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eBay Founder Pleads For Leniency For the PayPal 14
DavidGilbert99 writes "The founder of eBay, the parent company of PayPal, Pierre Omidyar has called on U.S. prosecutors to have mercy on the 14 members of Anonymous who are appearing in court this week facing up to 15 years in jail and a $500,000 fine for their part in a DDoS attack against PayPal in 2010. Despite thousands of Anons taking part, and most of the damage being done by two major botnets, the 14 are set to bear all the responsibility if U.S. prosecutors have their way."
Its odd how online activism is treated much differently than that which occurs in meatspace. Many protests occur in real life where access to buildings or simply roads are blocked yet the treatment of the two types protestors is very different.
But it won't work that way. It's never really worked that way. Making things more illegal doesn't really put more hindrance on what people do compared to just being illegal, else we'd have the whole crack thing wrapped up by now.
"Tough on crime" is a moronic stance that doesn't address why people actually engage in crimes. A hint: very few people breaking the law are thinking rationally about consequences when they do.
Unless 10 000 people spray paint a town one night. If you catch a few of them (14 ?) and you know they only took a spray can and shot a few seconds (they did almost nothing vs the botnets), would you charge them for cleaning up the whole town ?
If I choose to pay someone $5.5 million to put up a "no trespassing" sign and a chain link fence after getting hit by vandals, that doesn't mean the vandals cost me $5.5MM
Then the 14 would only have to pay a small fine and admit no wrongdoing. Really, what they should have done was form their own bank if they wanted to steal money. I mean, look at Paypal, and they aren't even a bank!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Spray painting a wall costs people time and money, and you know what, we don't drop fines that ruin peoples' lives over it.
We have zero tolerance for making companies lose money... now when companies or banks make us lose money (or homes), it just shows the system works (the way they designed it).
You need to complete your analogy. The ones that "only took a spray can and shot a few seconds" were willfully joining into an expansive coordinated attack with the intent to amplify the damage. This wasn't a case of "wrong place at the wrong time", they knew they were joining a larger group. One of Niven's laws... "Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man."
There is an easier real world analogy than the one GP picked. If there's a city-wide riot and the police only are able to arrest a few people, do those few people have to pay for all of the damage done during the riot?
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
are these 14 people the lead organizers or instigators of the ddos, or just some kids who thought it would be cool but didn't hide their tracks etc?
They all used Anons ddos app. It doesn't disguise your IP or anything. The point of it is, this is supposed to be a type of protest. I doubt there were any leaders in this case. 1 dude just pointed the application at the target and everyone else just ran the client for a few minutes. It's insane that this is illegal. This should be entirely a civil matter. Your ISP should ban you or you should be subject to a civil suit. But criminal charges? This is clearly a protest. Sounds like it was a hippie protest to me, and I hate hippies. But if we throw them in jail for bitching now, what's going to happen to all us non-hippies when we decide to bitch?
No it would be awesome to live in a world where protesters would only be allowed to protest in a convenient place where they didn't bother anyone else. Maybe designated "free speech" zones where they won't disturb the rest of us who need to sleep, go to work, go shopping etc.
Anyone who protested elsewhere and disturbed other people should get 15 years in jail and a $500,000 fine.
What a wonderful "Black or White" world that would be right?
I disagree w/ the GP. It's reasonable that this is illegal, but ... "up to 15 years in jail and a $500,000 fine" is insane. Get a good lawyer, and you can probably get away with less for murder. Armed robbery? Piece of cake. Yes I know they haven't been sentenced yet, but just the threat of sentences like that is absurd. It takes it from the government prosecuting a crime (in which no one was injured and even the founder of the "victim" company is asking for leniency) to the government saying "we can do whatever we like to you". Whole different animal. The first is a legitimate function of the government, and the latter is a step towards authoritarianism.
As for damage, FTA:
PayPal's website was down for an hour on 8 December and another brief period on 9 December. The company estimates the damage caused by the attack was $5.5 million
That $5.5M was probably calculated in the absurd way that such business losses are usually calculated. For example, if someone steals the source to a proprietary OS, then even if they do nothing with it, the "cost" is calculated as the entire cost of developing the OS. Right, they never made any sales and will never make any sales in the future.
The selective prosecution aspect of it is absurd too. Forget the fact that they're only prosecuting 14 of the participants. Search on "William K. Black". Far from being some fringe character, he was a major official the the OCC (Office of the Controller of the Currency - one of the banking regulators) when the S&L crisis blew up. He helped establish the case law on control fraud, and they obtained over 1000 criminal convictions. He's the ultimate "been there, done that, hence speak with authority" kind of guy. According to Black (many other knowledgeable people think this as well), the more recent financial meltdown, which makes the S&L crisis look like petty theft, has all the hallmarks of the same type of control fraud. Number of convictions for control fraud: 0. Number of attempted prosecutions: 0. Now that's selective. You don't really expect me to have any respect for federal prosecutors, or more importantly their past or current bosses, do you?