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By Jerry Finkelstein

I was watching the movie, Swordfish, the other night and I was reminded once again that when it comes to PC hackers it's not easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys. The movie features one of the best hackers in the world, and he's the good guy. You can tell he's the good guy because he loves his cute little daughter and he himself is an innocent among the confusion and violence around him. Still, Microsoft wouldn’t like this guy; he loves his job, hacking his way into seeming impenetrable encryption.
Doesn’t security matter any more? Microsoft thinks so and will be installing "impenetrable" software on your hard drive to prevent you from gaining access to other people’s property, intellectual or otherwise. This is a good thing, isn’t it? If you were writing your great American novel you wouldn’t want the guy from Swordfish hacking his way into your work. Is Microsoft a villain because it will prevent millions of Windows users from burning copyrighted material? The music and media industry moguls don’t think so.
Right now the record and movie industries are going after KaZaA, intensifying their resolve to bring the bad guys—the millions of users all over the world—to justice. Of course, the users think the guys in the Industry are the villains.
Our local newspaper recently reported on a computer virus, "the worst attack of 02". The worm, W32Bugbear, is clearly a bad thing. But suppose the perpetrator has a cute little daughter and he loves her. And suppose he hacks his way into Microsoft’s "impossible to penetrate" software and frees the rest of us to go about our free play and burn business. A good guy, for sure. Or is he?

JF

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