← Back to context

Comment by JasonADrury

6 months ago

[flagged]

One side publishes words, the other DDoSes. One side could just ignore the other and go about their business, the other cannot. One is using force, which naturally leads to resistance and additional attention, the other is not.

Both sides look like they have been bullied in the past and not found their way out of reproducing the pattern yet.

  • Words can have bad consequences. We‘ll see what will happen to Banksy after Reuters published words.

  • [flagged]

    • Words can have influence and can come from a place of authority, which does carry responsibility. Words of a president are very different from words published on a random blog by some random person, and different yet again from words published by a newspaper. Some presidents words are opinion, the same words in different context are commands and not acting on them comes at a price.

      Context matters. Which is why also different rules apply, and laws exist to guard these rules. DDoS is not an acceptable response in any jurisdiction, no matter what triggered them. We’re not in the Middle Ages, even if some behave like we are. Violence does not justify violence. Unjust action does not justify unjust responses.

      2 replies →

> The blog is still online and only exists as a part of a harassment campaign targeting archive.today

The blog has a lot of more posts on random topics. Why do you imply that the owner of the bloh is part of a harassment campaign and "only" that is the reason for this years old blog to exist?

You think DDoS (which is illegal btw) is okay as long as you don't like the target?

While I would it also better to a bit redact names and details mentioned in the original article in hindsight, I hardly find real defamation. I guess you want to provide random unproven evidence if someone is target of various foreign law enforcement and commercial sites. In the article they even call for donations to archive.today . As far as I read the tone of the post is full of admiration. Funny thing is that IMHO the rather childish JavaScript attack gives credibility to the post after all. In all this I somehow hope that we see a legal solution to all this major global copyright crisis that has been reinforced by LLM training. (If you want conspiracy theory: that I guess would be easy monetization for archive these days selling their snapshots)

  • Defamation? No.

    Doxing? Yes.

    It's clear that the person running archive.today does not actively publicize their identity.

    > As far as I read the tone of the post is full of admiration

    Exactly like an unhinged fan stalking a celebrity.

    • Totally agreed. Thanks for raising awareness.

      Thinking about it, I think we might need better platform rules, maybe even regulations on this. There seems to be pretty much no line of defense, which might explain the rather desperate DoS. If you take anonymity as a right, discussion like ours here on HN are dangerous as well, as they easily make otherwise difficult to find knowledge easily visible. So while a single fan page might go unnoticed, in case of doxing amplification is also a problem. Just my spontaneous thought.

      Edit: one afterthought. The story about hacking together a response to the GDPR takedown request quoting press rights and freedom of speech using an LLM shows actually the deeper problem. Actually rights come with obligations (at least ethical ones). At least in Europe press standards are typically rather aware of doxing risks. While actually celebraties also successfully use legal defenses, i still think the defenses for activist are weak balancing interest here (at least if you made something of public interest)