Legalize DDoS as a form of protest

[weekend hacker]

For you americans out there there is a random petition on petitions.whitehouse.gov to make ddos a legal form of protest.
Most of you will never notice but HTS gets DDoS'd a lot but this is just a few people(or 1) with botnets and not an actual protest.
On the condition that each ip == 1 actual person instead of 1 person with a botnet doing all the 'protesting' I am totally for this type of thing. I think the internet needs a way to have its voice heard because it seems to me that our wishes are far too often ignored.
What are your thoughts on this? And if you like it.. go sign the damned thing. And if not, explain why before someone goes to sign without being properly informed.

I also wonder what the media have to say about this. It would seem they like to mention the "huge"(we get hit just 10Gbit less than its max capacity a couple of times a month and with about 1/3th of it every day all day, and that is most likely just 1 person doing it) ddos on american banks that is supposedly being done by Iran(could be iran.. could be any 12 year old with internet access).
This is obviously to portray this as some kind of bad thing even though in the bank case its obviously a botnet doing all the work and not a large subsection of the worlds population.

Also note that in the past ddos WAS a legal(atleast never questioned in a court) form of protest(floodnet comes to mind) but somehow something went wrong after the post 2000 hacktivism boom. See the documentary Hackers in wonderland(2000) for more about the olden days of floodnet and other fun stuff.

[-Ninjex-]

For you americans out there there is a random petition on petitions.whitehouse.gov to make ddos a legal form of protest.
Most of you will never notice but HTS gets DDoS'd a lot but this is just a few people(or 1) with botnets and not an actual protest.
On the condition that each ip == 1 actual person instead of 1 person with a botnet doing all the 'protesting' I am totally for this type of thing. I think the internet needs a way to have its voice heard because it seems to me that our wishes are far too often ignored.
What are your thoughts on this? And if you like it.. go sign the damned thing. And if not, explain why before someone goes to sign without being properly informed.

I also wonder what the media have to say about this. It would seem they like to mention the "huge"(we get hit with half its max capacity a couple of times a month and with about 1/6th of it every day all day, and that is most likely just 1 person doing it) ddos on american banks that is supposedly being done by Iran(could be iran.. could be any 12 year old with internet access).
This is obviously to portray this as some kind of bad thing even though in the bank case its obviously a botnet doing all the work and not a large subsection of the worlds population.

Also note that in the past ddos WAS a legal(atleast never questioned in a court) form of protest(floodnet comes to mind) but somehow something went wrong after the post 2000 hacktivism boom. See the documentary Hackers in wonderland(2000) for more about the olden days of floodnet and other fun stuff.

I looked at that not to long ago.
I am not sure how it would play out if it did become legal.
I think people would just go on DoS'ing sprees and claim it to be in protest.
You could pretty much claim protest on anything, due to the fact that everyone is keen to their own opinions.
As you said also, I would probably assume abuse by botnets, perl flooders from vps's, shells on MySQL databases, etc...
I think it would just get out of control is all.

[weekend hacker]

I looked at that not to long ago.
I am not sure how it would play out if it did become legal.
I think people would just go on DoS'ing sprees and claim it to be in protest.
You could pretty much claim protest on anything, due to the fact that everyone is keen to their own opinions.
As you said also, I would probably assume abuse by botnets, perl flooders from vps's, shells on MySQL databases, etc...
I think it would just get out of control is all.

I don't know about DoS'ing sprees, theres a big limit to what a single person can do and that sort of thing is very easily blocked.
And with or without this as a law botnets would be illegal due to the whole breaking into a computer thing. Even if this law wouldn't be created(the current situation) this doesn't prevent a ddos from a botnet. Theres almost no way to find out who launched the attack with a botnet and so the law plays little role in that.
Even VPS's are limited, its easy to block a single VPS and launching an attack from one would surely be against their terms of service.
If its 1 ip per person, then the amount of inconvenience would be directly related to the amount of shits people give.

Also edited the previous post, apparently we don't get half that bank ddoss max capacity, we get only 10Gbit less then its max capacity(at least according to the latest article I read about that bank stuff they only peak at 70Gbit).

[fashizzlepop]

Now that corporations are people (thanks citizens united) this would allow massive corporations to DDoS as well including taking down smaller competitor's websites. Something to think about.

[WallShadow]

Looking at the economics side of this, this is terrible. It will allow large corporations to ddos smaller competitor businesses legally, thus supporting the growth of monopolies and oligopolies by preventing users from finding a small business's information online.

Example: In case you don't know, the industry producing and selling glasses is nearly completely controlled by just one company right now (in the US, that is, not sure about other countries). Right now, the only real competition to them are companies that sell cheap glasses online and have them shipped to you. Imagine if a huge company earning millions a year could legal ddos those sites? They'd have complete reign over the industry, complete vertical and horizontal assimilation.



So much for a free market economy...


edit; damn, i just read fash's post right after i posted this. sorry fash D:

[weekend hacker]

This is a very valid point, but I don't see it as a reason why it shouldn't happen.
Laws aren't made in a single sentence they tend to have several pages of rules and bylaws that accompany them. I think these are points that can be addressed when writing it into law and I imagine there are several other points we could make that they'd need to take into account to ensure it is to let people protest instead of silence people.(remember, such a law isn't written yet, we have free range to think up all the things that could be in it. And this petition doesn't mean it'll actually become law but only that it needs to be considered.)

For instance the corporations are people argument could easily be taken care of in the law text. For one there is the point that corporations are only 1 person, so only 1 ip could be used but an even better solution is to totally exclude them. Corporations may be legal entities but that doesn't give the right to vote in an election so it would be just as easy to write the new law so they also aren't allowed to engage in a DoS.
In real life you're not allowed to block emergency services/hospitals. Its only logical that their online equivalents are also not fair game.
Using a botnet would be similar to election fraud, you only get one vote at these things(+the additional punishment of unauthorised computer access).

There is all kinds of things we can come up with to ensure its 1 actual person wilfully participating per IP and who better to come up with all the potential problems that need to be taken into account then people like us?