A Question on the Ethics of Hacking Wikipedia's Blackout
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See here. Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers/domain names, but the content is free. If I wanted to host a copy of Wikpedia at wikipedia.aspdotnetdev.com, I think I could without issue (the software is also open source and free). Since Wikimedia Foundation owns the domains, I suspect they could just trash it and put whatever garbage they want up there at any time. However, there are limits of what they could do with the content. They probably couldn't, for example, block every page and only permit you to read it if you pay a fee. Legally, they are surely in the clear. Ethically, we could probably go back and forth all day relating the situation to the various ethical theories. :)
I usually walk away from a conversation with you with an interesting new piece of knowledge.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
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In the thread yesterday someone mentioned that Wikipedia posted directions themselves for getting around it if you needed to access their site. Assuming this was the case, then there is no ethical question at all. They wanted to draw attention to the issue without inconveniencing anyone who truely needed the resources. Anyone who didn't get around it, isn't one of those 'nerds' that our representatives are suggesting they listen to.
I didn't see it. I did go to their main page. This is what I saw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:History_Wikipedia_English_SOPA_2012_Blackout2.jpg[^] And since I'd heard it was coming I never clicked on the 'learn more' link. I'm not going to assume that it is there, although if someone wanted to point me to a link... Assuming that wasn't the case- would you feel an ethical issue had arisen either for the users or the article publishers?
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
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If I boycott a store because I don't believe in their policies I don't use a disguise, walk in and think I'm making a difference. Likewise if a site is using a blackout technique to show their support you don't close the front door and let people in the back door! The freakin world ain't going to end if Wiki goes down for 24 hrs.
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Mike Hankey wrote:
The freakin world ain't going to end if Wiki goes down for 24 hrs.
No. Nor if they shut down permanently.
Mike Hankey wrote:
Likewise if a site is using a blackout technique to show their support
you don't close the front door and let people in the back door!But did they? I'm not clear on whether they just made it easy or if they actually told people how to do it. I found out through brief experimentation, reading forum threads here, and through media outlets how to get around it. I do believe that there are people out there who did not know how to do this without the media outlets telling them how to. What is a script kiddie compared to these people? Script kiddies are handed tools by others but are not capable of building those tools themselves for the purpose of hacking. I see a congruence.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
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Listening to NPR on the way home yesterday and they had somebody from some tech website suggesting you get around it my using the cached copy on Google. The host then said he got around it my going to a foreign language Wikipedia and then copying the text into Google translate! :doh: Aside from the stupidity of the host's workaround, what shocked me more was that the supposed tech expert didn't point out that it wasn't the same page and didn't have the same content. The Danish version of a Wikipedia page isn't just the English version translated. It could be completely different. Also the "tech expert" didn't suggest the quicker and easier fix of pressing escape before the page finishes loading or the only slightly more involved (for a non-techie) step of turning off Javascript. [But to the original question: oh please. It isn't hacking and it isn't unethical. Get some perspective dude.]
About the tech expert: Yes.
Wjousts wrote:
[But to the original question: oh please. It isn't hacking and it isn't unethical. Get some perspective dude.]
My point is, how do you know? I agree that this is probably not hacking- although the more research I do on the idea the less sure I am. But let's say you and I agree that this is not hacking. How would the situation have to be different for this to be hacking? Would they have had to put up a password protected first page and then people tried to bypass it? If this is too trivial, how do we know that it is too trivial? Consider: if I punch someone in the nose, you and I would both call that assault (I assume). If I spit on them, we might or might not call that assault. If I pick up their paperwork from their desk and throw it at them, we might disagree on whether that was assault. One of us might consider damage caused, another might consider dignity, we could ask a third person and they might consider the threatening nature of the given act.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
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smcnulty2000 wrote:
Was hacking one's way into Wikipedia unethical or ethical, or is it not particularly black and white
Since ethics requires a moral code to determine whether the code was violated or not then your question has no answer unless you provide the moral code first.
smcnulty2000 wrote:
I personally think it is irrational to claim that if a hacking technique is more easy than another hacking technique that that makes it not hacking. Wikipedia 'closed off' their site,
Either I don't understand your terminology or all I can say is that I have never seen such a claim.
smcnulty2000 wrote:
Where does the line get crossed on these issues and how does one know when one is about to cross it?
Moral codes are completely subjective (the fact that moral codes might be back by laws doesn't change what I said.) As such it is only something that an individual can do on a case by case basis.
jschell wrote:
smcnulty2000 wrote:
I personally think it is irrational to claim that if a hacking technique is more
easy than another hacking technique that that makes it not hacking. Wikipedia
'closed off' their site,Either I don't understand your terminology or all I can say is that I have never seen such a claim.
This was used several times in this thread, in the way that I mean it. Someone suggested that if one uses the Escape key it doesn't qualify as hacking. Another suggested that if shutting off javascript qualifies as hacking that he would be a sad panda. I hear this from time to time. "Oh, if all you have to do is ... then it isn't hacking". The argument is that if the technical requirement is very low then it couldn't be hacking. Like saying "Oh, I guessed her password was her cat's name backward because she talks about that thing all the time, but I didn't hack her account". In the case of the Escape key- okay maybe that's just something for the user's manual. What if it is two keystrokes? Or five keystrokes? Or the writing of a program. Where does it cross from expected use and turn into circumvention? Toward the rest of your post: So- what does your moral code say? I know what my moral code thought of it. I certainly didn't want to sully the question by making that as clear as day. I didn't come to preach a viewpoint but to garner the viewpoint of others. In a sense, I'm curious about what the variety of people think about this line of thought and whether anyone here had a touchstone for this sort of thing. I think I'm clearer on what they think of this question specifically but not so much so on the more generalized version.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
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Yesterday several sites including Wikipedia (English) decided to go dark for 24 hours. Wikipedia used a Javascript trick to blacken their website, making the content 'inaccessible'. I read numerous posts in various places telling how to get around this block. Including an Article on MSNBC, which cited NewScientist as their source. We hear all the time from various sources in the world about how hacking is wrong. Hacking is unethical. And publishing articles on how to hack a web site is wrong and unethical and will not be tolerated, etc., etc. Was hacking one's way into Wikipedia unethical or ethical, or is it not particularly black and white? Was publishing an article, or post, or disseminating such information unethical or within the bounds of ethics? Being computer professionals, we all have to wrestle with this sort of question from time to time. I personally think it is irrational to claim that if a hacking technique is more easy than another hacking technique that that makes it not hacking. Wikipedia 'closed off' their site, and did so in a way that most people would recognize. They effectively announced that the content would not be available in many ways. This example is, in my opinion, highly telling because of the trivialities involved. The hack was trivial, most people could get by without Wikipedia for the 24 hours, most of the information contained in Wikipedia is arguably trivial. Many people who hacked the site probably believed in the cause Wikipedia was attending to. And yet the triviality of the information is not usually a defense for a hack when a hack occurs. I am not passing judgement on anyone here who posted the basic techniques for bypassing Wiki's javascript. I upvoted some of these as my judgement at the time. It was also interesting to see what the technical choices led to- did Wiki perhaps know that the techniques for bypassing their javascript technique would be easy and choose it on purpose? Where does the line get crossed on these issues and how does one know when one is about to cross it?
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
It's only hacking if you are breaking into code that you shouldn't have access to. For a website, anything they send via HTML and JavaScript to your browser is fair game to muck with – otherwise tools like Greasemonkey scripts would be 'hacking' (they post-process the markup), and they're clearly not considered as such by the community or by laws in any country I nkow. For a website the line comes when you are trying to break into the server code.
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I guess it comes down to what we all define "hacking" to be. Hitting the Esc key to me is not hacking.
Okay. So that's what leads to my next question. If hitting the Esc key isn't enough to qualify as hacking, what is? Obviously if I had to write a complex piece of software in order to access their site then you and I would probably agree that I'd hacked the site (unless you read my code, then you'd say I was a hack). :) What criteria makes you decide that it is enough to call it hacking? Or do you use more than one test to tell?
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
Hacking, to me, is the act of "breaking" through a digital barrier/wall for the purpose of sport and/or malicious mayhem. I have more ideas and thoughts on the subject. I always thought the word "hacking" was analogous with hacking down a door with an axe.
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About the tech expert: Yes.
Wjousts wrote:
[But to the original question: oh please. It isn't hacking and it isn't unethical. Get some perspective dude.]
My point is, how do you know? I agree that this is probably not hacking- although the more research I do on the idea the less sure I am. But let's say you and I agree that this is not hacking. How would the situation have to be different for this to be hacking? Would they have had to put up a password protected first page and then people tried to bypass it? If this is too trivial, how do we know that it is too trivial? Consider: if I punch someone in the nose, you and I would both call that assault (I assume). If I spit on them, we might or might not call that assault. If I pick up their paperwork from their desk and throw it at them, we might disagree on whether that was assault. One of us might consider damage caused, another might consider dignity, we could ask a third person and they might consider the threatening nature of the given act.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
smcnulty2000 wrote:
Consider: if I punch someone in the nose, you and I would both call that assault (I assume).
Yes. But this is them asking you not to punch them in the face while winking the whole time and moving their face rapidly towards your fist. It almost more effort not to punch them. Especially if you're the kind of person who routinely keeps javascript off.
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I agree, except for:
jschell wrote:
Moral codes are completely subjective (the fact that moral codes might be back by laws doesn't change what I said.)
As such it is only something that an individual can do on a case by case basis.That seems a little simplistic. You appear to be saying that anything is OK, regardless of laws, so long as you can justify it to yourself by your own morals. I'd hate to live in a world like that.
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Henry Minute wrote:
That seems a little simplistic. You appear to be saying that anything is OK, regardless of laws, so long as you can justify it to yourself by your own morals.
I'd hate to live in a world like that.It isn't simple at all and it is in fact the world that you live in. The fact that your co-workers don't spit in your coffee is based on their morals not yours. They might also not do so for other reasons which have nothing to do with a moral code. For example because they don't want you to punch them.
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jschell wrote:
smcnulty2000 wrote:
I personally think it is irrational to claim that if a hacking technique is more
easy than another hacking technique that that makes it not hacking. Wikipedia
'closed off' their site,Either I don't understand your terminology or all I can say is that I have never seen such a claim.
This was used several times in this thread, in the way that I mean it. Someone suggested that if one uses the Escape key it doesn't qualify as hacking. Another suggested that if shutting off javascript qualifies as hacking that he would be a sad panda. I hear this from time to time. "Oh, if all you have to do is ... then it isn't hacking". The argument is that if the technical requirement is very low then it couldn't be hacking. Like saying "Oh, I guessed her password was her cat's name backward because she talks about that thing all the time, but I didn't hack her account". In the case of the Escape key- okay maybe that's just something for the user's manual. What if it is two keystrokes? Or five keystrokes? Or the writing of a program. Where does it cross from expected use and turn into circumvention? Toward the rest of your post: So- what does your moral code say? I know what my moral code thought of it. I certainly didn't want to sully the question by making that as clear as day. I didn't come to preach a viewpoint but to garner the viewpoint of others. In a sense, I'm curious about what the variety of people think about this line of thought and whether anyone here had a touchstone for this sort of thing. I think I'm clearer on what they think of this question specifically but not so much so on the more generalized version.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.
smcnulty2000 wrote:
The argument is that if the technical requirement is very low then it couldn't be hacking.
Then as I said - I haven't heard that.
smcnulty2000 wrote:
So- what does your moral code say?
It had no comment. (That might seem flippant but it really does express my view on it.) Per your original question...
smcnulty2000 wrote:
Where does the line get crossed on these issues and how does one know when one is about to cross it?
It is a matter of personal choice and experience. Your example issue doesn't concern me but I do get rather strident on the topic of copyrighted material especially as, in my experience, many developers no only do not understand how it impacts them they don't even know that the issue exists. Given the legal ramifications of even accidentally abusing it I am always conscious of it.
