Litui.Net

This kind of thing really ticks me off sometimes. Not only was this show dreadfully produced, but they had the nerve to state (in similar terms) that the Electronic Frontier Foundation supports movie piracy which is bunk. In addition they seemingly skewed the context of John Perry Barlow‘s words to make him seem to be condoning piracy and illegal activities. It’s just plain slanderous.

Other highlights of the show were Eric S. Raymond telling the crew the difference between a hacker and a cracker which seemed to be shrugged off at the end of the segment, way too much footage of Captain Zap sitting in the back of a pickup truck with a desk and two laptop computers…uh huh, and some useless chit chat with “Ethical Hackers” who social engineer Fortune 500 companies.

Essentially, paraphrasing and condensing:
- Hackers are bad, but we’ll contradict ourselves by giving ethical hackers (those working for THE MAN) the green light.
- Hackers set out with the intention of doing malicious things BUT WAIT, in the second half of our program, we’ll explain how they’re really just in it for the thrill.
- Hacking is the act of doing malicious things to networks and systems, but wait ESR says that’s cracking, but hell lets just get it all confused again and go back to calling them all hackers.
- Captain Zap is a BAD BOY but at the end of our show, he’ll tell us how he’s switched sides and become good (what the show calls an ‘Angel‘).

All in all, disappointing to see this kind of FUD spreading. Not entirely surprising, but this one was pretty dirty.

Those who get The Learning Channel still have a chance to witness this travesty on Friday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 12th, 2002 at 12:09 am and is filed under Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.