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How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

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Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#51

Post by stcredzero »

axod wrote: post #47
stcredzero wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, this is smacking of rationalization. How is what your're saying different from, "I didn't send those DDOS packets, the lusers executing my trojan program did!" How about: "IMHO, that shouldn't be illegal. Mrs. Smith was extremely silly to believe that a consumer door lock and sticking her life savings under her mattress was a good way to secure money."

A company like Amazon should be able to deal with DDOS and CSFR in it's stride though. They should present absolutely no challenge. The correct response IMHO is for Amazon to realize they were stupid, and fix it. If you sue etc you put out the signal that being stupid is fine - you'll be able to sue someone if they take advantage of your stupidity. But then we live in an age where if someone doesn't tell you explicit…

So the victim's capabilities are to be taken into account? If Mrs. Smith was trained as a ninja guard, trying to abscond with her mattress stash is ok? I don't buy it.

Also, you can argue that not suing is sending out the wrong message -- that manipulating the flagging mechanism is cool, so long as you're a cool, clever hacker.

If I was running a business, and my employee left a storage shed unlocked, I shouldn't prosecute the thieves because I did something "stupid?" Uh, no. Most people would suggest that you make sure locking the shed is on the checklist and you prosecute.

Someone else being stupid doesn't give you a "Get away with being an asshat" card.

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#52

Post by uninverted »

johns wrote: post #36
stewiecat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but also that of the parent post. Is losing salesrank of a novel over the weekend (a holiday weekend no less), really a boom-or-bust kind of thing? If he'd been more malicious with this then this would be a crime with actual victims, but in this case I just can't reason through it enough to believe that.

If you walk into a bookstore and steal a bunch of books, even on a slow business day and it causes the store/publisher/author to lose sales, but not that much, is it a victimless crime?

What? He didn't steal anything. It's more like standing outside of the bookstore yelling about the owner.

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#53

Post by stcredzero »

lurkinggrue wrote: post #46
stcredzero wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trollers are sadists, period. Just because you are capable of the problem solving and coding required to pull stunts like this off doesn't justify deceiving others and causing them anguish. I have no idea if they believe the ideologies they spin to justify what they do as a perverse form of heroism. All of the worst assholes in history had ideology aplenty to justify their destructive behavior.

It's all justified as long as it is funny. I guess it is easy to be a prick when you are only looking at pixels.

It's also easy when you have a way of convincing yourself that you're "superior."

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#54

Post by potatolicious »

uninverted wrote: post #52
johns wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you walk into a bookstore and steal a bunch of books, even on a slow business day and it causes the store/publisher/author to lose sales, but not that much, is it a victimless crime?

What? He didn't steal anything. It's more like standing outside of the bookstore yelling about the owner.

It's more like breaking into the store at night and changing all the signage to read "I molest little children".

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#55

Post by stcredzero »

sho wrote: post #49
stcredzero wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, this is smacking of rationalization. How is what your're saying different from, "I didn't send those DDOS packets, the lusers executing my trojan program did!" How about: "IMHO, that shouldn't be illegal. Mrs. Smith was extremely silly to believe that a consumer door lock and sticking her life savings under her mattress was a good way to secure money."

Well, actually, it is those "lusers" who executed the trojan, and their computers, capable of action and under their control, that sent the packets. Since when is "but I didn't know!" an excuse? Sounds like negligence to me; widespread perhaps, but negligence nonetheless. It's like those people who buy those terrible cheap car alarms that go off at anything at all and then don't stop for an hour. Their car is sitting…

Another's negligence does not justify being an asshole!

If Mrs. Smith was running a bric-a-brac store and didn't know how to secure her display cases, then it's alright to shoplift from her?

If Mrs. Smith was holding a big party at her house, then it's alright for a party goer to steal her life savings?

If I hand a firearm disguised as a jelly donut to a random bystander, then they shoot someone with it, it's their fault and not mine?

Amazon messed up. It doesn't justify Weev's action. He could've just told them. Deception and malicious intent are markings of crime or antisocial behavior. That's just common sense!

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#56

Post by aristus »

jemmons wrote: post #16

How many of these do we have to stare down before the internet punditry learns to take three deep breaths before clicking "post"? Remedial reporting here would have saved a lot of faces from a lot of egg.

The internet punditry (including us, mate) get rewarded for reacting quickly and get virtually no punishment for being wrong or late. An uncharitable way to put is that many journalists, pundits and activists are just conduits for other people. You don't blame the pipes when the water is cold.

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#57

Post by stcredzero »

sho wrote: post #42
tjic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he didn't actually do anything that I think should be illegal. Registering multiple false user names? Giving false feedback? Restraint of trade? I'm not a fan of government prosecuting someone for registering on Facebook with the user name "Joe Schmoe" in order to blog anonymously about their crappy job at Microsoft. ...but I have no problem at all with the government enforcing laws against using aliases to log int…

"Registering multiple false user names? Giving false feedback?" Well then, unless your actual name is "tjic" then we are both criminals right off the bat. And since when is the government in the business of checking whether feedback is "false" or not? That's the company's job. It's not illegal to lie unless you are under oath, and nobody was. "Restraint of trade?" I don't see how Amazon's trade has been restrained in…

Dear god, not this argument again.

Sometimes that's a sign that your point of view is out of whack. (And being able to realize this is a mark of true learning. And yeah, it is painful sometimes.)

What happened here is more like Whole Foods setting out free samples. If someone concocted a scheme to walk out the front door with all of the free samples, I would not be at all surprised if the perpetrator were taken off to jail. "But Whole Foods encourages you to take them!" yeah, right. Something smacks of rationalization here.

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#58

Post by sho »

stcredzero wrote: post #45
Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting a message that you got food poising from a local restaurant will cause them to lose money without you breaking the law. Would you say it's reasonable for them to sue you if you where telling the truth?

It certainly would be reasonable for them to sue you if you had lied.

Then we have fundamentally different opinions of what should and should not be legally actionable.

How the hell should anyone be able to drag someone through the courts on the grounds that they might have lied about about feeling sick or not? And what could you possibly do when he just says "I did feel sick" - "no you didn't"? Yes I did, no you didn't?

I don't think you've given much thought to the complexities here. Laws have to be workable and practical and err on the side of freedom of speech and action. Trying to legislate niceness and truthfulness is pure folly, especially considering the imbalance of power between a corporation (or restaurant!) and a person.

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#59

Post by stcredzero »

aristus wrote: post #56
jemmons wrote: post #16

How many of these do we have to stare down before the internet punditry learns to take three deep breaths before clicking "post"? Remedial reporting here would have saved a lot of faces from a lot of egg.

The internet punditry (including us, mate) get rewarded for reacting quickly and get virtually no punishment for being wrong or late. An uncharitable way to put is that many journalists, pundits and activists are just conduits for other people. You don't blame the pipes when the water is cold.

Yes you can. Insulate the pipes! Install pumps that pump out the cold water in the hot water pipes. (Yes they sell these now.)

There are pundit rating sites out there now.

Re: How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code

#60

Post by stcredzero »

tjic wrote: post #9
ObieJazz wrote: post #5

If you're going to harass a group of people it's a lot more tasteful to target one that isn't already persecuted.

I second this - this guy definitely shouldn't have gone after Amazon stockholders.

Nice one. But his blog announces that he was going after homosexuals.
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