Is hacking any worse than Piracy

[TiG]

You wanted decent threads, answer me this, is hacking any worse than ripping off copyrighted products.

TiG

[Kilrov]

Hmm, toughy this one. Im definately against hacking and also ripping off copyrighted material. I think commercially hacking has the potential to create massive losses, but atm ripping off copyrighted material probably causes the most widespread loss.
So I think both are pretty much as bad as the other.

[luke313]

I feel that hacking is worse than piracy, due to the fact that piracy is down to the expensive products we have to pay for. Microsoft is a prime example of this. Make it more affordable, and there wouldn't be a market for piracy. Piracy when it comes to DVD's and films is due to the films being released months/years earlier in places compared to the UK and others. IMO, piracy can be stopped, or at least, made smaller by the businesses charging less and releasing stuff at the same time over the globe.
As for hacking, well, we have our own little hacker playing games on here. It does my head in. There was no need for it and there is no need for it. Major businesses aren't that vulnerable from hackers, its the smaller businesses, and tbh, people that are clever enough to hack big businesses are clever enough to have a well paid job and shouldn't need to hax0r people.

My £0.02.

[Agent]

Depends on what your refering to when you say hacking. White hat or Black hat ?

[Saracen]

Originally posted by luke313
Major businesses aren't that vulnerable from hackers, ....

Not necessarily true. I know of one VERY large multinational that had a major data centre hacked a few years back. So far as they were able to discover, the hacker had broken in, looked about a bit and left having done NO DAMAGE AT ALL.

However, the integrity of the system had been compromised and as a result the entire data centre was closed down and everything rebuilt from the last pre-hack backup. Thta put several thousand people off-line for some hours, and then the transactions since the hack had to be rebuilt. The total cost to the company was undisclosed but, according to my information, exceeded $250,000.

Like most things, I think both hacks and copyright theft vary in degrees. A hack could be someone breaking into my personal computer and looking around (which would be VERY boring for them) up to a deliberately damaging hack that could put a company out of business and cost people their livelihoods.

Similarly, copyright theft could be someone copying a CD they already own for use in the car, right up to commercial scale bulk duplication and counterfeiting. In the former case, neither the artist nor the record company have lost anyting as most of us will not buy a second copy of a CD we own in order to have one in the car. But the logical extension of the latter case is that record companies go bust, artists can't make a living and go back to painting and decorating, and new talent stifles. We all lose out.

There are degrees in these things and I don't think it is possible to give an absolute answer to "Is hacking worse than copyright theft". And this comes from someone who relies in large part on copyright protection to make a living.

[TiG]

heh luke313 - you really don't know much about corporate security, if anything large corporations are much more vulnerable. The fact they have so many computers and lines means they generally have so many entry points that its just finding the computer that is insecure.

Another example is Nimda appearing nearly 2yrs ago, my company was infected due to no virus definition available. So our systems got infected, i noticed something weird going on and found the code fragments appearing at the end of the web pages, immediately removed the servers from the internet and tried to stem the flow of the virus. 4-6hrs later we had wiped the virus from the system, fixed the damage on our internal systems and had everything back up and running.

2 third party companies who we dealt with who we share leased lines with where notified just incase. however it was too late both where infected. one was a network operator, the other a large well know name in this country, both who took over a week to get their systems up and running again.

Eventually we managed to track it down to a breach in IE security that could cause eml messages in IE to be executed eml was not eml tho it was a damn exe.

I post this as i personally think saracen nailed the discussion on the head with his superb post.

TiG

[luke313]

heh luke313 - you really don't know much about corporate security

I totally agree with you, but I thought that I would post my opinion, like you asked

[acidrainy]

I think it depends on what you want to compare...

To redefine the question...
Is money more vauble to you than privicey?

Looking at the Question this way you can see that you are stealing no matter what

In my view, the question is "Is theft worse than theft?"
Its all stealing whether its money or people privicey.... which do you respect more...?


Now thats a difficult question...... is there one thing you respect more of in people.......?

If you burn CD's for people your obviously not respecting peoples possetions (money). Would you steal money from a neighbours purse? Would you only stop yourself because you would probably get caught or because they dont have as much money as large music firm's?

Would you spy on someone just to find out thier interests so you know more information about them than visa versa?
We all know spyware does this..... Does that make it ok?
looking at it this way that puts spyware in the same bracket of hacking.... interesing.


anyways i should stop rambling on now before i redraft this into a bulliten

[poolking]

The bigger the company the bigger the buzz the hacker will get if they are successful, so I'd have to agree that the bigger the company, the bigger risk of an attack.

[Punky]

hacking is worse than piracy in some ways e.g if the hacker destroys someone's hard work. piracy is just distributing someones work to the poorer masses at a lower price, haha.

[steve threlfall]

Depends what the infringement is. Copying a cd for a mate or taking down hexus

[acidrainy]

Sorry, was talking about hacking as in.....
Informal.
a) To write or refine computer programs skillfully.
b) To use one's skill in computer programming to gain illegal or unauthorized access to a file or network: hacked into the company's intranet

Not cracking, as done by a cracker...
a)One who makes unauthorized use of a computer, especially to tamper with data or programs.


Cracking is just not right.... going out of your way to "harm" people

[Jonny M]

When people hack they can genuinely damage property and cause a direct loss of money.

Piracy is in effect making a copy of something, the original stays where it was. Money isn't stolen, just that not as much is made due to any loss of sales that may result.

I don't condone either, but hacking into systems with intent to damage them is in my view a much more serious crime than downloading an MP3 off Kazaa.

[Bindibadgi]

Hacking isnt as bad as piracy.. it just isnt. The RIAA makes $$$ ten to the dozen, if it worked WITH sharer instead of alienating them it would be better for it. They are fools too concerned with their profits rather than music lovers.

[Gristy]

i agree with above. Learning to hack in a completely harmless way isnt as bad as downloading retail games/movies/appz/music etc.

as im sure most top security admins nowadays used to phone phreak and try to hack stuff.

just like the stoery on catch me if you can with the cheques.

however i think now there are the top people in there top jobs from this kind of illegal activity they should pass it on to understudys and people not aloud to teach themselves

[Shorty]

"Is hacking any worse than Piracy??" is too diverse a statement to really be 100% on.

Saracen's post was right on the money. Even if a hacker doesn't do any damage, it's still a breach of security. EVERYTHING has to be checked, patched and rechecked. That costs downtime and money.

Big or small, would you want to just take the risk of ignoring? If someone got in once, they can get in again.

I've been on the wrong end of a hacking job. Icrontic was hacked by someone with a grudge against one of the other admins (over counterstrike of all things!). They wiped out the site in a matter of minutes, once the box was compromised. It's sad to watch a site that you have worked so hard on, get nuked into oblivion by someone who was bored and fancied wreaking some havoc

Piracy is a wide subject. Are we talking music? or software?

Piracy is piracy, whichever you slice it. There's an interesting argument bounded around...

"Well I don't have and never will have the £700+ to afford photoshop/Studio MX.. blah.. so Im not really stealing, as they would never have had my sale anyway".

I don't condone it but the witchhunts for P2P users is stupid. If they really want to stop it, they should target the distributors who sell thousands of chopped CD's or the pirate cracking groups.

My 2p for what its worth.

Ps.. don't steal all the music you can, some musicians don't make alot without sales not everyone has multimillion pound contracts.