I don't think that analogy is fair. It's a denial of service. It's similar to going into an Apple Store or any other store, and blocking customer checkout registers, preventing customers from paying and receiving their goods. But instead of affecting 30 customers for that one store, you're affecting millions of customers.
but that's exactly what the greensboro lunch counter sit-ins were (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins). they went into woolworth's (the apple store of the day) and blocked service all day. I'm not equating the two by any means, but it does seem weird to say that civil disobedience is ok only if it causes just a small localized amount of inconvenience.
"civil disobedience is ok only if it causes just a small localized amount of inconvenience"
I never stated that. Personally, I believe it's far more efficient and more ethical to use a court system and support your representatives than disrupt a business illegally. We have courts and representatives for grievances.
Your youth is showing. There's a reason why sit-ins were used in America during the last century to enact change and the courts were part of that problem.
Sit-ins were a LAST resort, not the first. There was a long, long history of unequal treatment and oppression by the state before non-violent resistance was used. More importantly, there was a consistent and protracted political movement that was also underway during the period in question. There was a dialog happening and resistance was used to "encourage" one party to stay in that dialog. Even then, it took almost the entire weight of the federal government to ensure the execution of the will of the political majority long AFTER the decision had been made.
Honestly, I think that making comparisons to the civil-rights movement in the US is just beyond the pale.
Anonymous is a mob; Pure and simple. It's an expression of a small, small minority of people that want to do damage and seek to cloak their actions in civic high-mindedness. I don't believe it for a second. The absolute lack of ANYONE willing to speak for them just proves my point. They embrace mayhem without accountability. Anarchy.
You're comparing apples and oranges, and using straw man attacks. PayPal did not ban them on the basis of their race. PayPal was perfectly within the law to do what they did.
Right. Paypal banned them because a 3rd party decided to use their privileged position working for the government to copy a bunch of classified files, and send them to Wikileaks.
You're trolling, correct? If PayPal shuts down for an hour, it loses a lot of money (transaction costs, administrative costs, paying idle employees, etc.). Not just them, but millions of their customers who rely on PayPal for their business lose out too.
There is no form of protest that does not affect other people and lost revenue is not damage. Your comment reads very mobbish.
You are free to disagree with the opinion of the DDoSers that PayPal punished Wikileaks because of close ties with a vindictive government and therefore deserved a tangible reaction, but you can't go arguing that people should only disagree with you to the extent that you are able to ignore them.
Explain what "mobbish" means in the context of my comment. Because I disagree with your position, my comment somehow resembles 'mob' behavior?
"you can't go arguing that people should only disagree with you to the extent that you are able to ignore them"
What does that even mean? Sorry, but that's one huge straw man attack for something I didn't state. You're free to have your own opinion. I did not state otherwise.
Further, you state that I am free to disagree with an opinion, but then you state that I cannot have some opinion that you conjured up some argument on your own to misrepresent my position -- and then attacking that distorted position?
I wasn't entirely satisfied with the word, but it was close enough. I meant that the words you (and others I read before) chose were of the polarizing variety, the kinds that people end up using in mobs. That is to say, instead of describing the situation at hand, I felt you were describing the closest clearly illegal thing someone could quickly think of, probably because your information was third-hand.
It seemed to me that you felt that the thing these DDoSsers did wrong was that they had an impact on the business of PayPal directly, rather than just the PR of PayPal. Well no, it seemed to me that you wouldn't have agreed with vocal badmouthing either, but that that would have resulted in an entirely different chain of events and so is not worth considering carefully.
If your opinion was not that no company's business should be directly manipulated for policy retribution purposes, I misunderstood. It was my intent to assert that this is not a position I consider valid and that the choice to briefly DDoS PayPal was almost certainly taken after considering less and more radical approaches. I saw no evidence towards the positions I do consider valid, that the retribution was overly severe or wholly unjust.
