Hacker News
points by tarsierscripter 2 days ago | 0 comments
The news is that people download it so much that they saturate your server’s connection and/or peg its CPU or disk (whichever is the weakest link in the chain). We used to call this a Denial of Service attack but now it’s apparently just a cost of doing business, even for people who just want to run a non-commercial hobby site.
[–] bijowo1676 2 days ago
its not a denial of service because there was never an intent to deny the service
[–] tarsierscripter 2 days ago
The effect is a denial of service. Service is denied because the server is overloaded. The intent is at best callous indifference and at worst is copyright infringement.

It’s comparable to broadcasting radio interference as a side effect of some industrial process. If a company were to do that they’d be slapped down hard by the FCC. The unfortunate reality we live in is that we have no equivalent regulation on the internet. Thus the situation has become a tragedy of the commons: small websites suffer denial of service due to unsustainable and unwanted bot traffic.