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Comment by pelasaco | Hacker News Reader

What is more hacker than bypassing rules and paid services? What was phreaking all about?

I think there's a difference between hacking for fun and feeling entitled to and arguing with weak arguments how you should be able to play music for free.

This entire thread has absolutely nothing to do with e.g. telling how Spotify can be hacked and everything to do with script kiddies at best wanting to download a binary from GitHub to listen to music for free.

But sure, maybe HN is that sad distribution mechanism now and, what's more, we're calling this hacker culture!

> I think there's a difference between hacking for fun and feeling entitled to and arguing with weak arguments how you should be able to play music for free.

I don't think people want only to play music for free. I don't. But for sure this new definition of "what hacking is" is for sure annoying.

This. Period.

Stealing content is not the type of rule breaking that phreaking was about.

you were probably not there or in any warez bbc...

phreaking was literally theft lol

> phreaking was literally theft lol

Right? People get so attached to their political views that they dont even notice it.

Kevin Poulsen, just wanted to win the Porsche for the poor...

"Theft of services", yes -- but the marginal cost/loss to the provider was effectively zero.

In this way, phreaking was exactly like media piracy.

But all of the above are entirely unrelated to the meaning of "Hacker" in HN.

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