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back to article Perverted Justice vigilante sentenced for DDoS attacks

A computer programmer was sentenced to two years in prison for unleashing crippling attacks on rollingstone.com and other news websites that published humiliating accounts of an adulterous online affair he pursued with a fictitious woman. Bruce Raisley was also ordered to pay $90,383 in restitution for the distributed denial-of …

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  1. sisk

    Messy situation

    Ok...so what we have here is a guy who went out of his way to expose pedophiles (a good thing) who used the same skills to ruin the life of a colleague (a bad thing) who, rather than suing the crap out of the guy who ruined his life, launched a DDoS against Rolling Stone and other companies (a dumb thing).

    Seems to me that the biggest losers in this mess are the victims of the pedophiles these men could have been exposing if they weren't so intent on going after each other and news outlets.

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  2. John Savard

    Libel Laws

    In some countries, since no public interest was really served, Rolling Stone could simply have been sued for libel. Because printing personal information that is no one's business, even if it's true, is still libel in some jurisdictions such as Canada and the UK.

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    1. David Neil
      Reply Icon

      Afraid not

      Libel can be defended if you can prove the statement you made was true.

      You appear to be confusing libel with public disclosure of private facts, which as very much a grey area still, even after the Mosely case

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    2. gerryg
      Reply Icon

      bollocks

      "DEFENDING LIBEL ACTIONS - JUSTIFICATION AND THE BURDEN OF PROOF

      130. The defence of justification requires the defendant to prove that the words complained of were true or substantially true[...]"

      http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcumeds/362/36206.htm

      "The most common defences, if someone sues you for defamation, are:

      Truth - A statement may have hurt your reputation, but if it was true then anyone can say it and have a good defence against a lawsuit."

      http://www.canadianlawsite.ca/libel-slander-defamation-of- character.htm

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Where is the moral?

    From the face of it Von Erk sounds more of a devil. So here we have another devil let loose in this god forsaken world.

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  4. joe.user
    Megaphone

    Karma has teeth

    meow

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    1. M Gale
      Reply Icon

      Yeah..

      ..because exposing predators of children is totally the same thing.

      Okay, the guy was dumb, possibly a bit of an arsehole and I pity his (no doubt soon to be ex) wife, but the stitch up job was neither warranted nor really reflects well on the people at Perverted Justice.

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  5. Anteaus
    Thumb Down

    OK so you're the editor...

    .. of Rolling Stone or Radar, and you're offered a story which you know is part of an orchestrated campaign of malice.

    Do you publish?

    If you publish, and become the subject of a DoS attack by the victim of this campaign of malice, do you then launch a retaliatory legal attack against the victim of the malice, or do you simply acknowledge that you should not have done that, and that the consequences are your own fault?

    Anyone with an ounce of moral fiber would do the latter, methinks.

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    1. Richard Boyce
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Re: OK so you're the editor

      It wasn't the magazine that prosecuted, it was the state and for good reason.

      You can argue that the magazine did wrong, but you can't legitimately remedy such a wrong by committing a crime against 100,000 innocent people.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    two years for ddos ?

    > A computer programmer was sentenced to two years in prison for unleashing crippling attacks on rollingstone.com and other news websites ..

    > A PRIMARY school assistant head has been jailed .. for 14 months on Friday after he admitted creating indecent images of children ..

    http://tinyurl.com/3b6tkzr

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3531910/School-assistant-head-jailed-after-he-and-his-teacher-brother-hoarded-11000-child-porn.html

    --

    no 'computers' were harmed in the making of this msg ...

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