[hackerspaces] bring back the crime - "hacker" is starting to mean "creative entrepeneur"

[Mark Rosenblitt-Janssen]

On 9/22/15, hellekin <hellekin at dyne.org> wrote:
> On 09/22/2015 03:19 PM, Mark Rosenblitt-Janssen wrote:
>>>
>>> Miss the good old association with crime - it made all these people stay
>>> very far away.
>>
>> Thank [Thor|Athena] that there's someone with some spirit on the list.
>
> I said earlier I didn't like the association with crime.  Probably you
> misinterpreted it, so I want to clarify.

It was Michael who made the statement about missing the association
with crime, not hellekin.  So let me clarify for YOU:  there was a day
(like when 9600 baud meant you were ELITE) when being a hacker meant
you *were* going where no one else had gone before.  Where you were
BREAKING new ground to create new understanding.  Not walking through
guidebooks that hold your hand the whole way which is what
hackerspaces have been doing.  Once in long while something creative
turns up in a hackerspace.  AND?!?

> When I said I didn't like the association with crime, it's because the
> term "hacker" is not a made up thing like "intellectual property" that
> confounds many different things into one meaningless term.

But that's what also makes it powerful.  You can always fall back on
the benign term.  And it SHOULD keep out those who want to make it
into a businessman.  You see, the association with crime makes it
mutually EXCLUSIVE to entrepreneurship.

> become just that, and the association with crime is part of why this
> happened.  When journalists brandish "hacker", they never ever mean a
> clever solution to a tricky problem, or going where nobody has gone
> before (fortunately, hackers don't wear spandex uniforms).
>
> What is considered crime is another part of the picture: it's certainly
> a crime to penetrate an organization's network, extract secret document,

Woah, woah woah, right there pardner.  It's not a crime until the
Judge says it's a crime. (At least if the term "criminal" means "one
who is guilty of a crime".) Until then it's just one or even two
branches of the government (in the US).  The Legislature can WRITE a
LAW, and the Executive can go ARREST the hacker, but whether it is
UNJUST is up to the judge -- not the police, not the lawmakers.
That's why there's a Judicial Branch.  Comprende?

Because, you don't know:  is the organization a criminal outfit?  Is
it stealing from the People what was given to them?  These are the
things the hacker needs to keep in mind for clever circumvention of
unnecessary or unrighteous obstacles.  One's liberty is absolute until
it infringes upon another's.  Whose liberty is being infringed upon
when a teenager dials up a huge mainframe at CorpX?

Marxos