to them if their lives are already horrible?

personally what I think we need is another America or Australia...some place to exile the criminals. Maybe a Moon is a Harsh Mistress needs to come to pass. Gives the criminal a 2nd chance and satisfies the victims by getting rid of the criminal.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, that's nothing to worry about. How on Earth could the 51% execute that sentence? You think the 49% would just go "Doh-oh-kay, here..." and bear their throats?

Now 84% of the population declaring "War Rape" on 15% of the population is something to worry about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation: http://imagechan.com/images/4256c6ebf2ec36d11ed68fc71fd34bfb.gif

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Newsflash: society has always had ways of punishing people who publically behave in ways very strongly disapproved of by the norm. This is not new. What is new is having millions of people able to shine a light on your public behavior.

Newsflash #2: China has always been a society that keeps itself in line through social pressure. This is just the extension to the internet of what once was the function of the local village--point out those behaving badly and shame or ostracize them into regretting it.

Remember: The Internet is a venue where you can make an ass of yourself in front of hundreds of millions of people. If you don't want to be publically held up as an ass, don't post videos of yourself being one on YouTube.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[S7urm]

I don't get how anyone can have this mentality

If it weren't for "angry mobs" truly ask yourself what in histroy would have never happened.

What comes to mind?
Boston Tea Party
The American Revolution
The fall of Communism in the USSR (and subsequent breaking down of the Berlin Wall...sure looked like a mob to me)
Tianamen Square and the attempt at democracy in China
The Jewish folks that tried to prevent the Holocaust from happening (and in turn died FIRST for their beleifs)

You go look one of the Student Disidents from Tianamen in the face and tell him he was merely a criminal, and had no right to protest the Human Rights Abuses that ARE STILL HAPPENING to this day

See if he could give 2 flying f%#$ how you or anyone else feels about vigilanteism

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no innocent until proven guilty, burden of proof, right to representation, or rules of evidence.

who needs any of that stuff when you have a video of the guy killing cats with high heels through the eye?

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[twidarkling]

No, the reason a jail term is considered justice is because we, as a society, agree to abide by certain rules with the understanding that the protection afforded by those rules is offered to all members equally (though I don't need to point out that this is an ideal).

I'm not certain if you wilfully misinterpreted my point or not. Your post is saying "we have punishments because society has rules." That's completely not my point.

I'm saying that jail time itself, the act of putting people in jail, is only seen as justice because that's how society's done it for ages. If society's rules were traditionally enforced by public shamings, or by doing an allotment of community volunteer work based on the damage to society by the crime, then those would be justice. In other words, the way the punishment is enforced is at issue, not the fact of a punishment at all. If the current methods of punishment no longer work for society (punishments which don't deter crime, etc), then society needs to come up with new methods of punishment. But the Legal System (not justice system) won't do that, because there's too much business to be made in prisons. Alternative methods of punishment are often filed under "cruel and unusual," thus making them impossible to enforce. Is it really adding value to a society to imprison people convicted of non-violent crimes, when they're perfectly capable of performing tasks? I'm fine with society's rules, but what's the point of closing up a shoplifter in a tiny room for a few years? Work on enforcement, society! Expand your mind! Options are possible!!!!!!!!!!!111!1

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[smellsofbikes]

Revolution isn't about justice. Civil war isn't about justice.
Sometimes it might be necessary, to remove a regime that has subverted the justice system.
But it's still not justice.

And the actions given in the article -- where the vigilantes are anonymous, and stand little or zero risk for their actions -- are *particularly* not justice because they have no perceived risk. The people who ran the American Revolution put their lives on the line, as did the people in Tiananmen Square, and many of them died. That's admirable, even if it's not justice.

But people anonymous-calling someone's job to get that person fired, or putting on white sheets and hanging someone they don't like, is vigilanteism.

And you're right: they don't care what I think about vigilanteism. That doesn't make what they're doing right, or admirable.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Requiem18th]

Bullocks.

All this crap about phear the mob rule! Tiranity of the majority etc is just rhetoric elitist bullshit!

You think vigilantes are dangerous because they respond to no one? Bullshit, Vigilantes answer to society, and in the case of very large mobs like the internet, the mob *is* society. What makes you think the police is better? Because they answer to no one?

How do you call a government that doesn't listen to the "mob"? A dictatorship.

Besides the "mob" has become much more sophisticated than before, you are talking about pitchforks and torches, this "mob" probably has never hold a pitchfork in their entire lives. We are talking about finding out stupid criminals online and you are talking about lynching, way to be disconnected from the real world.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[taucross]

As opposed to a society in which 0.1% can arbitrarily sentence the other 99.9% to death? At least with your option I have a decent chance of making my voice heard.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[S7urm]

If you truly think Revolution (See the American Revoultion, i.e no taxation without proper representation) isn't justice, and Civil War (see even Our Civil War, i.e though a byproduct, slavery was demolished) isn't justice, than ask your local African American friend if he thinks the North, who freed his Great Great Great Grandfather, were unjust in their fight. Merely ask yourself about paying taxes on something that you as a constituent had no power over, because you had no one representing you in government. Those are both matters of "justice" to the nth degree my friend. I may not agree with limited petty social campaigns against regular citizens, but to here people say that disidents, vigilantes, and revolutionaires of all flavors should be painted with the same brush as the spineless fools, then I tend to want to say "Hey, not cool"

Those same idiots in China could have easily put their efforts to better use, like finding a way for the citizenry of their localities to find ways around the Great Firewall, or even to find information on things like Tianamen, so that the next generation of Chinese citizens are saved from knowing nothing besides the current regime or about how people before them fought for certain freedoms that most people in China today probably don't know exist.

I do understand that the devil is in the details, however who is to say what is or isn't right for ANYONE be they victim or vigilante, and yes I can see your "but the Nazis!" BS on the horizon, I ask you that question with full intent on honest thought, not merely looking for ways to snipe my details. I would expect people to have a base understanding that evil is inherant and absolute to a degree, killing kittens = bad killing 8 million innocent Jewish citizens = REALLY frickin bad. But to say that I took the law into my own hands to protect my family or friends from certain demise = bad, well I honestly couldn't care, no matter what any nameless faceless, 6 digit UID having entity on /. says

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it's better to believe the well respected lies/liars (ahem, us/brit gov for the last 10 years, ahem) than the crackpot liars online? Whatever, fucking hand-wringer. Lets all have fun thinking of incredible and outrageous scenarios to feed our holier than though attitudes.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[phreakhead]

"Take the girl who very, very selfishly whined about the earthquake in China. Does she really deserve the same punishment as a convicted criminal?"

No, she doesn't. That's why she was not punished like a criminal. She was shamed and humiliated by the community, which she obviously deserved. She could have done the same thing WITHOUT posting it to YouTube, such as saying it in front of her family or close friends, and those people around her should have done the exact same thing. This is how society works, but on the internet it works at a much larger scale. (And BTW, that's why she was thrown in jail. She was inciting the public to riot, much like yelling "bomb" in an airplane or something.)

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for the 49% but I wasn't in the 49% so I didn't speak out
Then they came for the 49% of what was left but I wasn't in the 49% of what was left, so I didn't speak out...
...
Then they came for me and there was no-one left to speak out

Apologies to pastor Niemoller

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Good gods, fallacy heaped upon fallacy. You speak in favor of "society." Your societyâ"the society that you believe shares your values. Just wait until that society's values change and they turn on you. You really think "today's sophisticated mob" (trying hard not to laugh at this) would last long, unrestrained, before picking up weapons? Have a nice life. Who modded this up?

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[virgil_disgr4ce]

You need to flex your imagination. A kid fabricates a video implicating his enemy in some crime that would appeal to the barely restrained hatred of internet trolls, a hatred always ready to manifest itself. He recreates the target's bedroom, posters, etc., and makes sure the video finds its way into just the right hands, then riles his audience to a fever pitch. That kid wouldn't even have to be particularly malicious, just ignorant; he probably wouldn't even imagine it ending as badly as it could. Look, this is no different than any other kind of fraud, except that the apparent solutionâ""internet justice"â"is being lauded instead of being more aptly compared to a crowd of pitchfork-wielding racists (for instance; replace with any non-internet, real-life trolls).

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

This is "interesting"? This is good old fashioned right wing fundamentalism. The things you seem to be missing are preconsidered codified rules and responsibility for action taken.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's why I carefully studied all of the evidence available and have identified "the humeister" as the culprit. No, don't ask to see the evidence I used, it's all secret."

you already live in this world. what, do they need to charter planes and fly the targets of their rage to carribean islands for you to see that? government is a reflection of society. the internet is that society home alone and lounging naked.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex offenders also have the highest re-conviction rate. What you describe is a better alternative then taking them out back and shooting them.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[sFurbo]

Okay, you go to a fast food restaurant, and you see an employee wander out back and beat up a bum. Would it be wrong for me to go talk to his manager and call the cops on him? Even if he got fired?

*Sigh* Straw Man Alert. If you call the police, no, that would be fine. How would this be a mob?

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[sFurbo]

You get to defend yourself in a court of law? I would say that would make a rather big difference.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Requiem18th]

This is not my best post, I wrote hastily and left lots of details out. The issue is far more complicated than this, but, me an right wing fundamentalist? Give me a break.

My issue is with direct democracy for which I'm a proposer, and how it is dissed by some people in /. as "frightening mob rule"

Wut? As opposed to what? A dictatorship? The idea is that our dear representatives are there to NOT hear our stupid ideas and choose what is best for us.

Shryeah right!

The fact is that every social progress has come about thanks to the "mob" a.k.a. the voters.

Racism is the canonical example of the majority doing the wrong thing. Thanks God we got rid of the KKK in spite the "mob". No wait, the "mob" got rid of the KKK themselves.

Most white people didn't want to have anything to do with the KKK, the KKK was crazy, most white people realized it was wrong, because it was.

The success of the social liberty movement didn't come about from the enlightened elite forcing the matter on the population but from convincing the population to change its government.

ALL social progress comes from changing public opinion not from changing politicians opinion.

Now some people find themselves alienated by their community, they find their community to be racist/homophobic/fundamentalist. This is proof that the "mob" is evil and the government is good? No, it just means this particular "little mob" is in disagreement with the "big mob" that supports the laws that support you. What you need is not to get rid of direct democracy and hold onto your enlightened representatives. What you need is simply to get the "big mob" to protect you from this "little mob".

This is what I mean. I don't believe in the danger of the tiranity of the majority, the majority is not always right, but it is the best we have. You are far more likely to be wronged by the elite few than by the "mob".

Now back to the argument about Internet vigilantes. The main argument is that they are more likely to get violent and not follow due process than the proper authorities.

Of course the proper authorities are violent and also skip due process often, but the argument is that they do it less often. So far, I agree.

I would argue that by virtue of being allowed to be violent, the police needs this checks and balances a lot more than Internet vigilantes, who simply discuss your personal details in the web.

So what if one of this vigilantes actually gets violent? Well some GTA players do shot people but you know how that works, these people would end up shooting someone eventually.

Arguments of this sort I can accept. What I can't accept is arguments of the type "Oh fear the mob!" "What happens when the mob is against you!" "What happens to those who dare to be different!"

Yeah because being "different" is never wrong, right? For some people being different means "torturing helpless creatures", the truth is that as much as I'm in favor of personal liberties there are some kinds of different that I believe are dead wrong and I just won't accept in the name of diversity.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullocks.

Yeah? Well Saks Fifth Avenue to you!

Ooops.

[SatanicPuppy]

See, this is why you can't trust free speech and open information. One minute it's saving kittens, and then next minute it's BITING YOU IN THE ASS! I can has truth plz? kthnxbye!

Always nice to see the Chinese circumventing the Great Firewall. There is no way you'll get good information if all you get is government information.

Re:Ooops.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Your first paragraph makes no sense whatsoever.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with bypassing the gfw, it's entirely domestic. Chinese people actually consider it patriotic to track down miscreants this way. The phenomenon is known as the 'human flesh search engine' and they are scarily good at posting a person's full info. Then, the serious creeps start working on you - calling your boss, your mother, the principal of your old high school. Of course, charlatans can be exposed this way, too. One essay from a Chinese girl extolling the pleasures of foreign men and denigrating Chinese men was found out to the the work of a dickless virgin male university student who was pissed off that he couldn't get any.

Re:Ooops.

[Anonymous Coward]

One essay from a Chinese girl extolling the pleasures of foreign men and denigrating Chinese men was found out to the the work of a dickless virgin male university student who was pissed off that he couldn't get any.

I imagine finding out that it was written by a foreigner would have been too obvious.

Re:Ooops.

[Anonymous Coward]

link (original) and link (translated) for the citation.

Yay for Anon

[Anonymous Coward]

So are you saying that we should embrace 4chan and Anon?

Re:Yay for Anon

[stoolpigeon]

I thought this was a great article - though I thought there assumption that this is a brand new thing outside China is mistaken because of what's been going on at reddit or with /b for some time now. The stuff you mention is a perfect example of how this kind of stuff can be great, or terrible depending upon your point of view.

Cats

[mcgrew]

Maybe the internet can catch this guy. I hope so, and am glad he doesn't live here.

Re:Cats

[swarsron]

Maybe people could use their brains and realize that killing kittens is not the worst thing in the world. All this outrage is ridiculous. Murder and rape in war torn countries, a okay, a kitten gets killed, lets all get together and catch the bastard.

Re:Cats

[mcgrew]

People are outraged at murder and rape, which occurs in every country, not just war torn ones. If you had a pet, and its species was being targeted in your neighborhood you'd be worried and outraged too. But if there were a serial rapist or serial murderer, you'd be a lot more worried and outraged.

Re:Cats

[Omestes]

Maybe people could use their brains and realize that killing kittens is not the worst thing in the world. All this outrage is ridiculous. Murder and rape in war torn countries, a okay, a kitten gets killed, lets all get together and catch the bastard.

I shouldn't help that guy over there, because there are millions of other people who need my help in Africa!

That is fallacious reasoning.

People who kill kittens for fun are probably going to be dangerous in other ways. It is one of the signs of a burgeoning serial killer, for example. Actually, if I saw someone killing a kitten for fun on the street, I'd beat them within an inch of their lives, then take the kitten home with me, then call the cops on him, and his boss, and his family.

If you find hurting defenseless living things funny, then I really don't want you in my society, since I'm sure you can go far beyond "just" kittens.

Re:Cats

[swarsron]

I have a cat and have no sympathies for cat killers (and my comment was not really against you. I was pissed and lashed out against you, i'm sorry). I just can't believe that people organize around a video like that and ignore far worse cruelties done to humans. Reminds me of the episode of Bullshit when a PETA member was outraged at the notion of rescuing another human instead of her own dog.

Re:Cats

[swarsron]

I shouldn't help that guy over there, because there are millions of other people who need my help in Africa!

That is fallacious reasoning.

That's why i didn't say that. Read it again

People who kill kittens for fun are probably going to be dangerous in other ways. It is one of the signs of a burgeoning serial killer, for example. Actually, if I saw someone killing a kitten for fun on the street, I'd beat them within an inch of their lives, then take the kitten home with me, then call the cops on him, and his boss, and his family.

yes, i seem to be the dangerous one. Beating a human almost to death because of a cat makes you practically a saint

Re:Cats

[Omestes]

Actually you did say basically that.

Maybe people could use their brains and realize that killing kittens is not the worst thing in the world

Murder and rape in war torn countries, a okay, a kitten gets killed, lets all get together and catch the bastard.

Both of these statements either imply that killing kittens is fine (which I doubt your implying), or that its a lesser problem than war, and thus we shouldn't be mad about it.

Re:Cats

[stonewallred]

I fucking despise cats with a passion not unlike that of fundies hatred of homosexuals. Saying that, i also believe any scumbag fucker that would torture or needlessly kill a cat should be given over to whatever psycho-sexual torture killer on the local death row to use as an unwilling victim as a reward for said psycho killer's good behavior. That kind of behavior, IMNSHO, is disgusting and perverted. It outrages me far more than crimes against people, as people at least have the theoretical ability to protect themselves. Cats and dogs have been specifically bred to consider humans as "safe".

Re:Cats

[swarsron]

Both of these statements either imply that killing kittens is fine (which I doubt your implying), or that its a lesser problem than war, and thus we shouldn't be mad about it.

not that we shouldn't be mad about it, that is the point where you get it wrong. Organizing a global hunt for someone who kills kittens strikes me as mad. Not only in the face of cruelties done to humans but generally. I can understand if people in the area get mad about it and try to catch the asshole. But if one can watch the news and do nothing but see a cat killed and participate in that then the person has their priorities skewed.

Re:Cats

[swarsron]

It outrages me far more than crimes against people, as people at least have the theoretical ability to protect themselves

I really can't find an answer to your post. Your priorities are that off you're practically insane.

Re:Cats

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the internet can catch this guy. I hope so, and am glad he doesn't live here.

Oh, so it's a *guy* is it? I've done a similar amount of investigation, and have determined (well, *guessed*) that he's white, aged 13-20, and has a mullet. Hope that helps!

the intertubes - my new favs

[pha7boy]

"The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever." that's why I'm adding the internet to my Fav5.

Re:the intertubes - my new favs

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.".....And we FUCKING LOVE CATS!!
Remember this all you would be pet abusers.
Maybe /b/tards are worth something after all.

NSFW

[Anonymous Coward]

At least have the decenecy to tag the above link NSFW.

Re:NSFW

[Khyber]

You must be new to the internet. You also must not watch much porn. Turn in your geek card.

Re:NSFW

[amicusNYCL]

There's nothing NSFW about the home page at redtube.com. You see a bunch of giant text asking you to consent to entering an adult site, with 2 buttons you can click on. What exactly is NSFW about that? If you saw that text, still clicked the "Enter" button, and then got offended when you saw porn, you don't really have a lot to bitch about. If the mere presence of a page warning that you're about to enter an adult site is itself considered NSFW where you work, then I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they also don't want you reading Slashdot, but apparently you're fine ignoring that.

Re:NSFW

[fprintf]

What is NSFW about this site is that anyone going to there will automatically be identified as trying to surf for pr0n on any internet logs. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to keep my job even though surfing Slashdot is not particularly in my job description.

Re:NSFW

[Anonymous Coward]

The big fat "This website contains sexually explicit material." on the first site (without any sexual content) could be a warning

Re:NSFW

[Anonymous Coward]

You're still surfing Slashdot on company time. Get back to work.

Re:NSFW

[linzeal]

Depending on their firewall and proxy just attempting to visit a site like that can get you flagged by IT.

Re:NSFW

[amicusNYCL]

Just to be pedantic, they'll also be able to see from the logs that you only hit the homepage and nothing else.

Re:NSFW

[Lunzo]

Did you really expect a "human flesh search engine" to be work-safe? The NSFW tag seems a bit redundant.

Re:NSFW

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really expect a "human flesh search engine" to be work-safe? The NSFW tag seems a bit redundant.

I'm a cannibal you insensitive bastard!

Re:NSFW

[WNight]

No, it'll show you NOT surfing for porn.

This zero-strikes policy is ridiculous and just because it's real doesn't mean you should live your life in fear of it. It can't be predicted because there's no end to made-up crimes or ways for things to coincidentally appear related to you.

Besides, if your job really was that tenuous one spam could end it. And in the end if it did we'd (collectively) be better off because you'd be free to work at a company focused on something other than petty censorship while your old company slowly tanked.

And yeah, this is assuming they don't fire your lazy ass for chatting.

Re:NSFW

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but it'll raise the red flag, and guess what they'll notice when they review your activity?

Hours and hours of time spent reading slashdot, which wouldn't have raised a red flag on its own...

It's great! ...until...

[Anonymous Coward]

The crowd makes a mistake and some random dude gets beaten down for something his lookalike neighbour did.
Do a news.google.com search for: vilgilante mistake
read
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1357909/Man-beaten-to-death-by-mistake.html

Netizens are the new Jack Bauer

[sakdoctor]

Except online vigilantes go after the softest of soft targets.

And why cats? Sounds like the Chinese version of btards.

Re:Netizens are the new Jack Bauer

[nstlgc]

If it sounds like a btard and acts like a btard...

Re:Netizens are the new Jack Bauer

[qengho]

And why cats?

Quite. The Chinese eat cats.

FAIL at quoting Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

"We do not forgive. We do not forget." (and they have over 9000 penises that are all raping children! Just ask Oprah!)

Umm...

[SlshSuxs]

"...cannot be stopped" Unplug it? ... but then people may be forced to go outside.

Democracy vs a Republic

[kenp2002]

I offer this:

Look at history, and political science and take a hard look at why republics functioned beter then pure democracy. The Internet runs the same risk.

Take heed and good luck, crowd sourcing has a hidden downside people are forgetting.

Re:Democracy vs a Republic

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.

Different forms of government flourish as conditions are suitable. No one form of government is ideal in all circumstances, and even now the idea of a direct democracy via sortition seems preferable to US republic hell bent on deficits and USSR type nannying its way to oblivion.

Re:Democracy vs a Republic

[Anonymous Coward]

republics functioned beter then pure democracy

Pure democracy was only ever tried in Greek city-states, and even there the concept was, by modern standards, pretty mangled. Moreover, most people who identify as democrats don't push for "pure democracy", that's just a strawman.

Trying to juxtapose democracies and republics is arguing apples and oranges. Many if not most republics are democratic. Take the Republic of Finland; a fine welfare state, keeping with (absolutely speaking) rather a democratic system and with a formidable socialist streak.

Re:Democracy vs a Republic

[Anonymous Coward]

But before you look at history, look at the post I've quoted and check for spelling mistakes.

Then decide if it is worth looking at the history this character talks about.

Re:Democracy vs a Republic

[KDR_11k]

You mean a representative democracy, a republic is only defined as not having a monarch and can be anything from a fascist dictatorship to a direct democracy.

Re:Democracy vs a Republic

[Lunzo]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one annoyed by misusing the term republic.

Re:Democracy vs a Republic

[kenp2002]

drat the political science major has outed me! (hides) Correct.

NSFW link.

[SatanicPuppy]

Just in case someone here...by some freak chance...doesn't know that RedTube is basically YouTube for Porn, don't clicky the linky if you're at work...y.

Re:NSFW link.

[Ant P.]

Don't clicky the linky if you're not holding your winky?

Re:NSFW link.

[MarkGriz]

Unless you happen to work in the porn industry

Re:NSFW link.

[Thaelon]

And here I thought it was a communist version of youtube!

Re:NSFW link.

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

And here I thought it was a communist version of youtube!

On SOVIET YOUTUBE, video watch YOU!

Re:NSFW link.

[S7urm]

And here I thought it was a communist version of youtube!

On SOVIET YOUTUBE, video watch YOU!

dude,

In Soviet Russia, videos watch YOU!

oh

and j00 m0mm4

Re:NSFW link.

[DerekLyons]

RedTube is basically YouTube for Porn

Copyright violations and all.

Re:NSFW link.

[Anonymous Coward]

More generally, http://www.ovguide.com/ (NSFW after you click the adult button at the bottom of the list on the left) links to many more redtube like sites.

china and cats... too bad they do not protest

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the Olympics in China and how they rounded up stray cats to be used for
meat or sent to death camps on the edge of the cities? Where was the internet justice
mob in China to protest that enmasse? Oh... It was the government and therefore too
hard a target to take on. Yet a girl kills a cat in China and is hunted down by this mob
of internet citizens.

(I am a proud person owned by a Siamese cat named Salem).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-528694/Olympics-clean-Chinese-style-Inside-Beijings-shocking-death-camp-cats.html
http://www.zootoo.com/petnews/chinakillsthousandsofcatsasoly-497

"BEIJING â" In an attempt to clean-up one of the world's most populous cities before thousands of foreigners flock there for the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, China has begun carrying out the round-up, and extermination of thousands of cats.

UK newspaper Daily Mail reported that the animals are being brought to government âoedeath campsâ where without food, water or health care they die of starvation and disease.

According to the reports, a Chinese government campaign has told Beijing residents to beware of stray and feral cats, as they may carry disease â" even attributing the spread of SARS in 2003 partially to the animals.

One result of the campaign has been mild hysteria, in one case two concerned kindergarten teachers were so afraid of potential illness reaching their students that they killed six stray felines by beating them to death with sticks."

Re:china and cats... too bad they do not protest

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUFzfRn7vc0

Which is Worse?

[mdmkolbe]

Which is worse, the internet developing an emergent technology based sentience (e.g. skynet) or the internet developing an emergent crowed based sentience like in these examples?

Personally I'm not sure which would scare me more.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[EvanED]

A STREET vigilante was jailed for six years...

Six years? For what should have been murder? Six years is even light for manslaughter.

Sheesh.

Not really the new Jack Bauer

[Opportunist]

More like the new mob. It's fine if you fit in, if you agree with whatever "the internet" agrees on. It's utter hell if you don't.

"The internet" is not much better than the average religious nutjobs picketing abortion clinics. They just picket different targets. Sure, today it's kitten killers and the Co$. But how long 'til the next groupthink target is a group you belong to? Will it take a lot to jump from hunting down criminals to hunting down people that dare to be different, that refuse to fit in, that did nothing really wrong but made someone feel "uneasy" thinking of what he does?

And I'm not even talking about sexual fetishes that make me (and probably a few other people) cringe.

It's a small step from vigilantism to harassment. From fighting a crime that the justice system ignores to beating people you just don't simply like.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[nstlgc]

Has it ever occurred to you that the reason these specific 'raids' might be so successful is that the evidence against the target is overwhelming? Do you really think over 9000 Internet nerds would have taken it to the streets if it wasn't about something that deserved it? Sure, btards pull retarded shit. But the really backward retarded shit usually isn't done by large mobs.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[mrex]

"Internet vigilantes", the kinds who do care about issues like cults and animal abuse, seem little more than pawns for the sociopathic trolls who enjoy nothing more than exerting power over their peers, particularly in ways that elevate their in-group status and justify their innate desire to inflict suffering on those peers.

"Cult like mentality" is an apt description.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[mrex]

Do you really think over 9000 Internet nerds would have taken it to the streets if it wasn't about something that deserved it?

The social engineering is usually the easiest part of any hack.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[Anonymous Coward]

The social engineering is usually the easiest part of any hack.

Good luck with that. The internet is not your personal army.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[CantGetAUserName]

Have you considered how effective this could be if a certain cult that prefers attack to defence (or, indeed, anyone with anything to hide) can figure out how to work this to their advantage. If this keeps up I'm thinking it won't be too long before prying too deeply into some cults results in accusations of kitten-stomping or worse, because if you're busy cleaning the graffitti from your front door you won't be pursuing the cult in question.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[Opportunist]

Define "deserved" please.

While you're at it, imagine a divorce battle between a computer savvy partner and a computer illiterate one, with the former handing it over to "the internet".

You may hear both sides. But nobody said you have to. That's the difference between the verdict from a judge to a mob verdict. It's a bit like the fallacy that having a free press means you get fair, unbiased information. Just because you may say the truth and give unbiased information doesn't mean you have to.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[Opportunist]

No really, you think?

Why limit it to cults? You could easily bully any kind of minority group activist that way. Think it would have been unthinkable that people like Ghandi or Martin Luther King could have been "internet mobbed" if they fought their battle for the freedom of their people today?

Dirt can be slung many ways. It's not always going to hit the right targets.

That you can motivate people for the "wrong" goals is a given. For reference, consult a history book. As long as there is at least a latent uneasiness with a certain group, it is fairly easy to motivate people to actually hate that group if you give them enough reason to. All you have to do is twist reality a bit (like, blaming the group for something that happened to one of their members, even if the group had nothing to do with it, or blaming the actions of one of the members on the group), blow minor things out of proportion, or if everything fails, just invent things (don't worry, nobody will check). And there you go, you have a mob, aimed and targeted at the group you hate, and every activist they might field is of course a primary target for slander and worse.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad someone finally gave Co$ a dose of their own medicine. They're well known for group bullying tactics. But I'd fear this power in the wrong hands, aimed at the wrong targets.

There's always a nonzero chance that it could be you one day. Everyone is in some respect in some minority group, one way or another...

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[Opportunist]

No, it's its own personal army.

We have a tabloid here that is credited with having a lot of power. About 50% of the population reads it. It's said that they make presidents. Some claim they dictate the politics more than anyone, because the people believe the paper and they believe what they read.

Not quite. The paper in turn can only write what people want to read. It's not really a quality paper. It's more populist in nature. It can't convince the people that, say, the communists are great and they should rule the earth. It just won't happen.

Likewise, you can't really "steer" the internet and its users. You can nudge them, at best. You can give them a target, but only if they already kinda want to attack that target.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[Anonymous Coward]

"The internet" is not much better than the average religious nutjobs picketing abortion clinics. They just picket different targets. Sure, today it's kitten killers and the Co$. But how long 'til the next groupthink target is a group you belong to?

Any group I would belong to would be far more defensible than "people who tape themselves torturing animals to death." As such, I'm utterly unworried about being targeted "by the internet."

How about you? Are you honestly worried? What are you doing that's so sensational that a significant portion of "the internet" would peel themselves away from WoW and Facebook to punish you for? Unless you're directly and graphically ruining lives, I doubt anyone gives a shit. (And if you are, you deserve to be targeted.)

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[mrex]

You can give them a target, but only if they already kinda want to attack that target.

Unless you can figure out what makes them want to attack a target, and then give them that in a believable way. That's what opposition research is all about.

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[mrex]

PR firms disagree

Re:Not really the new Jack Bauer

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you just post an "if you're not guilty, you have nothing to worry about" here?

Mob Mentality and Internet Rabble-Rousing

[MarkvW]

Many people will SAY anything. I've seen people on /. advocate the murder of people who hold views of copyright different from their own. Extreme positions get amplified on the internet because extreme people can easily interact with other like-minded extreme people. That's all fine and dandy, so long as it's just idiots saying stupid stuff. Freedom of speech, whatever.

The problem for me is that there is a very small minority of people who can be triggered to act by the incitement of others. These people will reach out and HURT people with little or no factual support. Unless stopped, people like this exert an evil influence all out of proportion to their otherwise insignificant place in society. Nazis did that kind of stuff in the 1930s and it really chilled the behavior of other law-abiding Germans. A real turd-Kultur was created there. That kind of history ought best not be repeated.

If people alter their behavior because they are afraid of being tormented by Internet-spawned wrongful "meat world" attacks, then they are not free. Balancing protection from such acts with the right to freely interact on the internet is a serious legal and moral challenge.

Re:Mob Mentality and Internet Rabble-Rousing

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem for me is that there is a very small minority of people who can be triggered to act by the incitement of others. These people will reach out and HURT people with little or no factual support."

These people will reach out and HURT people without others telling them to anyways. Some people are just dangerous. Welcome to humanity.

Re:Mob Mentality and Internet Rabble-Rousing

[Sponge Bath]

...advocate the murder of people who hold views of copyright different from their own

Hmmm... do you have a link? I've seen all sorts of violence advocated on /. against scumbag organizations trying to destroy people's lives using illegal and unethical tactics in the name of copyright enforcement, but never for just a different view.

Spammers on the other hand must die horribly.

Re:Mob Mentality and Internet Rabble-Rousing

[DaveV1.0]

scumbag organizations trying to destroy people's lives using illegal and unethical tactics in the name of copyright enforcement,

Hmmm... do you have a link showing where illegal and unethical tactics were used? How about proof that the violations of copyright weren't illegal and unethical?

I have plenty of links to posts here on slashdot where the poster states (s)he does not care if it is illegal or unethical to violate copyright, so isn't it pretty much hypocritical to claim it wrong for "scumbag organizations" to use "illegal and unethical tactics" yet say nothing, support, or even commit "illegal and unethical tactics" to advance your cause?

Re:Mob Mentality and Internet Rabble-Rousing

[jafiwam]

[Tongue In Cheek]

Please stop with the christian bashing.

[/Tongue In Cheek]

Re:It's great! ...until...

[internerdj]

Ooops. Sorry we killed an innocent man. We'll get it right next time. The reason we have (admittedly a very broken) justice system is the crowd is not at all capable of making reasonable and consistent judgments on the guilt and severity of a crime. The crowd doesn't demand punishment for the guilty; the crowd demands a scapegoat in retribution for a wrong whether the guilty party can be reached or not(Sorry Iraq).

I, for one...

[SlovakWakko]

...welcome our new YouTube watching overlords!

Did the author just watch The Terminator?

[HockeyPuck]

Sounds like he just watched The Terminator...

'The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.'

From the movie..

That Terminator is out there.
It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with.
It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear
and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Re:Did the author just watch The Terminator?

[Ant P.]

Nah, he just made an attempt to look cool by quoting a 4chan line. And got it wrong.

Re:Did the author just watch The Terminator?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just watched The Terminator! I'm not the author, though.

I did it

[Anonymous Coward]

for the lulz!

My Hyperbole Detector...

[Anonymous Coward]

...just exploded.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[mcgrew]

So what's the difference between the crowd making a mistale and the police making a mistake?

DNA Testing Clears Virginia Man Of 1984 Rape
Chicago man sues Chicago, police over wrongful conviction
Milwaukee DA Drops Charge In 1995 Murder Case
Tests prove innocence of 23-year prisoner in Texas
New arson analysis may free convicted murderer
Texas Enacts 'Innocence Committee' Over Excessive Wrongful Convictions

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Xelios]

While I'm not too thrilled about people taking the law into their own hands, lets try to keep some perspective. How many innocent people have been jailed or executed by our 'proper' systems of justice? More than a few, I'll bet. Judges and juries are prone to making mistakes just like the rest of us. Most of these internet vigilante cases so far have ended in personal information being made public, threats against the suspects and evidence being sent to local authorities who take it from there (unless the person didn't actually commit a crime in his country). I'm hoping the internet gives some sense of separation from the issue that keeps people from doing anything too rash, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

ED

[Grithok]

So basically this is a post about encyclopedia dramatica?

Yes, its 4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

Its called /b/

Justice according to Wikipedia and Slashdot

[bzzfzz]

The outcome ultimately is justice through online voting and consensus systems, like the moderation system here, or the various systems of community sanctions over at Wikipedia. The problem is not that these systems are unfair, since they are arguably no worse than traditional legal systems (whose track record is far from perfect). The problem is that they are open to manipulation by people who have the willingness and the knowhow to game the system.

Re:Justice according to Wikipedia and Slashdot

[Reziac]

So... someday you could be judged by an internet mob from halfway around the world, who have not bothered to even look at the evidence (or RTFA, as we'd say here).

At that point, justice will truly become like politics.

NEDM Fad

[Maverick Hunter Zero]

This reminds me of the whole NEDM fad on YTMND. Basically, if you don't know, it stemmed from a video that was put online of a guy stuffing a cat in a hamster cage, dousing it in gasoline, and burning it alive. The guys were eventually caught and put in jail thanks to the internet. More info on the fad: NEDM

Anonymous' most recent missed target

[snarfies]

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Cheyenne_Cherry

Anonymous hates people, but loves cats (as evidenced by Caturday and the entire "lolcats" phenomena). Their most recent target is the evil Cheyenne Cherry, who put a kitten in an oven and roasted it alive. Anonymous went through a lot of effort to get as much info as possible, but jumped the gun at first. The NY Daily News reported a 75-yo retiree with a similar name had her phone number posted, and the result? "They're all saying, 'You'll burn in hell,' 'Who the hell do you think you are?'" Bernadette Cherry, 72, said of the 75 calls from cat lovers."

Re:Anonymous' most recent missed target

[Vohar]

Wow. Warning: That link is -very- NSFW unless you work for the Klan. Had to clear my cache and history after viewing that one.

Re:Anonymous' most recent missed target

[Knara]

Wow. Warning: That link is -very- NSFW unless you work for the Klan. Had to clear my cache and history after viewing that one.

Word of advice, if someone links to a page in a discussion about "anonymous", "/b/", "btards" or "4chan" there is a 99.44% chance clicking on it will get you fired.

Re:Anonymous' most recent missed target

[syntaxglitch]

Wow. Warning: That link is -very- NSFW unless you work for the Klan. Had to clear my cache and history after viewing that one.

It's Encyclopaedia fucking Dramatica. You must be new around here. As far as links to never click at work go, that ranks somewhere between kiddie porn and goatse.

Re:Anonymous' most recent missed target

[Incadenza]

Of course you can always collect your cat lovers hatemail in a book, as the Dutch artist Tinkebell did with all the mail she received after turning her cat into a purse. Oh and of course she didn't just collect the hatemail, she also searched the Internet for pictures and stories of her hatemailers.
From the NRC article:

The hate mail generated by the Pinkeltje project forms the basis of Simonse's latest project. The artists has collected the thousands of threatening emails she received between 2004 and 2008, and published them in a yellow pages-size book titled Dearest Tinkebell.

The book has already stirred a controversy of its own because Simonse doesn't just publish the emails - almost a thousand of them - but also the names, ages, addresses of the people who sent them. She also provides links to people's YouTube videos and MySpace profiles, and any embarrassing information, photos or videos she found there.

Re:Anonymous' most recent missed target

[Vohar]

Been around here for over a year, and that's the first mention of them that I've seen. You've heard of them before, good for you. Cookie?

Re:Anonymous' most recent missed target

[Anonymous Coward]

The book has already stirred a controversy of its own because Simonse doesn't just publish the emails - almost a thousand of them - but also the names, ages, addresses of the people who sent them. She also provides links to people's YouTube videos and MySpace profiles, and any embarrassing information, photos or videos she found there.

LOL, that's awesome. To any of you fuckwits out there who are reading this: Next time you give some random stranger all sorts of personal information in a fit of rage-induced frenzy, stop and think about what they could do with it if they were so inclined.

It's awfully easy to send an anonymous letter. The only thing you need to reveal is the zip code from which it was sent, and that can be as far from your home as you care to make it... and don't even get me started on how easy it would be to make a throw-away e-mail account instead of idiotically using your personal address to send your hate mail.

There will always be something!

[erroneus]

My fucking god! Every time I turn around, there comes to my attention yet another sick thing I couldn't possibly have imagined on my own. "Kitten Killing Videos"?? Holy crap!! And no, nobody needs to list "things sicker than kitten killing videos" and definitely do not post links. To this day, I have not watched two girls and a cup. It was the Daniel Pearlman video that convinced me that if I am warned that I shouldn't see a video, I should probably heed the warning. It cured my "morbid sense of curiosity" forever. (Movie violence be damned, but for all my "kill the spammers" rants, I doubt I could actually stomach actually being the executioner... handing down the sentence is one thing, but actually killing another person? Probably more than I can handle.)

Re:There will always be something!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kitten Killing Videos"?? Holy crap!! And no, nobody needs to list "things sicker than kitten killing videos" and definitely do not post links.

What's wrong with kitten killing? It's a perfectly natural urge to have. Okay, so some people film themselves killing a kitten, and not everybody wants to see that, but hey that's just how some people are. You can't fault them for wanting to share. Meantime, if I weren't at work I'd go kill one right now...

Umm... we are talking about pleasuring ourselves, right? That's what we're talking about by killing kittens, isn't it? Because I would never literally kill a kitten. That would just be sick.

Re:There will always be something!

[pelago]

If you are a cat-lover, I recommend not even reading the first link in TFS. It doesn't contain the video but it does graphically describe what was in it, which has left me quite shaken.

Re:There will always be something!

[PMBjornerud]

My fucking god! Every time I turn around, there comes to my attention yet another sick thing I couldn't possibly have imagined on my own. "Kitten Killing Videos"?? Holy crap!! And no, nobody needs to list "things sicker than kitten killing videos" and definitely do not post links.

Seriously, just watch a cat kill a mouse.

Re:There will always be something!

[erroneus]

Not a cat lover, but you don't have to be. It's just senseless and wrong.

Re:There will always be something!

[erroneus]

I get what you are saying. But somehow, my brain has no trouble rationalizing animals killing one another or even alligators killing and dismembering people. (Ever see that video of the guy getting his wrist removed by the alligator? It was reattached just fine I understand...) It's not quite the disgustingness that gets to me. It's the senselessness that tears at me. I may need to explore my own feelings on the matter to gain more clarification, but you are right to point out that there is extreme gore in nature and that it is quite comparative. It is this that makes me realize that it is not gore alone that leaves me disturbed -- it is the people and my inability to even remotely identify with what they are doing... for fun!

Grace Wang

[xplenumx]

it is not a good thing.

I'm sure Grace Wang would agree with you.

In brief, Grace Wang was an international student at Duke and dared to try an initiate a discussion between the pro-Tibet and pro-Chinese sides of a protest. After being attacked on forums such as mitbbs.com "Online Vigilantes" decided to bring these attacks to the real world by posting her personal information (her student visa application) and providing maps to her parents' house (which was defaced, causing her parents to go into hiding).

Defending kittens are one thing, but as with "think of the children", it rarely stops there.

Re:Grace Wang

[Presto Vivace]

Wow, I had not previously heard about this. I really don't know what to do about the digital mob, except keep warning people that it is not a good thing.

Re:Grace Wang

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

it is not a good thing.

I'm sure Grace Wang would agree with you.

Thank you for posting this. This is a perfect example of how Chinese groupthink works.

I don't have a link, but I remember reading an article where an angry ex-wife put some false allegations about her ex-husband online (this was also in China) and the guy ended up being constantly harassed until the government stepped in and protected him and put the ex-wife in jail for lying. I've heard of similar stories happening with "online justice" in South Korea where people just believe whatever horrible thing someone says online about another person.

What really bothers me about China is that many young people there seem to have this patriotic fervor that's based in nothing more than believing what the government tells them. I would be shocked if someone asked Chinese students why they are so angry about Taiwanese independence or Tibetan independence (or even autonomy) and that had anything to say beyond "They are now and always have been part of China". I've been to Taiwan and except for a few crazy pro-independence nut jobs, most people there just want to be left alone by China and nothing more than that. They don't wish any ill on China, they just want to be left alone. It seems to me that the Chinese government actually likes to encourage this irrational "Everything we say and do is right" attitude. It makes the population easier to control when they are incapable of independent thought.

Finally I read the original article and I found some aspects troubling. First of all, some people figured out where the kitten killing in China occurred by recognizing things in the video. No problem them. But then it says that someone recognized the shoes the girl wore and knew they were ordered online. OK, maybe these shoes are only available online and someone knew that. Fine. But then it says that they figured out who ordered them and went after her. Hmm... serious lack of privacy here. So it's not the government asking the business to see who did this but just an angry mob and the company apparently gave them the info. What? Was there only one woman who ordered the shoes? So how on earth from this paltry information did they figure out who did it? I don't know. It sounds kind of fishy to me but if true, I guess it says a lot about China that all you have to do is get an angry mob and businesses will give out all your personal info to them.

Re:Grace Wang

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing her, I would the NYTimes piece is very biased (in a good way, naturally, towards human rights). But the girl is an attention-whoring slut, and deserves what she got and more. Those pieces are her side of the story only- if you ask her roommate, you'll know what kind of "person" she really is.

Not exactly a fit, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone clever could turn this into a Two Minute Hate, craft videos of crimes not really committed, wars not really fought, and enemies who don't exist. Congratulations, you can now harness the raw power of a hateful, vindictive crowd.

"The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroyâ" everything. "

No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this predicted years ago by Bruce Sterling in Makeki Neko? Use of the 'net to commit "death by a thousand paper cuts", or harassment by many, many small acts, each of which individually wouldn't be considered unlawful, but in aggregate become overwhelming? I'm not sure whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, but it almost certainly is going to happen.

Re:No surprise

[Actually, I do RTFA]

or harassment by many, many small acts, each of which individually wouldn't be considered unlawful, but in aggregate become overwhelming?

And also become illegal. At least where I live, law recognizes that the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.

A common mistake made by people in cases of copyright and harassment.

(Standard IANAL disclaimer)

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sharing that. It was an interesting read.

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Best short story I've read in almost a year.

Anonymous delivers!

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Animal torturers deserve nothing less than death.

...and justice for all

[Anonymous Coward]

The government isn't going to waste time and money going after these people and thus far it sure seems like these are some fuckers who really deserve whatever the government can do to them. People who participate in hunting these people are just filling a void.
It sounds like nothing illegal was done by those participating in the hunt, at least nothing obvious. It's not like they are hunting the person down in order to physically assault them, they just all want to express their opinion at the same time to that person and make sure that everyone who knows them is aware of what they have done. Is it really a lynch mob if the noose is nothing more than information?

Re:...and justice for all

[geobeck]

Is it really a lynch mob if the noose is nothing more than information?

Unfortunately, it only takes one nutjob to turn a peaceful demonstration into a 'dangerous mob'.

Re:...and justice for all

[Rary]

It's not like they are hunting the person down in order to physically assault them...

...yet.

And how long until they go after an innocent person?

Re:...and justice for all

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really a lynch mob if the noose is nothing more than information?

Unfortunately, it only takes one nutjob to turn a peaceful demonstration into a 'dangerous mob'.

Or an Agent provocateur.

Re:...and justice for all

[ArsonSmith]

Or the police/security.

Re:...and justice for all

[Nekomusume]

And that nutjob is just as likely to be one of the police supposedly there to prevent violence/etc.

Re:...and justice for all

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And how long until they go after an innocent person?

Like these?

but...

[n30na]

Didn't we already know about anonymous? This is just the different face of the same thing.

People already have tendencies for this sort of thing, the internet just lets them work together. You don't need a very large portion of the internet fighting for your cause to have a force to be reckoned with.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Anonymous Coward]

How many innocent people have been jailed or executed by our 'proper' systems of justice?

Any system that's in the habit of executing people is hardly a "proper system of justice because"...

Judges and juries are prone to making mistakes just like the rest of us.

Exactly. Enlightened societies have worked that out by now. What sort of hell hole are you living in?

And as to how being jailed compares to being beaten to death by a mob... uh, jail is correctable to some degree when a mistake is uncovered.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right. Like the police never make a mistake and beat down some innocent man. (They beat and kill deaf people for "not obeying our commands" all the time. Google it.) And the courts never make a mistake and convict an innocent man. But crowds, they can't be trusted, because they make mistakes!

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Archangel Michael]

There is a reason why people still want vigilante justice today, because when someone who is obvious guilt of something like child rape, gets one year in jail, it pisses even the most level headed of us off.

No, it doesn't make it right, I'm just saying.

Suffice it to say, justice in this world is not perfect. And it will always be imperfect.

scary

[n30na]

If two versus one is rarely a fair fight, what can be said for two million verses one? It's a scary reality.

master of philosophy

[Onymous Coward]

Whatever. Take that feel-good stuff somewhere else. Two wrongs often do make a write, and eye for an eye does make me feel better. I don't care what Gandhi says.

Ah, it makes you feel better. Hm... Basing morality on urges is kind of a bad sign, isn't it?

I might suggest we all try to find ethical wisdom from different sources, rather than some anon online forum commenters. I know, kooky.

Re:master of philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

I might suggest we all try to find ethical wisdom from different sources, rather than some anon online forum commenters.

Wow, a hypocritical statement uttered without even a hint of irony. You really must be an MPhil, what with all that condescension and arrogance and nothing to back it up.

Re:master of philosophy

[Onymous Coward]

I'm no "anon forum commenter". I'm onymous.

Some folks see irony where there isn't any.

Don't you think?

Re:master of philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I thought it was pretty ironic... not sure about the hypocrisy thing, though.

I mean, to take your advice, I'd have to, erm, basically violate the idea you're proposing, because you basically are an anon as far as I'm concerned. I've never met you, most likely never will, and it's not like I have your real name or address.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. And the justice system make mistake too, but with due process, hopefully, the number is mistake is reduce. The due process is just not there with a crowd. No one want to listen to the person who said "stop hitting him, we got the wrong guy."

Re:It's great! ...until...

[fm6]

Right, rules of evidence, jury trials, right to appeal, right to have legal representation, none of these make any difference.

The question isn't "which system never screws up". There's no such system. The question is which system screws up the least. I think that a system that relies on some random idiot saying, "Hey, that must be the guy!" isn't even close to the top of that list.

Yet they do nothing aainst those in true power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice who the victims of justice are: people who have no power. Notice that for all of China's vigilante "might", they are powerless against the people who wield true power, the ruling Communist party. It's one thing to gang up on some weak female, but try doing that against those who control not only tanks, but the very weapon the vigilantes use: the Internet. The vigilante's sword comes with chains attached, not strings.

This is just the weak mob ganging up on the peasant. They dare not do that to the Emperor.

Re:Yet they do nothing aainst those in true power.

[couchslug]

"This is just the weak mob ganging up on the peasant. They dare not do that to the Emperor."

They have not been inconvenienced enough to revolt (and given the condition of China in 1948, and how far it has come, there is more reason for evolution than revolution....). Chinese proved they are capable of revolution, but their benevolent authoritarian regime isn't worth the social disruption, economic disruption, and violence revolution would entail.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Rary]

So what's the difference between the crowd making a mistale and the police making a mistake?

The police and the rest of the criminal justice system are bound by rules designed to at least attempt to "get it right". The crowd is not. The crowd will make more serious mistakes more frequently than the criminal justice system.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[strength_of_10_men]

So what's the difference between the crowd making a mistale and the police making a mistake?

A Trial and some accountability

Give me a break

[Verdatum]

'The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.'

I call BS. The Internet is a gaping global case of Attention Deficit Disorder. Show it a cute LOLCAT image, or a video of someone getting hit in the balls, and totally forgets about flavor-of-the-month investigation project.

.

Richard Kimble: I DIDN'T KILL MY WIFE!!

4chan.org/b/: I DON'T CARE!.....Ooo look guys, new cam-whore! lulz, she's ugly.

Re:Give me a break

[n30na]

There's no dash in camwhore, silly.

Why does that remind me of abortions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yes, because the same mob-thinking is at work when addresses of clinics, doctors and nurses who do abortions (legally!) get posted to public internet sites and these people get harrassed by lunatics.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that murder is legal doesn't make it justified.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[geminidomino]

Except you don't get to decide if it's murder or not. That's the lawmakers' job. Otherwise, you're committing the same action: deciding you know better than the law.

No value judgments from me on whether that's wrong nor not, just making a case for consistency.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who tries to claim that partial birth abortion isn't murder is downright deluded. When the difference, legally speaking, between "abortion" and "murder" is a matter of several inches – literally – we've moved to the realm of positionally-determined humanity rather than innate humanity. In other words, you're a human because you're no longer inside your mom's vagina, but this kid isn't (human) because he or she is.

I don't really care how far back you want to extrapolate that (speaking of time, i.e. abortions performed earlier in the gestation period)... if we can't agree that PBA is murder, then someone's not being rational and there's no point in arguing further. But if we can at the very least agree that PBA is murder, we've defined one form of murder that isn't legally considered murder, and it needs to be stopped; no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. If that baby is human, there is absolutely nothing lawmakers can do to take away its inalienable rights, which are affirmed (not granted!) in the constitution: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those rights are innate to humanity. They can be either respected or violated, but they cannot be taken away.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[Roland Deschene]

Except you don't get to decide if it's murder or not. That's the lawmakers' job

Not for abortion. The Supreme Court took abortion out of lawmakers hands by saying it's a constitutional right based on privacy. I don't have a right to privately smoke pot, but I have the right to privatly get an abortion. Go figure. Anyway...

Maybe if "the lawmakers" got to decide abortion, some of those whack jobs on the pro-life side will calm down. As it stands, they have a valid complaint. They and their lawmakers have no voice on the issue of abortion.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[geminidomino]

Anyone who tries to claim that partial birth abortion isn't murder is downright deluded.

Considering that "murder" is "the unlawful killing of one human being by another, especially with premeditated malice," I've got to call you on your rhetoric.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, right, it's okay because it's "lawful". Never mind the fact that they're a completely innocent human and they're just at the wrong place at the wrong time, by no fault of their own.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[geminidomino]

I never said it was okay. I said it wasn't "murder," and it's not.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the legal system has defined "murder". It has deliberately defined the word in an obviously wrong sense to cater to the demands of certain powerful voices. Therefore, my definition of "murder" disagrees with its definition. Abortion is deliberately killing an innocent human. That is murder.

I don't give a fuck what the legal system says about it. If the legal system decided tomorrow that a person is no longer a human when they're in a phone booth, and therefore killing them while they're in the phone booth is not murder, it wouldn't change the fact that they are human and killing them is murder. A person's humanity can never be either granted or taken away by the legal system.

Re:Why does that remind me of abortions?

[geminidomino]

Congraturation!

A vigilante is you!

Re:It's great! ...until...

[fm6]

Actually, the victim here wasn't all that random. He was an Indian immigrant. Funny how racial minorities tend to be victims of "mistaken identity" more than the rest of us. Which leads us to a completely different reason to despise vigilante "justice".

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's okay. We'll hunt all those bastards down and MAKE THEM PAY FOR WHAT THEY DID!

Re:hidden downside

[Anonymous Coward]

where is/was this pure democracy you speak of? With other myths like communism?

But of course here goes my argument to support yours. Direct democracy is like a rule of the mob. Mob is ruthless, violent, mindless and murderous. Being ruthless, violent, mindless and murderous is bad. So direct democracy is bad. There!

Isn't there a special fallacy for this? False analogy was it?

Direct democracy never existed. Despotic anarchy is hardly a valid historic example for deducting its "hidden downsides".

Re:It's great! ...until...

[parlancex]

Vigilante justice is wrong and it isn't hard to prove that, but the instances cited in TFA aren't really about vigilante justice as the summary would suggest. The crowd didn't find these people and punish them, it just found them. They will be subject to the same due process as anybody else accused of a crime (though I can't speak for in China). The trend worth discussing here is more akin to internet detective-work, not internet justice, and I think we can agree that internet detective-work has a stronger case than vigilante justice.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[mcgrew]

All the links (and there are many, many more) are to newspaper reports of people being exonerated of crimes they didn't commit after being punished for those crimes. Persinally, I'd rather get my ass kicked for something I didn't do than to be tried, convicted, imprisoned for years, and never be able to vote, own a gun, or work again for a crime I didn't commit.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Ironica]

So what's the difference between the crowd making a mistale and the police making a mistake?

Right of appeal.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[mcgrew]

Two wrongs often do make a write

Yeah, when they make the newspapers. Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

better things to do

[burris]

Maybe these people should stop worrying about cats and direct their energies to the tens of millions of human beings suffering under brutal oppression, man-made famine, religious and gender persecution, torture, and unlawful detention.

Then again, what else should I expect from a culture that demonizes and imprisons someone for arranging dog fights while former leaders and government officials who ordered the torture of humans are given a platform for their disgusting rationalizations and don't even face a trial.

I'm GLAD, you hear me? GLAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was subjected to a video of someone drowning a cat today and it made me sick. Yes; subjected. I went to a site where I didn't expect such things to appear. It took me a few seconds to realize what I was seeing. Then I promptly close the window. But the damage to my psyche was done. I wished there was someway I could reach into the internet and smash the person who tortured that cat.

I now feel better knowing that some people are punished for such deeds.

Nonsense

[darthwader]

The "cannot be stopped" part of the summary is complete nonsense. All you need to do to stop the internet is show it something shiny. Public opinion and passion is notoriously fickle.

If there are a thousand crimes committed, the police will make a real effort to investigate all of them, allocating their resources reasonably according to the severity of the crime and the likelyhood of a successful investigation. They will work on an investigation for days, weeks, months or years as required.

The internet "angry mob", on the other hand, will only investigate the single most exciting, dramatic, attention-getting crime. They will devote 100% of their effort to finding a scapegoat for that crime, until they get bored or something more exciting comes along.

A smart police force can and will use the power of the masses (think "Amber alert"), but it is still in control of the investigation.

Re:Nonsense

[hkmwbz]

The "cannot be stopped" part of the summary is complete nonsense. All you need to do to stop the internet is show it something shiny. Public opinion and passion is notoriously fickle.

It can't be stopped (the phenomenon). More cases like these will continue to appear. And it can't be stopped. Even China's censorship was unable to stop it, and it's a worldwide phenomenon. Showing something shiny won't really help if they smell blood.

Re:Nonsense

[falconwolf]

A smart police force can and will use the power of the masses (think "Amber alert"), but it is still in control of the investigation.

Amber alerts can lead to the same thing. A mob can attack a person who's with someone in an Amber Alert as easily as they can someone like this person who stomped on the kitten.

Falcon

Re:It's great! ...until...

[billcopc]

That's one specific problem, but the GLOBAL problem with vigilante justice is it has no defined endpoint.

If the vigilante response exceeds what is considered "fair", and it usually does, the instinctive reaction by the accused is to retaliate. It's not a criminal mind type thing, it's human nature. If I call you names and you punch me in the balls, I will knock you with a baseball bat, and you will shoot me in the ass, and I will burn down your house with your family trapped inside, etc etc etc... the rage continues to snowball without any sort of control.

If only...

[Hurricane78]

...they would do the same to their government, and make it pay, instead of only complaining in blogs. ^^

I guess it must be the imagination that many millions of people could not fight some thousands of people, because they would be protected by an army of those very same millions of people. ;)

Re:If only...

[n30na]

Maybe once we crowdsource the rest of reality too. Right now, weapons seem to be a lot less free than information.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Captain Sarcastic]

The crowd will make more serious mistakes more frequently than the criminal justice system.

And sometimes it isn't necessarily by mistake. How many times have people been targeted for mob action, not because of wrongdoing, but because of opportunity:

• Tom owes me money, and doesn't look to be paying me soon.
• Dick's son banged my daughter, then went and married that trollope down the hall.
• Harry knows I've been siphoning cash from the coffee fund.

Of course, whoever starts this won't say the actual reason. They can just say, "Hey, look, there's [fill-in-the-blank]! Get him!"

I for one...

[Hurricane78]

No, I will not finish that meme.

"The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever."

And it's incredibly stupid and totally uninformed, just like every other lynch mob since long before the kristallnacht and the witch-hunt.

What could possibly go wrong...?

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Minwee]

There is a reason why people still want vigilante justice today, because when someone who is obvious guilt of something like child rape, gets one year in jail, it pisses even the most level headed of us off.

And then the most level headed among you go looking for revenge on the pediatricians.

Didn't you even wonder why people _don't_ want vigilante justice?

Re:It's great! ...until...

[TomRK1089]

Why did such an obvious troll get +4 Informative? Because obviously the justice system with checks and balances is inferior to beating the snot out of someone on what amounts to hearsay.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Two wrongs often do make a write

I contest that and ask you to present a single instance.

beaten to shit ... eye for an eye

But killing people for harming animals isn't eye for an eye. It's more like a limb for a broken nose. Have a sense of proportion. Also, try to curb your bloodlust and act like a person who doesn't live in a cave.

It's simple justice.

But it's not. It's out of proportion and it's based on emotion. It's the same feel-good stuff you tell people to take elsewhere, just the other end of the spectrum.

Death Note

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason why people still want vigilante justice today, because when someone who is obvious guilt of something like child rape, gets one year in jail, it pisses even the most level headed of us off.

Reminds me of an anime...

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Xelios]

I think you missed the point, and also the quotes around 'proper'. Don't rely so much on isolated incidents, you can make a case for anything by using an isolated incident to make sweeping generalizations, that's why there's a whole class of fallacies called "faulty generalizations".

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Zakabog]

That story is idiotic, someone wrote the word "paedo" on her door.

That's it.

THE HORROR! They don't know WHY the word was on the door, there is no evidence at all of it being a vigilante act other than a hunch because she's a pediatrician and believes someone got her confused for a pedophile. Well who exactly would know that she's a pediatrician without actually knowing what a pediatrician is? Does she have a sign on her lawn? Did they read her name tag and figure she's really proud of being a pedophile?

While I agree vigilante acts are dangerous and it would be simple to go after the wrong person, there isn't enough information on this one particular story to say 100% that it was a misdirected vigilante attack. On top of that the penalty wasn't nearly as severe as the punishment dealt to the people in the article.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[DerekLyons]

It's not even which system screws up the least - it's which system has built in procedures for error correction (which mostly) work, and built in procedures for appeals (which mostly work). The system that relies on some random idiot saying, "Hey, that must be the guy!" lacks both of these key features.
 
Nobody with any sense won't admit our current justice problems, but you'd have to be seriously biased or ignorant to fail the realize the vast difference between the two systems or to ask questions like "what's the difference between the crowd making a mistale [sic] and the police making a mistake?"

Re:It's great! ...until...

[mcgrew]

Tell me, would you rather get the snot beat out of you, or spend tewnty years in prison after which you lose your right to vote, bear arms, find it impossible to get a job because of your record, and if you are wrongly convicted of a sex crime (like in one of the links I provided) have to be on a sex offender registry and have severe limitations on where you can live?

Personally, I'd take the ass beating any day.

Cyber-lynch mob

[hessian]

Wait until they make their first mistake and crush the first innocent person.

Wait until you see this being used to hound, ostracize and impoverish political dissidents.

If a lynch mob is a bad idea, a cyber lynch-mob is a bad idea.

And even more poignant: for every one cat killed by a Chinese psycho, probably 100,000 are euthanized in animal shelters across America.

Dying in pain or not, dead is still dead, and those cats are dead.

The Crowd wants to deny its real problems, which are systematic and institutional cruelty to animals and people, by beating up on a few scapegoats.

Re:Cyber-lynch mob

[Captain Sarcastic]

Wait until they make their first mistake and crush the first innocent person....

That will depend. If it's the Chinese government, they may well decide that an innocent person was just the sort of counter-revolutionary who would post fake information about the birthdates of the members of their Olympic women's gymnastic team...

Re:Cyber-lynch mob

[Locke2005]

Every living thing dies at some point... what's your point? Most people would prefer to be quietly euthanized than stomped to death by a woman in stiletto heals. And for those of you who prefer being stomped on by stilettos, I'm sure they have porn for that...

China, not USA

[SethJohnson]

The linked article references online vigilantism in China, but offers no example of it taking place in America. The American animal cruelty example referenced in the article illustrates an online crowd working to identify the culprits, which were then apprehended by police and charged via due process of the law. There is nothing regrettable in this case.

I am happy to see online tools used by citizens to identify criminals for law enforcement purposes. In fact, I hope someone identifies these guys and alerts the Austin Police Department.

Seth

I am currently being unjustly harassed

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currently being unjustly harassed by one of these idiot vigilantes. We squared off over a financial transaction that was ultimately settled but the emotions were not settled on either side. He has brought his vigilante network to bear on harassing me regularly. I can prove I am being harassed. I cannot prove who is doing it...I'm not that good at network forensics. The damage is very minimal, just psychological warfare at this point, although it is escalating lately. I am not a get-even kinda person, below a very high threshold anyway.

I am appalled that anyone would condone this end run around the law enforcement and judicial system, based only on suspicion and hearsay. Some law enforcement agencies are even encouraging this behavior.

Wanna get rid of your boss? Just tell one of the more zealous of these jerks that he's a cat torturer, they'll take care of the rest.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[sckeener]

you forgot the classic documentary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Blue_Line_(documentary)

The film concerns the November 28, 1976 murder of Dallas police officer, Robert W. Wood, during a traffic stop. The Dallas Police Department was unable to make an arrest until they learned of information given by a 16-year-old resident of Vidor, Texas who had told friends that he was responsible for the crime.[2] The juvenile, David Ray Harris, led police to the car driven from the scene of the crime, as well as a .22 caliber revolver he identified as the murder weapon. He subsequently identified 28-year-old Ohio resident Randall Dale Adams as the murderer. Adams had been living in a motel in Dallas with his brother. The film presents a series of interviews about the investigation and reenactments of the shooting, based on the testimony and recollections of Adams, Harris, and various witnesses and detectives. Two attorneys who represented Adams at the trial where he was convicted of capital murder also appear: they suggest that Adams was charged with the crime despite the better evidence against Harris because, as Harris was a juvenile, Adams alone of the two could be sentenced to death under Texas law. The film's title comes from the prosecutor's comment during his closing argument, paraphrasing Rudyard Kipling's Tommy, that the police are the "thin blue line" separating society from anarchy.

Re:Anonymous

[T Murphy]

That line isn't exactly new

And you were modded redundant. The mods have a sense of irony today.

to paraphrase the whole dialog....

[OutOnARock]

LISTEN! And understand.....

That Internet is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with.
It doesn't understand pity, or remorse, or fear.

And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!

Re:hidden downside

[Anonymous Coward]

Direct democracy never existed.

Are you sure about that? The ancient Athenian Democracy seems to be a very direct one, if not a completely pure democracy. Also recall that it was under this form of government Socrates was tried by his fellow Athenian citizens and forced to commit suicide.

Except...

[TopperMcNabb]

Except you don't get to decide if it's murder or not. That's the lawmakers' job. Otherwise, you're committing the same action: deciding you know better than the law. I would not so easily place my faith in the law as I would anything else. Every aspect of this world has shown an insatiable desire to be corrupted.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[S7urm]

I would most certainly rather have my future in the hands of a collection of people, than in the hands of one pissed off, old, Menopause inbued, psychotic judge, who on her way to MY criminal trial, got splashed by a puddle, spilled her coffee on her moomoo and then got called right before entering her courtroom by her husband who had just decided to leave her fat old smelly 4ss because he was sick of her judging HIM all the time.....You look yourself in the mirror and admit without a smirk that that situation could happen to more than any 2 random people in a vigilante mob.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[S7urm]

Let me just say this my friends

If you killed my dog, posted it onto YouTube while doing it, and then thought that I wouldn't try to find you, with a group of 10-20 friends all very much upset that our little friend was killed by YOUR stupid 4ss, then you have another thing coming, and I'd die before I allowed you to do that and only get fined, and maybe spend 6 months on probation....I would hurt you, and laugh for the 8 months I spent in jail for aggravated assault.

Now ask yourself if the roles were reversed.....I tell ya what, if I kill someone's friend/family member/pet....and was then stupid enough to tape it and post it online....I'd expect someone to try to find me real quick...and wouldn't blame them.....would you?

You don't have the right to decide what is just

[quanticle]

The grandparent poster was not saying that internet vigilantism isn't always unjustified. In the three cases cited in the article, it clearly was. The problem is, once these vigilante groups are mobilized, they are not very easily demobilized. Also, they don't give the accused a chance to answer and defend themselves. In such an environment its very easy for the mob to go after the wrong person, either through mistaken identity or intentional frame-up.

To put it another way, the only assurance we have of the accuracy of this mob's sleuthing is the claims of the mob themselves. There are no even notionally unbiased authorities looking at the evidence from both parties and trying to decide if someone is guilty.

You'll notice that in cities like New York it is now a CRIME to ignore a crime in progress (Good Samaratin law)

You're obligated to call police, not take action yourself. In fact, if you imprisoned someone who you thought was stealing from you (even if you had evidence) the cops would haul you off to jail before they went after the would-be offender.

I think if a crime is commited, and I can respond to it in a way that will prevent further loss of life, realty, property, et al. before anyone else can, then I will.

That's a very dangerous attitude to take. After all, you are not omniscient. All you have is the evidence before you, which may or may not be telling the whole story. Unless you let the accused have a chance to stand and answer the charges levied against them, all you're holding is a kangaroo court.

In short, I consider you no more civilized than the woman who put her high heel through that cat's eye.

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[khellendros1984]

It may not be more correct behavior (from a social standpoint) to be a vigilante than an animal abuser, and perhaps even not more "civilized", but in a case like that, I'll side with the vigilante. There are behaviors that I would regard as inherently evil. Some vigilantes do things that are inherently evil. Some do things that are what I would consider good. The problem with the class of people "vigilante" in general is that they're acting outside of an exterior controlling force, so you have no guarantee that they're working for the betterment of society. But an animal or human abuser that causes harm without benefiting society (as opposed to a medical researchers or equivalent) is scum. There's no chance that they're doing something good, or for the right reasons. I can't bring myself to condemn someone who would fight against that kind of behavior.

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[Fulcrum of Evil]

That's a very dangerous attitude to take. After all, you are not omniscient. All you have is the evidence before you, which may or may not be telling the whole story.

Depends on the context. If I see someone attacking someone else, I have the right in most states to use up to deadly force to stop the attack. If I find someone who's already been beaten unconcious, all I can really do is call an ambulance for them.

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[Tubal-Cain]

I can't bring myself to condemn someone who would fight against that kind of behavior.

Can you bring yourself to condemn those that weren't willing to take some time and make sure they are targeting the right person?

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[quanticle]

There are behaviors that I would regard as inherently evil. Some vigilantes do things that are inherently evil. Some do things that are what I would consider good. The problem with the class of people "vigilante" in general is that they're acting outside of an exterior controlling force, so you have no guarantee that they're working for the betterment of society. But an animal or human abuser that causes harm without benefiting society (as opposed to a medical researchers or equivalent) is scum. There's no chance that they're doing something good, or for the right reasons. I can't bring myself to condemn someone who would fight against that kind of behavior.

I have two objections to that point of view. First, how do we know that the amateur sleuths' fact finding was correct? How do we know that they didn't finger the wrong person, and now some innocent victim is living in fear for no apparent reason? All we have is the word of these 'human flesh search engines'.

Civilized countries have laws and courts for this very reason. Individuals, especially when they are outraged, can and often will make mistakes, and outside authority is needed to ensure that the accused has a chance to speak up and make sure that their side of the story is heard too.

Second, I don't think these villains are really any better than the person they are condemning. Just like she allegedly derived pleasure from the destruction of animal lives, these internet vigilantes deserve pleasure from vengeance resulting in the destruction of human life. If they were truly interested in justice, as they claim, they would petition the Communist Party to step up enforcement of animal cruelty laws, or enact animal cruelty laws if none are on the books. The fact that they choose to directly attack the person, rather than trying to change institutions shows that they're not interested in justice, but rather are simply deriving vicarious pleasure from another's suffering, just like the person in the video.

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[quanticle]

The case cited in the article is much more analogous to the latter scenario than the former. The viewers were neither physically nor temporally near the perpetrator, and therefore had no realistic chance of stopping the crime. Rather than strike out on their own the proper course of action would have been to turn over their findings to the police, so that the accused could have at least some chance of answering the charges levied against her. I know China's courts aren't exactly models of fairness and justice, but I think I would prefer even a Chinese court to an Internet vigilante mob.

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[S7urm]

If they were truly interested in justice, as they claim, they would petition the Communist Party to step up

Yeah, that works really well for most people who attempt to question the Chinese rhetoric, or anything that China considers to be it's soverign rights. As I had pointed out in other threads in this debate, just go to Wikipedia, look up Tianamen Square, and come back here, after reading how the government treated people who were fighting for HUMAN RIGHTS, and tell me you have that same opinion. And if you still do?!?! than pack you bags and move to Myanmar where you belong

Cowards and pacifists are the true perpetuators of everything that is heinous in my opinion because there is nothing more disgraceful than a group of good people who sit idle while something truly evil is happening.

The truly sad thing is that people can cherry pick words in a debate, mis-perceive all apparent intent, and attempt to turn the other point of view into some kind of Neanderthal who wants to just hit everything with a big stick to solve all problems. No one I have seen in this thread or anywhere else has said "Violence solves everything" and you not only also have to take into account the level of intelligence of your common /. (meme it up) but also you have to somehow rationalize this with people who say (and are lauded here for it) that they would KILL spammers, or members of the RIAA

Think about that for a sec, it's okay for people (in this case MOBS of Slashdotters) to advocate a discussion of murdering "Spam Kings, and Copyright Czars" but if someone dare say they would stand up for something that actually had value in everyday life (like say their family, or the fact that someone else committing murder for no reason is wrong)they get punced on, called an idiot, and apparently tagged as flaimbait.

Thats stupid, and if anyone still modding this thread cares enough to mod me a troll for saying it than do so, I have the Karma to burn.

People are pathetic when they see no reason to stand up for or defend against evil, all you are doing is allowing it to happen, I'm just glad not everyone is like the apparent majority of people here in this discussion!

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[quanticle]

Cowards and pacifists are the true perpetuators of everything that is heinous in my opinion because there is nothing more disgraceful than a group of good people who sit idle while something truly evil is happening.

Its true that having good people stand by while heinous things happen is a tragedy. However, one must never forget that the fault lies with the one ones that perpetrated the tragedy, not the ones that "allowed" it to happen, for some definition of allowed. Violence doesn't solve all problems and neither does pacifism. However, one must see that there are longer term consequences to letting vigilante mobs ruin people's lives on amateur sleuthing, hearsay, and rumor.

I'm no fan of the Chinese government, but I'd rather be ruled by them than by these Internet mobs; its the same as saying I'd rather live in China than Somalia or Afghanistan.

Re:You don't have the right to decide what is just

[S7urm]

Again, and this is a tired point I've been trying to make, I DISAGREE with silly social meanderings into vigilantism. However, to see people pilloried over the idea that dissidentism and Vigilante justice has no honorable or reasonable place in the world is simply the base presumption that will allow all the rights you hold dear to be taken away.

If and when our government decides to take away our free speech or right to bear arms, a minority (10% or less) or our citizenry has the audacity to stand up and fight (through current popular opinion) that is sad....simple. Our Parents, (the Great Generation) would truly be ashamed of how much we let slide for soooo little gain.

And I'd take Somalia anyday over China, anarchy, though silly and adolescent is a F#@$ load more appealing to me than being part of a nation (the largest on Earth) that lets their basic human rights be swallowed whole by a sadistic regime spearheaded by people who spout ideaology and live in decadence while their people die by the thousands.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[ArsonSmith]

But putting him in a black dress and giving him a wooden hammer, now that's the best system.

I'm RIGHTEOUS therefore I'm RIGHT

[fm6]

Of course I wouldn't blame you. Mob violence is perfectly reasonable if you're sufficiently provoked.

That was sarcastic of course. This isn't: You're an idiot. You're both a moral and a legal idiot. I know I'll never convince you of the moral side, so I'll stick with the law.

If you get 10 people together and plan a violent action, expect a lot more than a few months for "aggravated assault", never mind the provocation. And that's assuming that the violence doesn't escalate to where the guy you're attacking is seriously injured, permanently disabled, or even killed. And never mind that you don't plan to do that — a gang of angry assholes is hard to control.

But wait, there's more! I'm not even at the worst case scenario yet. Suppose the guy you're going after is armed. (Hey, doesn't the second amendment say he has the right to defend himself?) Or has his own gang of righteous idiots. Or one or more of his gang or your gang decides to bring a weapon. Much wackiness can ensue.

Still not done, though this only applies if you live in a "felony murder" state. FM is a charge you can face if somebody dies as the result of a felony you committed. That somebody doesn't have to be the guy you attack or his defenders. It can be an innocent bystander. It can even be one of the friends you brought along on your Mission of Justice. Oh yeah, and in some states, it's subject to the death penalty.

But on the bright side, you might get a TV movie made about you.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[taucross]

That's why they call it "Jurisprudence" and not "Justice". See sig below.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[fm6]

Tell me, would you rather get the snot beat out of you, or spend tewnty years in prison after which you lose your right to vote, bear arms, find it impossible to get a job because of your record, and if you are wrongly convicted of a sex crime (like in one of the links I provided) have to be on a sex offender registry and have severe limitations on where you can live?

Kind of depends. If I choose getting the snot beat out of me, can I get a promise not to have permanent neurological damage? Being a free person with no legal or social stigma doesn't count for much if you have to spend the rest of your life in the veggie ward.

Anyway, your dichotomy is crap. It isn't a choice between one kind of punishment and another. It's a choice between a system that gives you a chance to rebut the case against you versus the poorly-informed decision-making of some random idiot with impulse control issues.

Ahh the PC, everyone is a pretty rainbow side!

[S7urm]

Everything that you hold dear, be it your (obviously higher than mine) morality, or your ideology, or what have you, was given to you, fought for in your absense, and kept safe by, people that....and I know it isn't "okay" anymore to say this, FOUGHT for that right. You can argue details until you turn blue in the face, but bare bones logical thought at ANY level has ALWAYS been "I think that is bad enough to stop, I will attempt to reason with the provocatur of said bad event, and if, through diplomacy I can affect a positive outcome than great!, but if something BAD happens, and continues to be bad, and worse, and horrible, then I will stop it by force if words are of no avail"

So go ahead, trasport yourself back to the 30's and be a pacifist, and think that through your slanted PC ideology you in some way impact anyone's beleif that it is sometimes OK to fight for what you hold dear, than know I pity you.

You're a coward, and I would find myself at a loss (though it would thankfully never happen) to know you, because if you wouldn't defend yourself, or your family, or your friends, than you are truly a sad pathetic......

wait I'm on Slashdot

carry on.

Re:Ahh the PC, everyone is a pretty rainbow side!

[fm6]

Everything that you hold dear, be it your (obviously higher than mine) morality, or your ideology, or what have you, was given to you, fought for in your absense, and kept safe by, people that....and I know it isn't "okay" anymore to say this, FOUGHT for that right.

What, because violence is sometimes the only option, it's always cool? Go live in Somalia.

Or try reading the Declaration of Independence, which is the classic case of somebody advocating violent action in defense of their rights. It does not say, "WE'RE PISSED AT KING GEORGE. WE'RE OUT OF THIS BULLSHIT EMPIRE AND NOBODY CAN STOP US!!!" No it goes more like this:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

It then goes on to cite 25 or so of these "injuries and usurpation". All of which are rather more severe than "He killed my dog!"

Re:Ahh the PC, everyone is a pretty rainbow side!

[S7urm]

Are you honestly trying to demean a debate to the point that you are portraying me as I consider the killing of my dog on par with the American Revolution?

You've missed the point, violence is never the ONLY answer, but is also the acceptable last resort in the appropriate situation. If you disagree that's fine, but qouting our nation's most famous document is petty and unneccasry, and if you need to debase everything to a minute detail than I'll leave you to your own devices.

Take things to the true scale of the discussion man, I'm not talking about making war on America because of the murder of my puppy, I'm talking about defending what I hold dear, Scale it up, and I would pick up a rifle and defend my home from an invader, be they foreign or domestic. I think anyone who thinks that mentality is ugly or beneath them is not only a coward (as I intimated before) but also a signifcant part of the problem of the world today, no one holds anything at all dear enough to defend it because they are soooo concerned with the "PCness" of their actions that they allow themselves to be pilloried by the public popular perception (say THAT 5 times fast).

Re:Ahh the PC, everyone is a pretty rainbow side!

[fm6]

Are you honestly trying to demean a debate to the point that you are portraying me as I consider the killing of my dog on par with the American Revolution?

I don't have to. You already did that when you argued that people have a general right to use violence to get what they want.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[fm6]

You seem to be invoking a meme with which I am totally unfamiliar.

angry mob 2.0

[spandex_panda]

HAHA! A new meme! Those kitten killers need to feel the wrath of angry mob 2.0! Instead of burning torches and pitchforks, we the angry mob 2.0 can wield flickr, twitter, youtube and /. at the naughty witching minorities!

Vigilante mobs respond to themselves?

[iYk6]

You think vigilantes are dangerous because they respond to no one? Bullshit, Vigilantes answer to society, and in the case of very large mobs like the internet, the mob *is* society.

So, your argument is that vigilante mobs respond only to themselves, and therefore are not dangerous? I feel much safer now.

Re:Vigilante mobs respond to themselves?

[Requiem18th]

What I'm saying is that statistically speaking you are very, very likely to agree with the mob and may even be part of it.

China did it first?

[hkmwbz]

It has been suggested that this recent rise in online vigilantism was unique to China

Not at all.

China may again have generated a civilization-wide advance in governance.

Again, not at all. Take a look at Encyclopedia Dramatica for numerous stories of online vigilantism, especially in the US. This is definitely not something that started in China or which is unique to China. The story authors are clearly somewhat ignorant.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Archangel Michael]

Nobility is often at odds with the truth. Truth is often far too inconvenient to be noble.

Think it through...

[joebagodonuts]

The problem is that they are open to manipulation by people who have the willingness and the knowhow to game the system.

That applies to ANY system, including the traditional legal ones.

Nazis did that kind of stuff in the 1930s

[falconwolf]

The NAZIs just played on an undercurrent of antisemitism. For centuries Jews were discriminated against and harassed. And they weren't the only ones. Agnostics, Muslims, Wiccans and other Pagans were as well. As queen of Castile Isabella, who created a united Spain, demanded that either non-Christians convert to Christianity or leave Spain. Sephardim or Spanish Jews and Spanish Moors left en mass. Others such as Agnostic Christians were persecuted or massacred.

Also it was not the NAZIs' goal to exterminate all Jews, what they wanted was for all Jews to leave Europe, ie the "Final Solution" of the Holocaust when some Jews would not leave. In 1932-3 the NAZis negotiated with Jewish leaders in Europe wherein those Jews who wanted to leave would be helped by the NAZIs. The SS and Gestapo even trained Jews. As part of the negotiations there were two agreements made between Jews and NAZIs, the Haavara Agreement or Transfer Agreement and the Rublee-Wohlthat-Abkommen. The first one was an agreement for Jewish emigration to Palestine and the second was to anywhere outside of Europe. Now with the British Mandate of Palestine the British barred Jews from immigrating to Palestine, thus the NAZI's training of Jews. Today it's Palestinians who are called terrorists but through the 1930s until the independence of Israel in 1948 it was Jews who were the terrorists.

Falcon

I was the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

I was the (Anonymous Coward) that updated the wikipedia article on the salt pit (the CIA secret prision in Iraq). My mere contribution was ....the exact location -longitude and latitude. Prior to this, there was a satellite photo, but no location given. It took a bit of searching in google earth, but I found it and posted. Suddenly the world knew (it was never edited back out). Since then I've seen hundreds of *touchy* wikipedia articles that have juicy information with lat and long. And you can find the location in Google earth. Chinese submarines, Korean rockets, you name it. I'm not the only one finding and posting.

Spirit of '77

[Tetsujin]

Tell that to the black and Jewish victims of lynching in the south. Yes, in many cases vigilantism can be a form of law enforcement. The problem though is that when a group of citizens answers to no one the potential for abuse and stepping beyond law enforcement is definitely there. And while many of those lynched had committed capital offenses, most hadn't.

Indeed. I think the question to remember here is, who watches the watchmen?

It's vigilantes all the way down.

[WNight]

It's recursive, simply call for a flash-mob of vigilantes to take care of the troublesome vigilantes.

There's probably already an XKCD about it.

Honestly though, in a more transparent society (ie, fed-up with being taped by everyone else, citizens start recording everything too and sharing it in a giant p2p net) this is less of a problem because not only are more angles of any given event available but the people making the accusations become public themselves as well as the vigilantes who actually take any actions. This, applied recursively as mentioned, eventually produces methodical and well-documented vigilantes.

Or, um, chaos reigns.

Re:It's great! ...until...

[Minwee]

You look yourself in the mirror and admit without a smirk that that situation could happen to more than any 2 random people in a vigilante mob.

Only when you tell me where I can appeal vigilante "justice". Is there an angry appeals mob? A torch-bearing supreme mob that can overturn convictions made by lower mobs? If my public defender takes a rock to the head before making his closing arguments, will a mis-lynching be declared?

script now rendered correctly and available

[damn_registrars]

fm6:

Sorry I never got around to mailing it to you; the slashdot hater quotient script has now been (re)posted with the spaces correctly rendered to make it a bit less train-wreck-ish. Feel free to do your worst with it.

Re:script now rendered correctly and available

[fm6]

Thanks, guy. A bit busy now, but I'm looking forward to playing with it.

Re:Cats [Teen arrested in Fla. cat mutilations]

[Reservoir Penguin]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090614/ap_on_re_us/us_cats_mutilated