Hacker Manifesto - and the hacker of today

[hackajar]

Reference - http://www.mala.bc.ca/~soules/media112/hacker.htm

A recent story on DirectTV's new crack down method's, get the John not the trick(http://www.dailyherald.com/search/ma...?intid=3796175). The writer mentions:

The companies' names and products give a peek into the mindset of hackers and pirates, a rebellious, intelligent and mischievous bunch that take pride in their illegal activities, as evidenced in the widely circulated "Hacker's Manifesto," which says, in part, "We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals."

Now this is the first time I have seen this "Hacker Manifesto" (I don't hang in large groups of computer junkies, so yeah, it's new to me).

To me this is NOT the manifesto that I want to be idenified with. And further it was written in 86', yet this crack pot writer plays it off to be the "mission statement" of all hackers around the globe.

Is this still the norm (generally speaking). Was it ever? People wonder why "hacker" get bad rap in media, yet there are documents like this floating around proving the media is right.

Thoughts?

[yankee]

To me this is NOT the manifesto that I want to be idenified with. And further it was written in 86', yet this crack pot writer plays it off to be the "mission statement" of all hackers around the globe.

Is this still the norm (generally speaking). Was it ever? People wonder why "hacker" get bad rap in media, yet there are documents like this floating around proving the media is right.

I think the really important part is that it was written in 1985/1986. It's incredibly unfair for anyone to try to apply this to today's situation, because everyting has changed since then. We're talking about a time when it cost somthing like 25 to 50 cents a minute to make a long distance call. There was an Internet (first year for NSFnet), but there were only something like 5,000 systems connected. No one had access. Anyone you meet who says they did is almost without a doubt lying (FidoNet doesn't count).

I don't really know how to explain this, but I think things were much more casual in those days. Everyone who had a computer, from the student who sold his car to get a memory upgrade to the rocket scientist (shout out to Pezz & MITcourseware) at NASA, was a hacker. It was almost expected that these people would be playing with computer and phone systems. When someone got caught, it wasn't a huge f*&king deal like it is now. If no damage was done, nobody really cared (usually). It was almost congenial. It was a real boys-will-be-boys kind of thing.

Now it like, if someone gets caught even thinking about sending a packets to a server that they don't admin, they get 20 years in the electric chair.

I think I'm not really explaining this very well, but my point is that in 1986, it was a very small number of people who were getting free phone calls from a monopolistic, very wealthy, multi-national corporation that was charging 40 cents a minute. They weren't much of a threat to the company or anyone's way of life. Yes, it was illegal. So was pre-marital sex. You could drink at age 18. The USSR was the great evil empire. Times change.

So I think yes, at one time, this was the norm (as much as there was one). But that was nearly 20 years ago.

[EeeekPenguins]

I think alot of has to do with the stereotypes that people give hackers. The stereotype has changed a little bit recently but for the most part people have the same gereral stereotype of what a hacker is. I was just born so I cant really tell you what was going on then but I can make a guess, sorry if this is horribly inaccurate so please correct me. Well as yankee said alot of people didnt have the internet so this idea of a hacker was slightly foreign and very new. There was this general stereotype that was quickly formed about hackers to explain what was going on in simple words. So imagine being someone and telling people that you are a hacker, "Oh you break into banks through the internet!?" It also applies to this ,almost underground, society that we have. This is how I take it, I dont think it should be a creedo or something we should live by because as it states labels are what hurt us.

[jesse]

I think the movie "Hackers" using the manifesto did the most damage.

[skroo]

I think the movie "Hackers" using the manifesto did the most damage.

Yeah, but the best part is that Blankenship (who wrote the manifesto) let them use it, and is actually credited.

Welcome to the mass-market pop-culture phenomenon of the hacker culture. Which really means 'anyone running Windows XP who warezed something' these days.

[hackajar]

Welcome to the mass-market pop-culture phenomenon of the hacker culture. Which really means 'anyone running Windows XP who warezed something' these days.

Warez the Beef?

[Shatter]

Couple things forgotten about '86...

Your online "internet" as peopel think of it today consisted of large mainframe systems with e-mail.

The Source
BIX
Compuserve
GeNIE

These system started at $.10/min (The Source for 300bps) up to $1.50/min. They were all text base. The majority of clients were businesses who wanted real time stock pricing, etc.

The other sid eyou had was Telenet & Tymenet. These were also high end systems, that mainly catered to Corporation/Gov't.

Example: The U.S. Federal court system used to maintain a BBS of sorts on Telenet where Federal Judges would exchange mail, discuss cases, etc. It was later hacked and fraudulent messages sent around and posted, caused it to cease being used (No clue about any of that, I swear...)

CitiBank had a rather large presence on Telenet, taking the entire 223 & 224 exchanges. All Telenet Adress's wer ein teh form of ### ###. This was how you connecte dto systems like The Source. You would dial into Telenet, then connect to the system (much like the internet pre-www).

Since Telenet was a reverse billing system, all systems connected paid when somebdy connected to them vis the service. The funny thing wa sthat meant they were paying the service to allow peopel to hack at them.

Also on Telenet was Telemail, which allowed for global email capability for anyone else with a Telemail account. Again, we're talking about '85 here.

Another Telenet service that Hackers LOVED was their service (name eludes me) that cost $25/mo, and would let you connect to remote computers, bbs's, etc. via a local call. This meant that for a flat price you could be in California and connect to a bbs in Texas without paying $.40/min to the telco. All at 300bps. This is why national BBS phone listings were like gold.

[valkyrie]

Couple things forgotten about '86...

Your online "internet" as peopel think of it today consisted of large mainframe systems with e-mail.

The Source
BIX
Compuserve
GeNIE
<snip>

Gods, Shatter. Your post is making me feel an olderster. And I really am not that old. Sheeze. Where did the time go?

r0cketgrl

[noid]

The other sid eyou had was Telenet & Tymenet. These were also high end systems, that mainly catered to Corporation/Gov't.

I used to use this to connect to Delphi. Delphi offered 10 hours of free shell access to new users, needless to say I had no shortage of new user accounts. Don't write Telenet off, it simply became SprintNet. I wouldn't be suprised if you fired up a NUAA scanner and still found systems using it. Lots of big old companies and government type business still adhere to the 'if it ain't broke, dont fix it' policy. I know Westinghouse used to own a metric ass-ton of NUAA space, bet its still in use.

[skroo]

I wouldn't be suprised if you fired up a NUAA scanner and still found systems using it.

Very much so. PADs are still in use for certain low-data-rate wide-area connections where it's going to cost more to upgrade to something more modern than keep the old stuff ticking over. Here's an interesting chronology I found that details - in parallel - various countries' online services lifespans (including the quasi-related teletext).

On a quasi-related note: anyone ever play with Prestel? Oh, the fun some other unknown parties had with their mail system...