Bracing For The Crackdown

from the criminalizing-the-curious dept

I have a dog-eared copy of Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown that I should probably take out and reread. Many people are noticing a lot of similarities between what happened a decade ago when federal agents went around arresting all sorts of people for hacking and what's starting to happen now concerning file traders. There's a great quote from John Perry Barlow saying, "They are going after people who are young and want to share their ideas. They are criminalizing the curious." Of course, the big difference that I can see is that a decade ago "hackers" were a very small group of people that mainstream America was afraid of. This time, it is mainstream America that's about to be targeted. I'm not sure it'll go over so well.

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