Ah, see, that's the point, it's not robbery. It's disruption, it's protest, it's a form of free speech, and fuck yes it can impact profits. That's the entire point of it.

It's ridiculous to cast speech that I disagree with as somehow "theft", "robbery", or any other bullshit just so I can have some illogical excuse to argue it shouldn't be allowed.

Fuck Paypal and their 3.5 million, a number I guarantee came straight from their assholes to your newspaper I might add.

Paypal has fucked people illegally and gotten away with it for 100 times that, when they've been caught they've paid a tiny fine, not worth a shit compared to the value the illegal conduct brought to their personal bottom lines. This is true for a lot of business.

And now you seriously want to deny people their ability to influence this behavior? I don't care if you agree with it, it doesn't even matter if I agree with it, that's a double-standard if ever there was one.

Fuck that shit. Yeah, I support those peoples' rights to protest, the fact they're doing it with a computer doesn't change the fundamental value of their ability to do so.

The difference between DDos and regular peaceful protests is that the latter does not actively block entry.

I think that is where the sit-in analogy gets stronger (because otherwise it really doesn't hold water in my mind): in fact a lot of peaceful protest can block access (to services, or a physical location, or being able to interact with the people who are being protested against). A big part of protest is to disrupt the service which is being provided so that protestors are listened to in terms of what their issue is about.

Also:

http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/images/GifGuide/clapping/citizen_cane.gif

Protesting stops being that when you harm damage or prevent from functioning someone or something. You want to protest paypal not accepting payments to wikileaks make a blog or tweet about it you don't get to try and to break them. Unions can't physically restrain workers from going to their jobs or take a sledge hammer to the new automated tire stacker. Hippies don't get to throw rocks and bottles at returning veterans. Hackers don't get to shut down a website they don't like any more than they'd like it if sopa did. If you feel somebody is being a dick you can yell at them but no throwing punches.

You have a lot to learn about protesting, protesting can very much block streets, access to public transit, access to buildings, etc.

No I'm not saying they should be allowed to physically assault you in the name of protesting, but all this malarkey about only being allowed to do stuff that doesn't impact anyone has crap-all to do with reality. Literally, you're denying 50 years or more of US history, to say nothing of world history, by doing so.

I suggest you visit France, let the fucking grand masters of protest show you how it's done.

Oh yeah, the French know how to protest.
I once didn't have to attend class for an entire month, because of some student protest thing.
The front doors were pretty much barricaded.

Just thought I'd point this out as no one else did -- Anonymous is not a group and so it doesn't have members. The "hacker group", actually several groups and individuals, is largely a product of media idiocy. People found the idea funny and/or inspiring and so took up the name. Otherwise, Anonymous is what it has always been, a description of the sum of nameless, faceless people on a BBS (or by extension any online "community" or the internet itself).

From the article:

Visitors to the affected websites in this case would be directed to a page displaying the message: "You've tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung."

Doesn't really sound like the language of protest to me. Sounds more like a juvenile power trip.

That's actually very tame compared to many of the placards I've seen various protest groups wave about.

It's PayPal, it's not like they earned any of that money.
Not really, look up the history of the labor movement in the US, if you believe that. Protests aren't effective if the part you're protesting can just ignore it.

Also, WTF does hippies throwing rocks have to do with this. Nobody is going to be potentially physically hurt by hacktivism.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Unless of course, free speech is now dependent upon motivation.

I view Anonymous in much the same way as I view PETA: they occasionally bring up a good point or do something to affect positive change, but they're just too assholish most of the time for me to really support their cause.

Also, I'd like to point out that what they do isn't the same as public protest in that they have to break into and modify privately-owned property (that is, company webservers) to do their thing. The real world analogue for that would be if a group of protesters broke into a privately owned building and spray-painted their message on the lobby walls.

Are you really suggesting that Paypal has never provided a service for anyone?

Facepalm.

I'm suggesting that nobody does business with them that has any choice. Creating a monopoly and abusing the hell out of it is not what I would consider earning the money. That's rent keeping and it's parasitical.

They're a monopoly in the sense that Steam is, perhaps. So if that's what you mean, OK...

I dono i like some of the things ananymous stands for, problem is its not an organization any1 can take on the name so it's such a chaos of different agendas.
Still some of the "protests" like taking down some useless website for a few hours/days were really meaningless, and i doubt many cared.

As to people against "protesting" because of the damage that is just a rediculus thing to me...
Protests ARE GONNA cause damage ofc, and the more important the case the more damage is a general rule.
Do you think the Englishmen liked the American protestors leading up to 13-colonies breakout?
Do you think the french royalty&their supporters and even the commonmen "enjoyed" the damage of the french revolution (on which we tribute the invention of devestating devices such as the "guillitine" which was in AMPLE use during that revolution)

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.