Hacking Can Be Justified

If LulSec’s aims were benevolent, they should not have then released the information live onto the Internet, where it could be maliciously used by any number of cyber-criminals. The message wouldn’t be as convincing and shocking if the information wasn’t released, of course – but users who clearly don’t have the technological skills to even choose sensible passwords (‘Many of the passwords posted were, by and large, dictionary words or easy-to-guess phrases such as “123456.” While a strong password wouldn’t have helped in this kind of attack, users who make their passwords that easy to guess aren’t doing themselves any favors. shouldn’t be put in danger because of a battle they’re likely to know nothing about.

‘Here is the problem I have. My Robin Hood didn’t burn Sherwood Forrest to help the poor. He also did not use the poor as pawns in his fight with the rich.’ – http://www.corrections.com/news/article/28572-hackers-crackers-tramps-and-thieves

Ordinary users caught up in hacker stunts often can’t complain and are inconvenienced or even put in danger – often to the detriment of the cause that the hackers are trying to make a statement about – users aren’t likely to want to try and mod a PS3 game if they can’t use a PS3 without their credit card details being stolen.

<<Holes in their security wouldn’t matter if no one was allowed to hack. Also, if the company wants to plug in the holes then they would hire someone to do it for them. It is their responsibility to take care of their own. Outside hackers are breaking into others systems which is outside their right. If you lock your door and some stranger broke in to prove that it was possible, they still performed breaking and entering which is against the law. So to do it to prove it can be done is the worst excuse i’ve ever heard.

‘The greatest excuse in the world, Lou thought, They’ll be happier doing what I want them to do instead of what they themselves want to do’ – Ben Bova, The Exiles Trilogy.

Doing something for the good of someone else against their will is rarely justified. Nintendo and Ape Laboratories between them have produced enough successful games to know how to sell games, but we impatiently pressurise them to make a decision that they are waiting for the opportune moment to do so.

<< If Pepsi made 5 cans of a new special Soda called Pepsi Awesome, and you tried it and loved it, but then created some yourself to give to other people and encouraged that they can (if they wanted to) purchase a regular can of pepsi out of appreciation you are still in violation copyright infringement for basically recreating the same product (or modifying the same product) and giving it away for free. You can encourage them all you want, how many do you think will actually buy the real game, which would be useless to them. It wouldn’t happen and what The Mother 3 Translation Project is doing is against the law.

If art is being created using hacks, then at some point it is being done without someone’s consent, either the user or the company that originally created the product. Art should not be forced upon people.

<< The art of stealing? Im not sure i buy that. Youre saying its artistic to hack a game for content they created? But nonetheless, hacking yourself is not quite what this argument is about :P

“Hacker culture itself is a political statement about freedom of speech and freedom of information.”

Having scanned the hacking web site and blogs they are hypocritical, it would appear that the moment anybody speaks out against them their website or network is taken down. These kind of actions are creating a culture afraid to speak its own mind for fear of reprisals.

So who determines what can and can’t be said?
The hackers, that make them no better than the people they are attacking.

In the recent PSN attacks it is costing Sony millions, how much more will it cost them, and how long before that then transpires into loss of employment for potentially thousands of employees that are just trying to earn a living. It appears that hackers do not always consider the “bigger picture” when they exercise their right to steal peoples information and then display it on the network for all to see.

Surely a more effective way would have been to demonstrate to Sony that they had been hacked privately to allow them to improve their security, and then published on the net that Sony had been breached and have been advise of their weakness in security. This would have achieved the same end result, everyone would know and peoples personal information would not be up for grabs. How many fraudulent actions can be made from the information released that will end up costing the user.

the pros do not out-weight the cons. How many people hack to see if their neighbor is a terrorist? How many people hack to steal information of cause harm?

Point proven

To the person whose personal information has been released onto the web without their consent, who has been exposed to potential credit card theft, or whose gaming network has gone down for months on end, hacking cannot be justified. Hacking is never victim-free. Companies are victims too, and if a games company, for instance, loses money because their website goes down or they face litigation, they can’t spend that money on developing games that would benefit the fans.
<could, but the pros do not outweigh the cons :P

Whether or not the action is in the physical or digital realm, whether it is is a physical object or data that is being stolen, theft and invasion of privacy is wrong. If I break into your house, it doesn’t matter if I’m trying to make a statement that your personal security isn’t good enough, it is still a crime.

<<and your argument still doesn’t outweight the cons :P

It is reducing it to the same level as the Shin Megami Tensei alignment of Chaos (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Alignment)

‘We care not whether the actions we have taken in this struggle have complied with laws of the United States or any other country. What your lot fail to understand is that we live in cyberspace. The only laws that apply are the laws set forth by our individual consciences. We break your nations’ laws when we recognize those laws to stand between the people and their freedom.

Anonymous is not simply „a group of super hackers”. Anonymous is the embodiment of freedom on the web. We exist as a result of the Internet, and humanity itself. This frightens you. It only seems natural that it would. Governments, corporations, and militaries know how to control individuals. It frustrates you that you do not control us. We have moved to a world where our freedom is in our own hands. We owe you nothing for it. We stand for freedom for every person around the world. You stand in our way.

We hope you come to see that your attempts to censor and control our existence are futile. But if this is not the case, if you continue to object to our freedoms — we shall not relent.

We do not fear your tyranny. You cannot win a battle against an entity you do not understand. You can take down our networks, arrest every single one of us that you can backtrace, read every bit of data ever shared from computer to computer for the rest of this age, and you will still lose.’ – http://www.reddit.com/tb/hto2s

Such a world would not be one in which any human would want to live. It would be totally anarchistic, dependent on the whims of the strong who have the resources, charisma and knowledge to control the flow of the Internet, where those who are less influential are used as pawns or discarded entirely. There are no laws or hierarchy to constrain anybody – but also nothing to stop them preying on the weak.

This is certainly not a good model for humanity outside the Internet, as Anonymous seem to want it to be.

Law is by no means a good faction in SMT. This doesn’t mean that Chaos is a good faction.