piracy activities

piracy activities

Since the invention of computer technology hacking has been there, but it has improved with time.  Hackers have developed new skills in hacking or gaining unauthorized access to systems or data with each technological advancement that has been invented in the tech world. The adaptive nature of hackers has also changed the way people get access and reproduce other peoples work for their benefits. Comparing the piracy activities of the golden days and today’s world there is a clear difference between the two which is contributed to by the change in technology and motive.

Hacking is considered as piracy since it is an act of using technology to gain unauthorized access to data or information that the hacker uses for his or her benefits. The modern-day hacking has become more sophisticated with different categories of hackers compared to the golden days hacking. In the modern piracy, there are those hackers that hack for evil and malicious activities, and there are those that hack for good intentions and are authorized to do so by the company for security measures against black hat hackers (Rao & Nayak, 2014). In today’s world, hacking is done for both good and bad, which was not the case in the olden days, where hackers were only perceived as evil.

An excellent example of an excellent intended hack was the collaboration of the American and Israel government to come up with a bug or a malicious code that would cripple Iran’s uranium facility (Grossman, 2014). Also, in the modern world hackers sell their skills to organizations where they hack the system to pinpoint the vulnerable part of the system that might be used to gain access to the system and repairs it. In the golden days hacking for good was something that no one would think of as hackers of those days could only hack for bad intentions, and they were not trusted.

In today’s world, hacking has gotten more complicated due to the innovation and advancement of the internet. Piracy or hacking nowadays is done through the creation of bugs, using the network, software or malicious codes that are spread through email attachments and applications downloaded from the internet (Levy, 2010). Hackers in the olden days did not have such skills and could only hack a system through a vulnerable space in the system and using backend access. The difference in hacking methods of the golden days and the modern-day hackers have been contributed to by technological advancement and innovations.

The intentions and motivations of piracy or hacking are also different from the golden day and the modern-day. In the golden days hacking was done for evil and malicious purposes as hackers only pirated a system to gain access so that they can use the data or information accessed for their harmful benefits. In today’s world, hacking has become a commodity of trade as hackers are selling their skills to prevent the system from being vulnerable to the black hat system (Jordan, 2009). The motivation of the hackers also differs as some hack as a means of business or trade, and there are those that hack sabotage and bring commotion and confusion in the society by causing havoc in the tech world and systems.

Piracy or hacking in the olden days was motivated and justified by very different factors as compared to today’s world hacking. In the olden days hacking was an evil act, but in today’s world, the hacking skills are used as a commodity of trade to safeguard systems. There is a clear division between the old day’s hackers and the modern-day hackers in terms of ethics and motives as nowadays hacking is done for good intentions which cannot be compared to the type of piracy done in the olden days.

Reference

Grossman, L. (2014). World War Zero: How Hackers Fight to Steal Your Secrets, TIME. Retrieved from https://time.com/magazine/us/2972309/july-21st-2014-vol-184-no-3-u-s/

Jordan, T. (2009). Hacking and power: Social and technological determinism in the digital age. First Monday, 14(7). doi: 10.5210/fm.v14i7.2417

Levy, S. (2010). Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution. Computer Law & Security Review, 1(6), 29. doi: 10.1016/0267-3649(86)90036-1

Rao, U. H., & Nayak, U. (2014). The InfoSec handbook: An introduction to information security.