Tribal rights charity weathers DDoS assault

The publication of footage of Indonesian soldiers torturing native Papuans appears to provoked a denial of service attack on the websites of development charities who hosted it. The websites of Survival International and at least five other organisations who work in West Papua were all floored by the attack, which started at …

[lIsRT]

youtube?

They have an account: http://www.youtube.com/user/survivalintl - they should just put it there and see what the combined might of Indonesia/Botswana can do against Google's networks.

In any case, the Streisand effect has probably been invoked now.

[Loyal Commenter]

Just a guess

But I should think that videos of torture are probably against Youtube's terms of use.

It does make you wonder, though, as you point out, what the perpetrator of the DoS attack were expecting to accomplish. It doesn't take an idiot to see that this would generate publicity for charitable groups which a lot of people would otherwise not have heard of. I, for one, will now be boycotting Indonesian goods. (If I ever find myself about to buy something that has actually come from Indonesia...)

[John 104]

Seriously?

A couple of geeks in a shed? Surely that stereotype should be put to bed. No wonder they got a DDoS...

[Jimbo 6]

I presume...

...you're confusing 'geeks' with 'gooks' ? Not quite the same thing (though both Viet Cong and computer nerds are known for doing most of their work under cover of darkness...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Humm

Seems it did more good than harm, and they clearly don't know much about DDoS.

[Just Thinking]

Friends of People Close To Nature

WTF?

If by some accident of birth I had been born into a primative tribe of hunter gatherers, I would rather hope to be rescued from the situation, given an education, and maybe lead a similar life to everybody else.

The last thing I would want is some bunch of nutjobs trying to protect me from "forced assimilation" into modern society. What gives them the right?

With friends like that...

[Loyal Commenter]

Nice Colonial Attitude you have there.

There's a difference between providing things like sanitation and housing, and trampling all over the culture of others. With your sort of attitude, I suspect you have never left the shores of your native country. Just because someone's way of life is different from your own does not make it necessarily 'primitive', or 'inferior', in the same way as not having satellite TV, the latest trainers, and status symbol from Crapple does not make someone less 'developed'.

[Just Thinking]

Information is choice

I don't know anybody who would prefer to be subsisting as a hunter gatherer, rather than having the benefits of living in a modern society. That doesn't mean having to adopt western attitudes, give up your culture, or anything else.

Who has the right to decide that these people shouldn't have TV, or that they wouldn't find a mobile phone quite handy just like you do? TVs and phones aren't specifically western they are just modern (probably designed and made in the east). Making sure Sky isn't the only channel is a separate issue.

Probably these charities are genuinely trying to preserve tribal cultures, but you can't do that just be putting people in a time bubble.

[Ondrej Doubek]

@ "Just Thinking": You maybe might feel that way...

--- but there are many who find OUR way of living sick, sad and unworthy, and everything our "education" has to offer useless, poisenous and destructive.

And, although some "accident of birth" has placed me in the "developed" world I can somewhat see why.

Who are you do judge and despise their way of living? I am sorry for you who can't see beyond your fence.

Maria Theresa refused to spend the rest of her old days in "Western Europe" saying she couldn't face the poverty and misery. She talked about a spiritual poverty rather than a material one, showing that there are different views on the world, and how numb we have become to big parts of it.

I hope that the way of life of those "People Close To nature" will survive as long as they choose it. As it implies there to remain some of that nature to start with...

Haven't actually been thinking that much, have you.