

Guilty plea in Anonymous attack on Scientology websites - ilamont
http://www.csoonline.com/article/524063/Nebraskan_Pleads_Guilty_to_2008_Web_Attack_on_Scientologists

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tptacek
Good. Just about the worst conceivable response to Scientology: arm the cult
with stories about criminal stunts to help them delegitimize criticism.

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jrockway
I wonder what these people were threatened with if they didn't take the plea
bargain. 25 years to life for a hate crime against a religious organization?

(One _year_ in prison for running a script to DoS a website? An entire year of
your life, gone forever!?)

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jongraehl
I'm okay with DoS attacks being punished as vandalism. Still, one year seems
excessive.

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tptacek
There's "vandalism" and there's "vandalism". A year for spraypainting a wall
is crazy. But what about for sneaking into a company's garage and slashing all
the tires on 20 or 30 service vehicles?

DoS is more like the latter than the former.

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jrockway
This situation is more like convincing everyone in the neighborhood to slash
one tire, and then punishing the two people that got caught for the entire
group's action.

One person running "while /bin/true; do wget -r scientology.com & done" is not
going to do any damage. When 1000 people do it, though, it does cause damage.

Should the two people that got caught be liable for the damage done by the
other 998? (I say no. In many cases, the law seems to disagree.)

