Good Hacker, Bad Hacker

A dark room is lit only by the glow of a computer screen. A pale, nerdy-looking youth bends over the keys, tapping away frantically. And there you have it: the stereotypical hacker in modern America.

A “Hacker” is described as a person who accesses a computer system by circumventing its security system. This sort of thing is seen as highly illegal in America, because many hackers use their skills with computer software for evil; breaking into private computers, stealing information, and sometimes planting harmful viruses. However, the connotation of the word is slowly beginning to change. Instead of “criminal”, many people think “genius”.

According to an article called “When Is A Web Hacker Good For My Business?” on Forbes.com, “An emerging trend to ensure your website, business server or database is secure is to hire a professional hacker and have them target you for an evaluation”. If the hacker manages to find a break or flaw in security, they report it to the company, who fixes the error, and the system is stronger as a result. This sort of hacking is not illegal, if the company has hired someone to hack their system. Also, the Washington Post reveals in an article, “the NSA is looking for a few good hackers”. The article remarks that the U.S. government is heavily in need of good computer coders to fight the “cyberwars” that are threatening national security.

However, there are also people who believe that hacking, even hacking for the purpose of stealing information, is all fair and above board. “Hack this Site” is a website that offers opportunities for people to practice their hacking skills. Their “Philosophy” says, “We believe everyone should have free access to all information.” This seems to be the mindset of the last generation or so—because information is not only public and available, but also easy to access, there is little sense of privacy or decency among people who can hack.

And that, my friends, is a pretty scary thing.

Occupy Wall Street and Toulmin

Political movements are hot topics just now, what with the 2012 presidential election just around the corner. The “grass roots” Tea Party movement seems to be copied, in a way, by the recent development by “Occupy Wall Street”, a group of left-wing protestors who are against Capitalism in the United States. The article I decided to analyze using the Toulmin method is called “Occupy Wall Street: The Right Focus”, and uses a pro/con approach to analyze both sides of the argument.

The first claim made in the “Pro” side of this article is that “Economic inequality has been growing steadily for three decades”. This statement is backed up with evidence in the form of statistics collected by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. The warrant is pretty obvious, and is one that the American audience does generally share, and that is that economic inequality is not something we want to encourage. However, the next claim the article makes, that “before the late 1970s, inequality had been falling for five decades”, is supported with less evidence than the first (although it is mentioned that the years during which economic inequality dropped were the Golden Years of Capitalism), and the warrant is unclear. Perhaps it is that capitalism can economic equality are not mutually exclusive.

This was in interesting article, but not one I found to be terribly convincing. Perhaps if the author used stronger warrants and evidence to back up his claims, it would be a more convincing argument. However, this article is posted on the website for “Bloomburg Businessweek”, a website that focuses on the information and relevance to the world of business that stories offer. Since this article is written to provide information rather than to convince, I think that strong warrants are not necessarily needed, so long as the evidence is there to support the claim.

Opening Pandora's Box

A new wave of popular sites have spread across the internet. Pinterest is one, but another is a “make your own radio station” site called “Pandora”. By signing up for a free account, you can type in your favorite combination of songs and create different “stations”. I have one for Celtic music, one for Disney songs, and one for Reliant K.

However, my question is this: Why is P2P (peer to peer) considered illegal, while Pandora is not? Both allow you to listen to your favorite music at absolutely no charge, thereby costing the artists by not compensating them whenever their material is listened to.

I think the difference is the ownership of the music—you cannot download the music from Pandora. Instead, there is an option to purchase the song on iTunes for the regular 99 cents. With P2P sharing, you get the song free of charge. 

Also, as mentioned in my post last week, studies in Europe show that streaming services like Pandora seems to be decreasing the amount of internet piracy and illegal downloading. “54% of those surveyed said that streaming music made them stop illegally downloading songs”, the article on Radio Industry News Blog reads. It still doesn’t change the fact that people are technically enjoying the music free of charge, but if making listening to one’s favorite music for free legal cuts down on the taking/sharing of music for free, then I guess everyone will profit in the end.

Rhetorically Analyzing Piracy Posts

I analyzed two blogs talking about digital piracy (big surprise, yes?). The first one, from Read Write Web, was titled “All-You-Can-Stream Music Services Reduce Piracy, Says Study”, and talked about how Sweden’s use of music streaming services (somewhat similar to America’s “Pandora”) has reduced piracy in Sweden by 25%. The second article from Science Codex was called “Removal of restrictions can decrease music piracy”, which talked about how DRM (digital rights management) was actually causing piracy because of their strictness with protocol concerning downloading and backing up CDs, and so forth.

Of the two, the Science Codex article was more professional. Their information came from Rice University and included a quote from the late Steve Jobs (an appropriate sense of kronos, or good timing), which gave it plenty of logos, however I found the Read Write Web (RWW) article more interesting, since it gave us a look at the way Sweden is dealing with internet piracy, rather than just telling us more about America. The RWW website has a lot of ads, and does not look very professional. The color red, however, draws readers in. On the other hand, the Science Codex site is all light blues and browns. There are a few ads on this site as well, but it still pulls of a more professional look.

In a nutshell, I would say that the Science Codex article is more professional and scientific, however the casual RWW article is creative and explores some new territory.