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."

Comments

EXAMPLE TO BE SHOWN !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Make them pay, pal !!

Activism

[Luthair]

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.

Re:Activism

[TheNastyInThePasty]

It's a difference in views. People view blocking a street as free speech. They see people staging a sit-in as trying to raise awareness for their cause and the send a message.

DDoS, on the other hand, they view as vandalism (unfathomably severe vandalism, if these prosecutors are to be believed).

Objectively, I don't see much of a difference between a sit-in and a DDoS but that might just be because I understand what a DDoS is. Most people don't.

Re:Activism

[robinsonne]

The difference being that meatspace activism is almost pointless these days. It might get a 30 second mention on the news on a slow day, but otherwise you're just shunted into a "free speech zone", traffic gets routed around the protest and is flat out ignored.

Hacktivism on the other hand, has relatively immediate, noticeable (sometimes very much so) consequences that can either cost an organization money or if nothing else cause embarrassment.

Meatspace protests make you feel good, and are probably amusing to the powers that be. Online, a few people can a real nuisance, which is what activism is trying to do: be a nuisance until a change happens. [sarcasm] We can't have things like that happening in this country. Obviously we have to set an example for these 14 people. [/sarcasm]

Re:Activism

[tysonedwards]

To follow the analogy, "filling the streets with stuff" is illegal due to it's classification as littering and that effort needs to be undertaken to remove said litter.

Once a DDoS attack is completed (assuming that the sole action taken was DDoS and not defacement or intrusion), there is nothing to "clean up". When you stop, everyone picks up their "stuff" and walks away.

history in motion, transiting from hooliganism

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:history in motion, transiting from hooliganism

[Charliemopps]

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?

Re:history in motion, transiting from hooliganism

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Will the Government Listen?

[Grantbridge]

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.

Re:Fuck Them

[PIBM]

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 ?

Deterrent

[EMG at MU]

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.

Re:Fuck Them

[i kan reed]

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

Re:Fuck Them

[TheCarp]

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.

Re:Fuck Them

[N0Man74]

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).

Re:Let em off cuz most weren't found?

[Wootery]

I think the intent was that the full sum of the blame is unfairly being distributed across the few who were caught.

Re:Fuck Them

[TheNastyInThePasty]

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?

Re:Let em off cuz most weren't found?

[Samantha Wright]

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.