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Ethical Lines of the Gray Hat
Facter writes "There is a great article on CNET about the ethical debate between white/gray/black-hat hackers - interesting to note is that it reports the "fading away" of the "gray" definition between white and black, due to the DMCA hindering anything in between.."
While the ethics of cracking have always been interesting, the legality has never been an issue. It is, and for years has been, a crime, essentially, merely to knowingly obtain unauthorized access or to exceed authorized access to a computer owned by another. [Alas, many companies have injudiciously asserted these criminal charges against former consultants, merely to beat a bill with a nasty counterclaim.]
However popular it is to join the bandwagon railing against the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions (people seem to forget that the DMCA is itself an omnibus of technical and non-technical issues, good, bad and indifferent, and ranging from boat-hull designs to ISP immunities), the article's focus on DMCA is misplaced -- almost irresponsibly so.
The big guns against cracking conduct have been in place for years, and well before DMCA: The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the ECPA and countless state computer crime and regular theft statutes. All of these tend to be much broader in scope and reach, and far easier to prove and enforce. After the enhancements (from a prosecutor's point of view) made in the USA-PATRIOT Act, CFAA has become an even more powerful tool. The FBI didn't need a DMCA to get Kevin.
At the end of the day, the HP nonsense was just that: nonsense. The reason the HP DMCA threat was never pressed was simple -- it was a no-play claim, and everybody knew it. However, there are and have for years been a kazillion laws to beat up on anybody who engages in unauthorized access or exceeding authorized access of any kind, and regardless whether the conduct amounts to any circumvention of an effective copyright protection scheme.
I'm not arguing cracker ethics, or defending DMCA. I'm simply saying that the focus of the article is wildly misplaced. DMCA is just barely an interesting curiousity in the enforcement quiver -- so far as real cracking goes, it isn't even a fourth-string defense except in the oddest cases.