What does the DOS analogy suggest? (Was: Freedom to Spew)

>>>>> "bijan" == Bijan Parsia <bparsia-vEoVa6Jh+/J4piUD7e9S/[email protected]> writes:

  bijan> A key point occurs to me, and I'm embaress to have niether
  bijan> thought of nor expressed before

Hmm, me too.

I started thinking again, carefully, about the DOS analogy. It's
interesting but I think for a different reason than discussed here so
far.

I initially overestimated it because, well, I'm a geek and I know
firsthand what it means to clean up from a DOS, I appreciate the
technical details in warding them off, etc.

But calling the paper snatchings a DOS doesn't really condemn the
paper snatchings now that I've thought about it. I think it suggests
that 1) a DOS against the Brown web site, w/out the paper snatchings,
would have been as appropriate as the paper snatchings alone were (or
as inappropriate, depending on your view); 2) tactically there may be
something said for the virtue of the DOS over paper snatchings, I'm
not sure; and 3) if useful beyond that, the DOS analogy suggests an
argument about the badness of laws against most forms of cracking,
including DOS.

If I'd left my home in TX and gone to Brown and helped snatch the
papers, out of some sense of obligation to prevent harm, say, then
whatever else one might say about the 'native' paper snatchers, one
could say about me, but not much *in addition* and certainly not much
just by virtue of my having crossed state lines.

And yet if I'd decided to do a DOS against the Brown site, iirc, the
laws against cracking would have been federal since I would have
crossed, 'virtually', anyway, various state lines and other
jurisdictions to do the DOS.

I've generally been suspicious of any law that treats an online
version of a crime more strictly than a real world version of the
crime, esp. when there aren't different harms (or the harms, while
different, are of the same magnitude and type).

The DOS analogy seems to suggest -- at least, my initial differential
reaction suggests -- another case of differential treatment for no
discernibly good reason.

Kendall