Re: [dvd-discuss] Hackers = terrorists, an analysis

[Steve Stearns <sterno(at)bigbrother.net>]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 Michael.A.Rolenz@aero.org wrote:

> That article was rather offensive, although I doubt the author intended it 
> to be - comparing if not equating the death of individuals and destruction 
> of personal property to infringment of intellectual property. THere is a 
> considerable difference between the two. I haven't heard of anybody 
> willing to die to preserve intellectual property from infringment. Maybe 
> our laws should rediscover that fact that I'm certain was well understood 
> 100yrs ago.

The author's point, and a very valid one (IMHO), is that fighting a war
against terrorism has close parallels in strategy to fighting against
hackers and copyright pirates on-line.  I don't think there was an
equating of hackers to terrorists but merely indicating the similar
strategies used by both to ellude capture, and how the attack against them
will look very similar.

When people started to talk about how Bin Laden's organization was like a
network, I immediately thought of how to attack it as you would a computer
system.  DOS attacks, man in the middle attacks, worms, all have real
world parallels for attacking an organization like this.  Of course the
disturbing thing here is that the parallel of music sharing on-line leads
to the conclusion that there's little that can be done to truely wipe out
these groups.  

---Steve