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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."
Make them pay, pal !!
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.
it's sort of like how union leaders used to get put in jail (or killed) for organizing strikes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike
Right now what they did does seem illegal hooliganism, as does most civil disobedience. Sometimes society adapts to see things differently. For now this is still hooliganism. I think they need to show a compelling good coming out of this if they expect a different response. The question is, what good would that be?
And the prosecutors are probably out to send a message to all the potential hangers-on, that what they're doing is going to result in serious consequences.
That way they have to think what will happen if they get caught, and it won't be a slap on the wrist.
Which doesn't mean I think that what Anonymous was doing in this wasn't based on a genuinely good idea, I'm just expressing the intentions of the Justice Department.
This makes perfect sense. If an angry mob smashes up some shops fronts, but police only catch 14 people you wouldn't charge them with the total damage of the entire mob, as well as the cost of upgrading security to protect against an angry mob in the future. You would charge each individual according to the damage they actually did. In this case a single person using LOIC doesn't really do any significant damage at all. You could charge them a 1/1000 of the cost of overtime for personal to deal with the attack, and the extra bandwidth they caused the company, but its madness to hold them responsible for the damage done by the entire swarm. In a cynical POV, this is also an excellent way for PayPall to remove themselves as a target when the PayPal14 are found guility.
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.
These few are fined for the actions of thousands of individuals.
This means that if the detectives did their job better and caught more individuals, each individuals' fines would be lower.
Why should these individuals be punished for a sloppy job done by others?
They should be punished, they should pay a fine and they should pay damages. But they shouldn't have to pay damage caused by others.
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Oe noes. Financial damage oh the woe. Nothing can be so bad as financial damage. We must nail their balls to a wall to serve an example to others.
Fuck them.
Apparently the chaiman of the coppany that owns the damaged one wants leniency. That is the person who represents those who suffered financial damage. Who the hell are you to call otherwise?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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 ?
The objective here isn't to punish anyone proportionally to the crimes they committed. The whole point of online activists having the book thrown at them is to deter future activists.
The corporations already feel like meatspace activists have too many rights, so it is imperative to set a precedent that online activism will be dealt with harshly.
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
Jesus Christ, can I make one post here with metaphorical language without someone coming along to say "don't you mean [literal version of the colloquialism I just used]?"
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.
This wasn't spray painting a wall. It was more like barricading the doors. Painted walls don't stop you from doing business.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So we should ignore the fact that making punishments harsher is a terrible deterrent; in spite of how simple it sounds? The chance of getting caught is what is an actual deterrent.
So hitting a few people, very hard, for an action much larger than them, produces very little result. Whereas slapping a lot of people lightly on the wrist, would likely produce a much bigger result.
Course, paypal deserved it. I applaud everyone who took part.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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).
To follow the analogy, how is this different from setting up a picket line out front of someone's front door to protest some of the things that said company is doing that you find morally objectionable?
Should the physical analog of this very same situation also be subject to a 5.5 million dollar fine?
Thirty four characters live here.
... a position which is frightfully naive. Of course making things more illegal is a deterrent. It used to be totally legal to drive with your kids in the back of your truck on the open freeway. It's now more illegal (at least in California) and you don't see (very many) people driving on the freeway with kids in the back of their truck.
All officially recognized crimes are punished with the intent of deterring future crime, and you live in a time and place which ranks as among the most peaceful and civilized periods in all of known history. To suggest that this concept does not work betrays a stunning lack of understanding and respect for all the work put in by the millions of people who worked to establish and maintain the system that provides such domestic peace and tranquility.
Did you actually think that spending 10 years in jail actually compensates the parents and loved ones of a murder victim? Sorry, if they're dead, no amount of punishment will ever bring them back, and until you've personally experienced the loss of a close loved one, you cannot really understand just how devastating such a loss can be.
However, even sociopaths can understand personal injury and suffering even if they lack the ability empathize in any way with their victims.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I think the intent was that the full sum of the blame is unfairly being distributed across the few who were caught.
It costs virtually nothing to put up a sign and fence and is pretty much standard protocol. If vandalism was so bad in your area that you had to take considerably more action like paying guards, changing site layout etc then vandalism has cost you that money. Society normally puts a premium on punishments/fines etc to account for three (or more) things 1/ the odds of getting caught and 2/ the disproportionate costs crime can cause and 3/ to act as a deterrent.
If I steal £10 off someone in the street but then get caught a £10 fine won't put me off doing it again because I'm never worse off for doing it. £10 also isn't the real impact of my crime. Stealing the money may mean that my victim couldn't afford the bus and so lost 2 hours wages, they could feel unsafe in public, it could discourage other people from travelling to that area.
My crime, and the crimes of others, in combination have caused this and it is right that punishments consider 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."
They shouldn't have to pay for all the damage caused by others however I think the case can be made for considering the damage caused by the whole group when punishing individuals involved. On a basic level a DDoS goes from ineffective to partially effective to effective when more people take part and on another level their involvement helped build up the critical mass behind the attack.
It looks like Paypal is saying, "This won't decrease our business risk, it won't impact the actual source of the problem, and these people aren't responsible for or capable of the damage they did. On their own, they would annoy the network security guys; most of the network guys wouldn't notice them. This isn't relevant to us; except that if these kids get fucking crushed for this people we can't fight will be pissed at us and kick us more! We need to stop this to reduce our risk of suffering mob justice!"
Somewhere around there, some folks felt the system was unfair and brought up an argument. It turned into a business argument. That's basically how it works.
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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
They were not physically blocking you from sending http requests to the sight, they were just sending them faster then you can. Its like if to protest McDonalds, protesters lined up and ordered waters. Its annoying and costs money, but if you spend 5.5 million dollars to add a line specifically for water, do the 5 out of 1000 protesters you caught deserve to pay for all of it?
That, and, Omidyar feels that many of the participants in the PayPal DDoS saw it as a form of protest. He doesn't attribute malice to them.
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Yup, and the favorite counter example of mine is lojack. Even a smalish increase in lojack use in an area (if I remember right, around 1%) was shown to correlate to a 20% drop in car thefts in that area.
Nobody wants to get punished, but many more people will take a small chance at a large punishment than will take a large chance at a small one. which makes sense. A small chance at a large punishment is a large chance at nothing but benefit.
I mean, if you erased the actual action and just look at the risk/reward as a bet, it makes a lot more sense. I mean, imagine a Keno game where prizes go up to 19 numbers, but if you guess a perfect 20, you get executed.
Is that a good bet? You know what.... if I was a gambler I would, its still a good bet: There is no documented case of a perfect keno round having ever happened. It is that unlikely. You could place and replace that bet every minute and still die of old age.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
On the other hand, you won't be on the hook for every petty theft that happened in the country that day. You'll make restitution and face penalties appropriate to stealing £10
Dissent will not be tolerated!