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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

#71

Post by mlLK »

I remember back in pre-teen days (just when I was starting to get curious), the internet was without Google, dial-up was fast, internet porn was innocent, and our home network consisted of one PC running Windows 3.1 in our living room. I relished those times when my parents would leave me (or me and my friends) at home to go out to eat, leaving nothing but these 10 lines between me and my hungry eyes.

I think my first hack was figuring out how to cover my tracks by making a backup of Netscapes's cache and cookies before going on my adventure then restoring the browser's history back to it's original state as soon as I saw those headlights pour through our dining room windows.

Ah those were the days. . .this was even back before E/N hit the scene.

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

#72

Post by jrockway »

tjic wrote: post #23
sho wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should certainly hope not. While he's certainly mischievous and possibly malicious, he didn't actually do anything that I think should be illegal. He merely used Amazon's flawed system against them, at considerably personal expense. He hacked them, in other words. I can't agree with his aims in this case but you've got to hand it to him really - you don't have to like trolling in general to admit that was an amazin…

> 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…

I agree with you, it's all about intent. If you give false feedback to avoid having your family killed, that should be legal. If you do it to troll Amazon, that's malicious, and should be a crime.

This guy is a jerk, and he's making society slightly less good. As a society, we should try and avoid the tragedy of the commons, or else we won't have a society for much longer. Someone needs to remind this guy, in an official capacity, that his actions are not appreciated or tolerated.

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

#73

Post by sokoloff »

stcredzero wrote: post #40
sho wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should certainly hope not. While he's certainly mischievous and possibly malicious, he didn't actually do anything that I think should be illegal. He merely used Amazon's flawed system against them, at considerably personal expense. He hacked them, in other words. I can't agree with his aims in this case but you've got to hand it to him really - you don't have to like trolling in general to admit that was an amazin…

"counter-intuitive" is your code word for "I can't justify it but I like it anyway?" If his hack involved writing an innocuous demo script and presenting it to Amazon or at a conference, this would be one thing, and society is better off for the freedom to make such discoveries and talk and write about them. Society is certainly better off when it accords freedom of speech. But academic freedom ends where you start t…

Let's be clear here. Weev didn't censor Amazon listings. If what Weev claims is true, the most you can say is that he helped trick Amazon into choosing, via automated means, to censor those titles.

But ultimately, it was Amazon who took the action to remove the listings.

(Unnecessary disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of Amazon, and hardly a week goes by that I don't buy something or other from them.)

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

#74

Post by mlLK »

tvon wrote: post #30

Does this really belong on HN? Isn't it better suited for Reddit or Digg?

Does it? Think about it this way, why does this make right-wing nuts or technically inept parents go bonkers? A.) They a moral nut and they're reacting to the confluence of information and media as an invasion of privacy. B.) They fear that the exposure to such material at a young age will corrupt their kid, screw some other kid, and get pregnant in high school.

Either way, I think this is a cash cow and fertile conditions for any startup whose primary function is a sort of opt-in form of censorship, more or less the startup would act as a proxy for each IP. For the most part, I think their rage is fairly valid since this demographic is probably just old, confused, and sick of scouring the internet for web-sites to block.

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

potatolicious wrote: post #37
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.

How many customers did Amazon lose this weekend that will likely never hear that this was a hack? He directly and irreparably harmed the reputation of a company, how is this victimless at all?

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by sho »

potatolicious wrote: post #21
dlytle wrote: post #18

I'm mainly wondering if he can get his face sued off over this. I've got NO doubt that this is going to have a noticable negative impact on Amazon's profits. Not world shaking, but more than enough to make the lawyers angry. As another commenter mentioned, he's been in a NYT article, with his face and full name displayed. Amazon won't have any trouble finding him.

I for one hope he does. He's not some internet freedom fighter going up against the man, nor is he a legitimate security expert in any way. He did it for the lulz, I hope he gets his ass sued off. He's like the kid dropping rocks off the overpass for shits and giggles - pathetic.

"He's like the kid dropping rocks off the overpass for shits and giggles - pathetic."

Yeah man. Except for the overpass, and the kid, and the rocks, that is a very good analogy.

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

#77

Post by lurkinggrue »

stcredzero wrote: post #53
lurkinggrue wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Exactly, you just say "He is taking himself too seriously" and that can justify any horrible action and feel superior.

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

#78

Post by johns »

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.

You're right. Replace "steal" with "deface"

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

#79

Post by tutwabee »

potatolicious wrote: post #37
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.

How many customers did Amazon lose this weekend that will likely never hear that this was a hack? He directly and irreparably harmed the reputation of a company, how is this victimless at all?

He may have hurt the reputation of Amazon, but not through his crime. Publicizing vulnerabilities in Amazon's ranking system is what may hurt Amazon's reputation. The "crime" of messing with Amazon's system didn't hurt Amazon's reputation let alone their website much at all.

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

#80

Post by dc2k08 »

tvon wrote: post #30

Does this really belong on HN? Isn't it better suited for Reddit or Digg?

On reddit, they are considering that the poster might be 'meta trolling' by taking credit for what was actually a glitch created by a French Amazon Programmer: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8c50o/troll_week...
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