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Comment by orky56 | Hacker News Reader

It's such a fine line and if he veered just a bit more on the other side, all this press would be beneficial. Instead, he's caught with the hot potato. Honestly, some people have the gift to notice & exploit vulnerabilities but there needs to be a commensurate amount of tact, empathy, and morality for it to be a positive force. I'm on the other side of the spectrum looking to "learn" this type of behavior but my scruples hinder my progress and way of thinking.

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That fine line is called the law. "Journalists" were thrown in jail for doing the same to celebrity/royalty voice mails.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as the "law" but more of "is it worth enforcing?". If you look at the stories of successful startups including YC ones, you'll see a history of unfair advantage early on to achieve initial traction or press. If their intent was misconstrued as malicious, it wouldn't be too difficult for someone to take them to court.

Some examples -

1) P2P file sharing & video hosting sites gained their meaningful traction by dealing with copyrighted content in a very hands-off manner

2) AirBnB & dating sites taking existing customers from popular sites to move them over in a way that goes against TOS

Ok but what about when companies like Uber break the law and it's celebrated? Or when the law gets changed to protect existing companies from competition like Tesla's competitors have been successfully lobbying for?

It's a very simplistic world view to think that Uber defying regulation and hacking someone's voicemail are in the same ballpark.

I think most people (on HN and otherwise) can agree that laws protecting someone’s voicemail account are justifiable.

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