back to article eBay chairman: 'Don't make payback a bitch for Anonymous hackers'

In a move likely to negatively affect his board members' blood pressure (and highlight his future media plans), eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar has called on the government to show leniency in the forthcoming trial of the "PayPal 14", who are accused of DDoSing the online payment service. Later this week, the Department of …

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  1. LaeMing

    "some of the upgrades required to block further attacks"

    I defininately agree that paying for this ^^ shouldn't be at the attackers' expense, since it is clearly something that should have been paid for long before they arrived on the port. (No comment on the rest as I don't have enough info).

    1. John McCallum
      Devil

      Re: "some of the upgrades required to block further attacks"

      Unfortunatly that will not stop the DoJ in their mission to get their hands on FREE MONEY.

      1. Sir Sham Cad

        Re: FREE MONEY.

        It's likely to be self defeating, though, as they'll set the amount so high that they'll never have a hope in hell of recovering it. It's merely adding "...and forced bankruptcy for extra punishment" to whatever jail time these guys get.

  2. J__M__M

    He needs to get with the program.

    So this guy thinks these agitators shouldn't spend more time in the pen than, say, rapists and killers? Even though they messed with HIS stuff?

    That's crazy talk.

    Sincerely,

    Visa, Sony, DOJ, Citibank, MIT, MPAA, & Federal "I'm a God Hear Me Roar" Prosecutors everywhere

  3. Unicornpiss

    Wow, someone in charge with some common sense?

    And integrity? Not to mention empathy? What is the world coming to...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wow, someone in charge with some common sense?

      ... and money aplenty. Not the usual mix.

  4. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Stop

    What a hypocrite, just paying to his new market.

    "......I can understand that the protesters were upset by PayPal's actions and felt that they were simply participating in an online demonstration of their frustration. That is their right...." No it's not. They have the right to peaceful protest within the law, not e-vandalism.

    Omidyar is simply on a PR run to generate market interest in his commercial news service. He is rich enough to not care about the losses from the Low IQ Cannon, he plans on making it back through his faux freedom-fighter news service, but a lot of his shareholders probably won't be so flush. PayPal works and makes money as it serves the needs of thousands of little "Mom & Pop" companies selling their goods, and I bet Omidyar didn't stop to think how the loss of payment service affected them.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Velv

    Perhaps he has a point.

    If you were to physically stand with a group in front of the doors of PayPal and prevent people from entering how much jail time would one person expect? Breach of the peace perhaps, with a small fine for a first offence.

    I'm in no way suggesting these people are innocent and walk free. But why should they get more jail time than a rapist? Or perhaps rapists get it too easy.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Velv

      ".....I'm in no way suggesting these people are innocent and walk free. But why should they get more jail time than a rapist? Or perhaps rapists get it too easy." If you do not agree with the sentencing or laws used in such cases then the RIGHT and LEGAL way to deal with it is to campaign for a change in the law. Until such a change, the law is the law and publically available for scrutiny, and anyone stupid enough to fire up the Low IQ Cannon and expect the law to be waived is simply being unrealistic. The Internet has become far too important a tool to commerce for any government to risk widespread economic disruption at the drop of a hat by any group of bored skiddies with a grudge.

      What you fail to see is that it was simply LAZINESS on the part of the Anonysheep - they could have gotten out of their Moms' basements and protested legally, maybe mounted a negative PR campaign against VISA, PayPal, et al, but it was less effort and "kewl" for them to get their sheeple to fire up LOIC. The law does not and should not make exceptions for either stupidity or laziness even if it is the trend du jour.

      1. Shasta McNasty
        Alert

        Re: Velv

        When you're dealing with corporate entities, the only thing that they take notice of is the bottom line.

        A negative PR campaign against Paypal would take a huge amount of money before it even came close to being effective and Paypal has enough money to stop it before it got anywhere.

        I'm not saying what they did was right or wrong, but it was the most effective way of protesting.

        And the laws of a financial nature have always attracted harsher punishments that the laws protecting a person. It has always been unfair like this and as the people with money run the governments, its unlikely to ever change.

        1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          FAIL

          Re: Shasta McNasty Re: Velv

          "....A negative PR campaign against Paypal would take a huge amount of money before it even came close to being effective and Paypal has enough money to stop it before it got anywhere......" Oh yee of little imagination. The great, wide Internet is a massive opportunity for cheap PR campaigns that even the largest corporates are helpless against. An example is the negative campaign against "New Coke" where a small minority of customers kicked up such a media frenzy that Coca Cola dropped the brand completely. And that was back in the days before YouTube, Twatter and Faecesbook, which give one guy in his bedroom the ability to instantly spread his message to millions Worldwide. TRY THINKING!

          "....I'm not saying what they did was right or wrong, but it was the most effective way of protesting....." How was it effective? It achieved SFA, it did not lift the embargo. All it did was put the full weight of the law behind PayPal and co and leave dozens of Anonysheep in jail. The only way it was effective was in thinning out the herd!

          1. Mike 16

            OT: New Coke

            Need to tighten the straps on your Tinfoil Hat. There are many who believe, with some evidence, that the whole point of "New Coke" was to flush the supply of "Old Coke" so that when they "relented" and "brought back Classic Coke", nobody would notice that the sugar had been replaced by HFCS. This only makes sense in the U.S., where sugar incurs high tariffs and corresponding high local prices, while HFCS is subsidized.

            But they probably recouped the cost of the "New Coke Fiasco" in a few months of higher margin on Classic.

            And yet the story lives on, like the "Chevy Nova" one, or the notion that patents are for the benefit of small inventors, because, well, that one guy eventually got a payout for intermittent wipers.

            As for Omidyar "playing to his new crowd", well, what do you expect? He's in business. You may as well be shocked that politicians lie or water runs downhill.

  6. Frogmelon

    So. Leniency for hackers disrupting Paypal.

    Meanwhile if you're a decent seller on Ebay with a few anonymous low scores due to buyers' "opinions" you'll probably be shown the door and banned permanently with not much leniency shown at all.

    GG Ebay/Paypal.

  7. TopOnePercent

    LOIC

    Am I missing something here, but why develop LOIC to be so simple to backtrace?

    I won't pretend to be a computer forensics expert, but it seems to me it should be straight forward enough to build something at least a little difficult to backtrace?

    I'm not of the tinfoil hat brigade, but would it be reasonable to suppose the authors intended to privde some low hanging fruit to the authorities, or least didn't care much if their users were identified?

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: TopOnePercent Re: LOIC

      "....but why develop LOIC to be so simple to backtrace?....but would it be reasonable to suppose the authors intended to privde some low hanging fruit to the authorities....." The idea seems to be to provide "martyrs" for The Cause, possibly in the hope that hundreds of arrested sheeple would be such a burden on the legal system and generate so much negative press that the authorities would abandon the case rather than risk the courts being swamped. The problem is those that accepted they would be traced often passed the tools to others without explaining the implications. But the ploy largely failed because the authorities were smarter and simply went after the herders.

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