Life support devices also don't require constant internet access. Diagnostic equipment also doesn't require constant internet access. Local medical procedures do not require internet access. Hospital medical records do not require constant internet access. In fact no life supporting activity requires constant internet access, because designing the system to rely on something that is unreliable would be stupid. Physicians are not stupid.
It is conceivable that telemedicine sessions might have been interrupted, but telemedicine is inappropriate when life is in jeopardy. We could imagine the future invention of remote robotic surgeries that would qualify, but if that were going on it would have been mentioned in the indictment, and also a dedicated and isolated network would have been created. In fact since every federal indictment written includes everything but the kitchen sink, and this indictment mentioned only the customary ridiculous inflated monetary damages, we know that this DDoS attack did not hurt anyone physically.
I don't think that we normal easygoing HN folks would really mind your conceptual mistakes, but the combination of those with the withering scorn you've exhibited here is probably what inspired us to keep this thread going long past the point of interest and utility. So, nice trolling!
The statement in question:
> He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the protest.
Mr. Gottesfeld's own statement:
> Almost unbelievably, they kept their donation page on the same public network as the rest of their stuff. Rookie mistake. To take it down, I’d have to knock the whole hospital off the Internet.
Christ, if that's "not untrue" in your judgment, then I won't hold out hope that you care enough about basic facts to see that even in the many words I've spent in this thread bickering about the topic, I've never stated that I support the prosecution or alleged mistreatment of Mr. Gottesfeld. My opinion has been: I am more ambivalent about this case than I was about what happened to Aaron Swartz [0]. Given how angry Swartz's case made me, me not feeling strongly about Mr. Gottesfeld by comparison does not equate to me supporting his prosecution.
But I'm not surprised you aren't able to see the distinction, if you don't see the difference between a website and the Internet.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306401