

Polish Internet community goes nuts against ACTA - pawelwentpawel
https://plus.google.com/110802750614569707247/posts/XpK4KLpsQCs

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jakubw
_Some simple instructions + JS web applications allowed thousands of people
from Poland to DDoS those websites on their own_

Willful participation in a DDoS doesn't sound like a good idea (being a
criminal offense in Poland) just as much as the whole concept of getting the
government to change their mind by taking down their websites (especially
those belonging to parties not involved in the ACTA ratification process). One
thing that folks behind this seem to have failed to learn from the SOPA battle
is to make it impossible for the government to present the protesters as the
bad guys in this situation in the mass media.

~~~
choros12
Polish people tend to always think that protesters are right just because they
protest and the Government is wrong just because it is the Government. Hence,
I wouldn't worry too much about this what the Government will tell to the
public about the protesters. The public will know better as it always does in
Poland.

Actually, this is just one of the reasons why I live in Poland even though I'm
an US citizen. People just distrust the Government and the media here so much.
It is fantastic!

~~~
jakubw
I'm Polish myself and I'm not sure I can fully agree with your optimism as
there have been a few cases under the current administration in which
controversial laws managed to pass thanks to the government's ability to
"properly" depict their target groups (the football stadium ban is one
example). You might be right that it might not be effective in this case.
Still, my point was that there are many lawful ways to bring the media's
attention to the problem. In the case of SOPA, shutting down Wikipedia and
other sites for one day was a great example. It not only had a major impact on
many people's lives but actually was an argument in itself (What would a post-
SOPA world look like?). What point does killing a bunch of .gov websites
prove?

~~~
choros12
Just saying... I remember the time in 90s when Polish coal miners didn't get
guarantees from the Government regarding their pension plans. Well, they
basically went to Warsaw and started riots. Real riots. As far as I remember
they literally _kidnapped_ member of the Administration or two. They destroyed
a few government building in Warsaw. They terrorized and paralyzed the
Government.

Next thing you know, the Government agreed to each and every one of the
protesters requests. As I said: I love Poland Man.

~~~
Tomek_
They fought hard with the police and caused some real damage to some of the
government buildings, but there was no kidnapping, or terror. Poland is not
some wild, crazy country. Also, most of the society was against the protests
and was literally pissed off on miners and on government (for the fact that
they indeed agreed to most of the requests of the miners).

~~~
choros12
That's exactly what I meant by terrorized. The miners did occupy Government
building and they did destroy some of them and yes they did terrorize some of
the high level Government officials by locking them up in their own offices
and not allowing to get out.

Yes, Poland IS a wild country. That is its biggest strength. Poor Americans
just have to deal with whatever laws thrown at them by their Government. Here,
in Poland - not really.

~~~
zdanozdan
I think we just see the government (any) as an enemy and I agree it's pretty
healthy. History teached us to do so but somehow still works.

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Tomek_
According to this text: <http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/9637> (in Polish, from a
lawyer who is against ACTA), there was no real attack on any of the mentioned
sites, it was just that there was so much interest in the case that some sites
went down due to naturally increased traffic. Case in point: his own website
went down, even though he is against ACTA.

~~~
gcb
how can you tell requests to a site with the intention to DoS it and the
regular ones if they were promoting in-browser tools for regular people?

~~~
Mad_Dud
The simplest way is to use netstat and check amount of connections from each
host. If you see plenty hosts with many connections established, that's DDoS.
If there is plenty hosts, but each one has few connections, thats DoS (aka
slash dot effect), mentioned by Tomek_.

PS: DDoS - distributed denial-of-service attack. Deliberate attack which
involves dedicated software; DoS - denial-of-service. Server can't handle all
requests, because suddenly there is more of them (because of link on frontpage
etc)

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jstepien
It's worth being noted that the latest attacks on government's websites are
top headlines on majority of Polish news sites at the moment. Both the attacks
and ACTA are being covered on news TV channels and radio. Apparently, taking
down government's website is a remarkably good method of raising interest of
media.

~~~
viraptor
I just hope it doesn't get interpreted in media as "hackers destroy government
property using pirated software - that's what ACTA is supposed to stop". I
wouldn't be surprised at all if that happened.

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pawelwentpawel
If there is anybody reading this from Poland - you can sign up a petition
against ACTA -
[http://www.petycje.pl/petycjePodpisyLista.php?petycjeid=8316...](http://www.petycje.pl/petycjePodpisyLista.php?petycjeid=8316&podpis_rodzaj=1)

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pawelwentpawel
Update - street protests in 13 cities are planned for next week. The biggest
one seems to be in Warsaw (over 13,000 people joined the event).

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pawelwentpawel
Update - 80,000 new people joined the case since yesterday, street protests
started literally right now (Gdansk - around 2000 ppl expected), new
government websites down.

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kolinko
My mom (55y.o.) just called me and asked what is that ACTA thing. My Facebook
feed is filled with ACTA posts & discussions... amazing.

~~~
hastur
Very cool. :)

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test1663
Check the biggest web portal: <http://www.onet.pl/>. The top (bold) news item
is about ACTA, and there also is a featured "10 things you need to know about
ACTA" article on main page. Same in all TV and radio.

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zeratul
Let me know if I can help anyway: scripts, source code, bandwidth.

~~~
pawelwentpawel
Most of the information (in english) about joining/current progress are being
twitted in here - <https://twitter.com/#!/AnonymousWiki>

They've taken down quite a few websites that I wouldn't really associate with
acta. There is also quite a lot of people making general mess around the
situation. Nevertheless, I've never seen an action like that in the Polish
"corner" of the Internet, quite remarkable.

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hastur
As I got up on a late Sunday morning, all major news outlets are talking both
about the alleged attacks and about ACTA itself. Sunday talk shows are talking
about ACTA. The Govt spokesman starts assuring people that they won't rush
anything and ACTA will be consulted.

ACTA suddenly came into mainstream public debate.

Where else did that happen in the world? I'm friggin proud of my country. :]

Oh, and BTW, signups on Facebook for the street protest against ACTA have
jumped from 13,000 to 19,000 in 12 hours. :]

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hastur
Oh man, I would have missed it, if not for HN! :)

I'm definitely going to the protest.

