Re: Re: Freedom to Spew

The denial of service angle is more direct than are willing to admit yet, as 
both elements of the comparison are means of communication.  A DOS attack on 
monkeyfist.com would end it's ability to serve it's prime public function, 
the dissemination of information, in exactly the same way that absconding 
with the entire printed run of a college newspaper would end it's ability to 
disseminate information.

If something appears on slashdot, no matter what the intent of the man that 
posted it to that forum, and the server subsequently crumbles under the 
load, then that means that MORE people saw the information it was 
established to convey, not fewer.  Despite eventually going down, 
slashdotting the server resulted in a period of dramatically increased 
success in its prime public role, disseminating information.

>then the taking of the papers and burning them may be a
>form of speech.

No.  Taking one paper and burning it is a form of speech.  Taking all the 
papers and burning them is the suppression of ideas.  An apologia for 
bookburning won't go far outside the Taliban these days.

There are many leftists who would defend burning a flag, but damn few who 
would defend the forced burning of all of them.

You're warming up to the truth when you discuss scale.  Think about scale in 
terms of barriers to expression.  Then learn to resist sophistry and you'll 
really have something.



----Original Message Follows----
From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia-vEoVa6Jh+/J4piUD7e9S/[email protected]>
To: "Pete O'Such" <[email protected]>
CC: bonobos-4GNy1lrxftmrG/[email protected]
Subject: Re: [Bonobos] Re: Freedom to Spew
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 22:17:35 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Pete O'Such wrote:

 >    I've never understood the charge of "stealing"
 >    free papers. Presumably I can take as many copies
 >    of a free paper as I want? I can take the whole
 >    stack if I have urgent need for massive amounts
 >    of papier-mache material?
 >
 > You are discussing a denial of service attack.

Interesting way to put it. One I definitely handn't thought of. Still not
*stealing* per se, though. Er...and presumably only a denial of service by
analogy, as taking newspapers isn't interrupting a *service* but taking
*objects*.

Do these differences make a difference? Maybe, maybe not.

If I mange to get something on slashdot with the express purpose of
bringing down a server via the Slashdot effect, I've instigated a denial
of service attack, yes? But, it's probably legit. Now, IIRC, we explicitly
have laws against certain forms of DOS (I'd guess you'd have to have both
intent and a certain kind of means -- not sure how a broken spider would
be counted). Now, other kinds of means may result in the same lack of
service, but, as in the slashdot effect case, be permitted. E.g., if an
anon ftp server has a very low simultaneous use set, and no timeout policy
(and *say* so), then my sitting on the the connections will result in loss
of service to others. But it's not (legally) a denial of service
attack. It's not even (morally) a denial of service attack. It's being a
pig in a permitted way. The server owns might *change their mind* and thus
*change thier policy*, but given the policy, they're screwed. We might
call this a "scalability problem">

 >  I think you'd feel a bit
 > differently if someone applied your "logic" to the residents of 
64.6.45.65,
 > especially since they are about ten revisions behind the current version 
of
 > Apache.

I take your point, but I'm not sure you've taken mine. I've never denied
that taking the paper prevents people from getting one. That would be
insane. That's the *point*. I've denied that it's theft. I think it's
called theft to stigmatize it, which I don't see as a good thing.

Again, if we have expansive notions of protecting speech (as some do),
then the taking of the papers and burning them may be a form of speech. A
vital, unique form of expression. Not one I particularly care for, but I
don't care for the particular expression of Horowitz's ideas either.

Notice that the charges of theft are explicitly designed to bring in the
power of official authority against the protesters -- literally to censor
them. There are *other* was to combat their action (distributing the
papers by hand, for example).

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.


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