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Comment by fredoliveira | Hacker News Reader

Ah well, the same thing all over again. The hacker/cracker distinction is sadly never going to be mitigated, and the press doesn't know/care enough to change the way they report these things. The words hacker and cyber criminal are used interchangeably in this article (and just about any article on this topic). Sad, particularly for those of us who happen to be reading Hacker News.

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Everyone really needs to get over this point. No news organization was ever going to use the word cracker. I could see the headline now, "Two Crackers Attack Bank." That wouldn't go over well.

A problem is that "hacker" is a good, short word. Descriptive competing phrases like "cyber criminal" are clumsy by comparison, and "cracker" is just equally good and short.

At least the French, by refusing to use English words, have found a much more interesting phrase for it: pirate informatique

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_french/medical_general/...

To be fair, the people who the media call hackers also call themselves hackers. Language is defined by how we use it, not necessarily the way the person who originally coined the terms wanted.

Also, to me, crackers are people who break copy protection and other DRM systems.

Maybe we need to follow the lessons from another article on the BBC site, and "reclaim the word" - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13333013

(Note - not an otherwise Hacker related link)

This problem started in the 80s, if not earlier. The original MIT "hacker" definition morphed into a definition used by the medial and the public to refer to the cyber criminals of the time. And along with this evolution in the definition came people lamenting the change and railing against the media.

Flash forward three decades and hackers are still using a term to mean one thing while the media and the public are still firmly entrenched in the cyber criminal definition.

Now, which definition was in use by the media when Hacker News was born?

I kind of disagree. I think PSN actually was attacked by "hackers" (this term still works, even in context of how it's used in this community). They had to be good at what they do to figure out how to get into PSN and steal that data. However, what I agree is wrong is that the media makes all "hackers" out to be folks with similar intentions. Just because you are a "hacker" doesn't mean you want to steal everyone's data -- even if you are able.

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