I had a little bit of discussion with Ovid on some things he posted about the ethics of DoS attacks as a means of protest. To further this notion of what you can do when a company does something you don't like, here are a few DOs and DON'Ts that could be useful to someone who wants to make a difference:

DO Tell them that you don't like what they did. Write a real snail mail letter, state your case intelligently and politely, and mail it to them. Make it clear what they could do to win your respect back.

DO Boycott them, and get others to boycott them. Tell them you are doing this.

DON'T Attack their website. Besides being illegal, this will not help to convince anyone that you are a rational person whose views matter. It trivializes your stance by marking you as a criminal, and thus probably not someone they would have wanted as a customer anyway. If you wouldn't smash in the windows of a brick and mortar company, you shouldn't DoS the servers of a web company either.

DON'T Assume that all the company's employees are evil. There may be one or two people there who are ruthless or else uninformed about the consequences of their actions, but a company is made up of many people who don't all share the same ideology.

DO Remember that there are many sides to every story. As an employee at eToys during the time when they were embroiled in the etoy fiasco, it was painful to see how one-sided and unfair the Slashdot articles on the subject usually were. I know that eToys' motives were good, even if the actions were wrong, and I know that etoy was not as pure and righteous as they were made out to be.

DO Recognize it if a company tries to do the right thing. If they fix the problem, stop boycotting them. Maybe even send them a thank you note for doing what you asked. After eToys dropped the lawsuit against etoy and paid all of their legal bills for them, I saw lots of people on Slashdot saying things like "I don't care, I'll never buy from those fuckers again." If you take that attitude, what possible motive does a company have to change in the way that you asked?

This is all a bit off-topic, but since others were already talking about it, I though I'd throw in my two cents.

In reply to Ethically Protesting a Company's Actions by perrin

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