Comments on: When is hacking OK?

By: MT

MT — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 17:06:51 +0000

It’s more like using an authentic driver’s license that’s not your own. It’s impersonation. I suppose that falls under “fraud.” But it’s not counterfeiting.

By: AC

AC — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 05:34:26 +0000

Clearly hacking is not hacking if you don’t have skillz. If you are a partner at a law firm or a small business owner you don’t have the knowhow to circumvent technological measures. To be less cynical, hacking is hacking when it is not social engineering.

MT: Yes DMCA is in play. To quote:

Circumvention, as defined in the DMCA, is limited to actions that “descramble,” “decrypt,” “avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair a technological measure.” 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(3) [...] As such, the court concludes that using a username/password combination as intended—by entering a valid username and password, albeit without authorization—does not constitute circumvention under the DMCA.

Of course, analogous behavior in the real world would be replicating an authentication token such as a driver’s license or a video rental card. Presumably both of those actions are fraud of some sort. So the DMCA isn’t necessary to proscribe the behavior of the defendant in this case.

By: MT

MT — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:15:21 +0000

D’oh! But you probably know that. I forgot the principle that all’s fair in headline writing, including puns not otherwise fit for human consumption.

By: MT

MT — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:13:21 +0000

BTW, I think coders want us to call this “cracking,” since “hacking” originated as a word for elegant coding and still gets used to refer to such (as in “a nice hack”).

By: MT

MT — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:05:15 +0000

Do the cited cases postdate the DMCA? Maybe the distinction hasn’t been crafted. Instinctively to me, “guessing” is a handfull-of-times kind of thing you do without assistance of a machine and based on some inspiration other than the perception of an obvious universe of possible permutations.