I would agree with your criticism except for three things.

1. Do a Google search on "Defense of Personal Property," there are legal precedents even there.

2. There is no reliable legal recourse to an "attack" of this nature.

3. Going with the author's argument a bit, if there is no attacker, if it's more along the lines of an out-of-control vehicle crashing into your front door, you are perfectly justified in reaching into the vehicle and turning it off.

4. The problem with using the self-defense analogy that I should have seen earlier: It doesn't take into account that the attack from the running process is not a single, discrete event, it's a continuous barrage. I don't know if this would work for corporations (depending on how the judge feels about Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company), but Castle Law provides explicitly for standing your ground in your home if you can not evade the attack. Yes, you can block the flow of traffic from upstream, but the attack is *still* going on and *still* consuming bandwidth, which is a quantifiable "injury."

I'll have to have more coffee and think about it.

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