The Charlottesville rally was already set up to be the biggest white supremacist gathering in recent history, described by one of the organizers as "the biggest rally event we've had this millennium", pulling in members from the KKK, the proud boys, neo-Confederates, neo-nazis, and just about every other white supremacy group in the nation.

Still with all this coordination and bluster the event planner requested a permit for at most 400 people. Now that may seem like a lot but these people were coming from all over the country, hell that murderer that drove into the crowd was from Ohio. The white supremacy movement, with months of coordination and planning, could only gather less than 400 people for one of their hate rallys. There are high school graduating classes with more people than that. With the events in Charlottesville and the media's endless reporting before and after it may seem like these groups are very large and a profound influence on society, but the truth is that these people are a very very small minority of the population and most people do not believe like they do. The KKK and Nazi's may become as emboldened as they want, I do not see them ever fielding marches that exceed the size of a high school football stadium. Because no one wants to join them.

Be careful with how you praise 'market forces'. It could very well lead to organizations buying out domains that are critical of them.
Before domains were mainly considered a type of property, they belonged to the owner as long as they kept up on their registration fees and it was up to the owner if he wanted to keep it or not.

But now that GoDaddy and Google have decided to refuse registration based on the content how far is it till they decide to sell domain names to the highest bidder? Or cancel registration if they get a better offer? ripoffreport.com could easily be bought out by one of the companies it has named, and the EFF is already operating in the red last year, how well do you think they would fair in a bidding war for their own domain against any organization that would love to shut them down? Do not cheer for 'market forces' at work in what is one of the most important subsystems in the internet, be wary because it could happen to you next.

Were this thing to have happened two years ago there would have been some precedent covering this. Before October 2016 ICANN operated the DNS system at the behest of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the US Department of Commerce. I am not a lawyer but it would have been easy to argue this arrangement would have made ICANN a state actor, and restricted from engaging in content based limitation of speech just like the government itself.

But now that ICANN has moved from being managed by the Department of Commerce to a "Multi-Stakeholder Community" the legality of this move is much more uncertain. While private institutions are free to enforce their own policies and restrictions can they take over a government built and designed system and do the same? Especially if the government was instrumental in supporting and developing the system in the first place and leading to it's success. the current DNS system we have in place is roughly equivalent to the Interstate Highway System in that both form a major backbone of their respective systems. I imagine many people would complain if the US government ceded control of the highway system to private enterprises, especially if that private enterprise started blocking highway access to people they deemed undesirable. Yet that is what is going on here, and I am not sure what the legal ramifications are for it.

Incidentally one of the main criticisms of moving ICANN out from under the DOC was the concern that other nations without as robust protections of free speech as the United States would try to take down domains that fall afoul of their laws or politics. It seems that their fears from those days may have been justified.

My best guess is that some middle manager signed off on it, but then had seconds thoughts and wanted to "monetize" it (read: sell it) with delusions of becoming the next rapid 7 or something. The authors protested because they wanted to release Meatpistol to the community and do their presentation. Butthurt manager fired them in retaliation, probably not knowing what sort of shit show he was starting.

While also looking to hire more security professionals. I think this little stunt may have an adverse effect on their recruitment efforts.

Although the Purple People Eater does have the ability to fly, his monocular vision reduces his depth perception making him a somewhat less dangerous foe. Purple People should drop a point or two into agility to make evasion easier.

And that is where a lot of the information security professionals are concerned. There are several programs and methods used in information security research and penetration testing that would fall under that category, one example being the Meterpreter shell in the Metasploit framework. If this case results in a conviction under those charges you can bet many companies and researchers would hesitate to publish their tools for fear of being the next target on an ambitious DA's hit list. Criminalizing tools based on their functionality rather than the users actions with them could have a very chilling effect on information security research.

You say that, yet this case has not been ruled unconstitutional, and given the packing that has been done recently....

According to this study about 0.6% of the adult population identifies as transgender. If the US is hurting for manpower that much I hope they go after the 1%ers kids before trying to draw from the transgender community. Maybe then they will think twice about supporting chicken hawks who are too eager to go to war but not willing to fight it.

May be a day late and a dollar short on this response but that is not a good analogy. Client side validation is not swapping stickers, it is handing the customer the label maker and letting them choose their own price. Sure it has a suggested price as the default, but without checking the accuracy on the server side you are letting the customer pick which ever price they want and you accept it because that is how your system is set up. It is like the credit card company that did not verify their own contract when it was sent back by a customer. If your system is set up to auto accept what the customer said you are going to have a bad time.

Why the hell should Netflix, google, et al pay twice for their traffic?
Also the thing with extortionists is that you pay them once and soon enough they are at your door again asking for money.
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld. You never get rid of the Dane.

You know, I think that in addition to investigating and pursuing these types of companies the FTC should have a "How to" guide for filing in small claims court and using their settlements as evidence. I do not know if the FTC actually pays the victims of these sort of scams so I do enjoys the thought of thousands of default judgments chasing these assholes for the rest of their life.

Say what you want about soviet occupation but those fuzzy hats were definitely a fashion statement.

So a coordinated campaign against 36 people, across 14 states, for words on the internet does not seem authoritarian to you?
Hmm, so how is North Korea this time of year? Is is any good? How is Jong-un doing these days, hanging in there?

By god! A leak of this scale could go all the way to the top, does Linus know about this?