Visceral Hacking or Packet Wanking? The Ethics of Digital Code.
Although hacking is painted as destructive and anti‐social in the eyes of the mainstream media, many hackers seek to reclaim it and its meaning as a harmless if not socially beneficial activity. One strategy is to construct a boundary between legitimate hacking and the activities of the much maligne...
| Publicado en: | Culture, Theory & Critique Vol. 47; no. 2; pp. 213 - 236 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Oct2006
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=22897258&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 22897258 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 14735784 J2K jtl: Culture, Theory & Critique issn: 14735784 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2006 vid: 47 iid: 2 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 22897258 10.1080/14735780600961809 ppf: 213 ppct: 23 formats: tig: atl: Visceral Hacking or Packet Wanking? The Ethics of Digital Code. aug: au: Best, Kirsty su: Computer hacking Work ethic Freedom of information Websites Information storage & retrieval systems Technology Computer programming Ethics sug: subj: Computer hacking Work ethic Freedom of information Websites Information storage & retrieval systems Technology Computer programming Ethics ab: Although hacking is painted as destructive and anti‐social in the eyes of the mainstream media, many hackers seek to reclaim it and its meaning as a harmless if not socially beneficial activity. One strategy is to construct a boundary between legitimate hacking and the activities of the much maligned script kiddies, inspired by a ‘hacker ethic’. This hacker ethic springs directly from hacker practice and thus emerges from the visceral register, particularly that associated with pleasure. It is also engaged in a politics of becoming which attempts to extend ethical principles of equality and freedom to information environments and applications. This paper argues that the presence of the ‘other’ of hacking continues to contaminate hacking because of the ambiguous and contradictory nature of this ethic. It argues that the ambiguities inherent in the visceral source of hacking’s ethical orientation will continue to destabilise its legitimacy. Further, hacking cannot justify itself based on appeals to the virtues of hacking skill without contradicting its own moorings in the politics of becoming. To illustrate this argument, the paper looks at a case study of script kiddies and their involvement in distributed denial of service attacks against seven corporate websites in February 2000. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2006 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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