Legal or Illegal?

How do you evaluate what's legal and what's not legal? I just saw a thread about a guy looking to hire a "hacker" and the thread was closed but you allow illegal file sharing in Members Downloads and BlackHat Tools.

I don't want to bitch about it, just wondering...

Anything that is shared in member downloads is internet marketing related and isn't hosted here.

Hacking is NOT internet marketing related, therefore is has no place in this community.

I understand that pofecker but sharing other people's products without their permission is also considered illegal so IM up or down, it's not legal. Not that I haven't done it in the past or don't do now but I was just wondering about that thread. Thanks for your reply.

hacking is DESTRUCTION and compromise of sensitive and private data

Sharing and Downloading cracked/nulled products and files is simply blackhat. Alot of us wants to test a product first before we buy or subscribe to it for the simple reason of knowing whether its worth it or not. There tons of shitty, crappy and over-hyped products circulating the IM world and I dont see anything bad testing before paying.

See the difference?

If your talking about the legality of us sharing stuff in member downloads, we aren't.

We host nothing. You'll notice that all links are rapidshare, mediafire, etc.

Now, if we actually hosted something, that would be a different story.

No I don't sorry.

Hacking has got a total different meaning over the past few decades but nevermind that, it's still a very wide meaning. Hacking can mean a lot of different things and one of those things is also exploitation of server's/website's vulnerabilities in order to gain data from a third party. In other words, using Google to find Clickbank's thankyou pages and download their products free of charge without paying for it.

And you can't say you want to try it out first and make it all better. Software and games have demos, books have sales letters and reviews. You either buy it or you steal it, you can't justify what you're doing by saying you have a good cause.

It's like you walk down the street and see doors opened on one of the houses and you decide to walk in, take some stuff with you and then say you first want to try it out and then consider buying it. That means the TV you just stole might not be what you're willing to pay for but you're still going to use it because you already took it.

In internet marketing the word blackhat stands for something that is not moral by society's standards, right? So why are people using it to describe something that is not legal? In my opinion, blackhat and illegal don't go together. Those are different meanings.

Now I don't care about the guy who opened that thread but I just wanted to ask how do you guys set standards around here. I'd like to continue this discussion with you if you don't mind and still ready to reply to my post, otherwise thanks for your answers.

pofecker said:

If your talking about the legality of us sharing stuff in member downloads, we aren't.

We host nothing. You'll notice that all links are rapidshare, mediafire, etc.

Now, if we actually hosted something, that would be a different story.

Click to expand...

That's understandable and compliant with the law but how do you explain the thread about "hacking" Clickbank's thankyou pages? Isn't that considered hacking and illegal? I don't know what organizations are looking through the web but I believe this can get you in trouble since you teach people how to hack.

It's a thin line between blackhat and illegal.

If a thank you page is dumb enough to be findable via G00gle or 4lexa then it is public domain pure and simple. Anything on the internet that is not hidden behind a username : password or similar system can be considered to be public domain. If I "stumble" on to a file and stop to read it, you can't then cry intellectual property rights or copyright theft or whatever because by your own omission you have placed it on a public internet.

I have never seen or heard of anyone here brute forcing a protected page to get at a merchentable product, THAT would be theft... see the difference?

One is black hat the other is illegal...

So do you apply that to real life as well? Finding an unprotected website online is the same as finding a running car with keys in it. Do you jump in and take a ride?

No because the car is not public domain, i.e. it doesn't belong to me or you. At this current moment in time the unprotected content of the internet is.

How's that so?

Public domain is intellectual property which is not owned or controlled by anyone. Nothing on the internet is public domain now days and you can easily get sued just for using someone's article on your website without his/her permission.

After March 1, 1989, an author's copyright in a work begins when it is fixed in a tangible form; neither publication nor registration is required, and a lack of a copyright notice does not place the work into the public domain.

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I don't have to protect my website if I don't want to. If I claim a book as my own and charge for access then it can't be a public domain. Do you see where I'm getting at?

My point is not to discuss the reason behind the thread getting closed because it's not legal by any means and I would've done the same but I just want to imply that taking and sharing Clickbank's (for example) products is also illegal no matter how innocent it might look.

Linking to thank you pages IS NOT illegal. Downloading the content on that landing page is another story. But that's not the responsibility of BHW.

Yeah I can see where you are coming from and I concede the point. This is the last I want to say about this here cos it's cluttering up the board but I'm just arguing that there are different levels. One is questionable but caused by an owners naivety, the other is just illegal period.

As for your point about material on the internet being intellectual property, I agree but at the same time, scraping goes on all the time and no-one is getting sued.

Illegal hacking will bring the heat down on you fast, and on this point I DO know what I'm talking about, trust me

the hacker could be sued a few hundred thousand, they will come looking for tracks, find this place, what do you think will happen next..

I know that nobody is getting sued because in practice it doesn't pay off but what I'm trying to say is that pirating and hacking are both illegal no matter the level of activity and FBI won't go after you over some IM books but they will hunt you down if you hack/crack servers. Fine with me when I download stuff but not fine when I make something and want to sell it.

Exploiting naivety is often taken for granted and people like to forget that it is still against the law even if you know you won't get prosecuted.

The real truth (common sense, as opposed to the modern absurdities of current intellectual property theory) is that accessing digital copies of content simply is not the same thing as taking property away from somebody else, period. Historically, copyright was originally devised to only provide very temporary subsidized monopoly to publishers (NOT authors) for certain content to recoup their initial publication and distribution costs, after which it was supposed to belong to the public domain. It was never meant to be inflated into this open-ended, never-ending subsidy of government protection of ideas/content into perpetuity.

For digital content this is even more so, as there really aren't even initial costs involved as compared to traditional publication, nor physical substance to the info. As the actual original content or code is not being stolen from the author, nothing in fact has been has been stolen, and digital or not, no author has an indefinite right to own abstractions. The attempt to force everyone believe otherwise has led to increasingly expansive and coercive limitations on the exchange of ideas in the public domain.

I suggest we keep this thread as a place to discuss blackhat ethics and such. It's good to talk about these things because it's very easy to never question your own standards of behavior. I think 3kings is doing a great job in identifying and confronting these questions and we should applaud him for starting this debate.

Ask yourself.. have you really thought about what you're doing? How do you know what you're doing is OK? I suggest you disregard your immediate defense as truth and then question it.

I personally struggle with this question often. I think most advertisements are disgusting infiltrations of my mind and they we would be better off without them. I also feel that they are a symptom of our disconnect from each other (in a more positive way-- rather than the manipulative knowledge of eachother present in advertising) and evidence of where our energy lies. You can't just treat the symptom... and right now, I'm just as sick as the rest so I want to take part in this.

3kings said:

So do you apply that to real life as well? Finding an unprotected website online is the same as finding a running car with keys in it. Do you jump in and take a ride?

Click to expand...

someone drops a twenty on the street, I see it, It ends up in my pocket. It was put out in the open, and I found it. [unless I see them drop it]

The line that separates what is illegal and what is unethical is thin and ever-shifting. This line is enforceable law. Sadly, many of the people marketing their materials online are not following the standard procedures of the brick-and-mortar, tangible world. As such, they are not protected by many of the same laws that dictate ownership and enforceable copyright.

That said, this is an extremely interesting topic and one that is becoming more and more complicated as the Internet's ubiquity expands past the First World. I don't personally believe it can be as black-and-white as many of those that are approaching these same questions intellectually think. It is even becoming more complicated to think about logically, because these questions force us to associate "object" and "ownership" with degrees of abstraction that intellectually transcend the way we have traditionally thought about the laws of intellectual property.

Interesting topic.

The real truth (common sense, as opposed to the modern absurdities of current intellectual property theory) is that accessing digital copies of content simply is not the same thing as taking property away from somebody else, period. Historically, copyright was originally devised to only provide very temporary subsidized monopoly to publishers (NOT authors) for certain content to recoup their initial publication and distribution costs, after which it was supposed to belong to the public domain. It was never meant to be inflated into this open-ended, never-ending subsidy of government protection of ideas/content into perpetuity.

For digital content this is even more so, as there really aren't even initial costs involved as compared to traditional publication, nor physical substance to the info. As the actual original content or code is not being stolen from the author, nothing in fact has been has been stolen, and digital or not, no author has an indefinite right to own abstractions. The attempt to force everyone believe otherwise has led to increasingly expansive and coercive limitations on the exchange of ideas in the public domain.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what has been bothering me in the past. Why is digital product not equal to physical product? Let me quote Wikipedia for a second:

Intellectual property (IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical, literary, and artistic works; inventions; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights. Under intellectual property law, the holder of one of these abstract properties has certain exclusive rights to the creative work, commercial symbol, or invention by which it is covered.

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If I write a short e-book and invent a car to run on water, both of my products have the same properties no matter the form they take. Both are my intellectual property therefore they cannot be considered a public domain. I hold exclusive rights for both of them.

If you illegally download a copy of my e-book it won't hurt my pocket but if you steal one of my cars that run on water I will suffer 5,000$ I had to spend to build one. This is what most people take into consideration when telling immoral apart from illegal but it's wrong and the fact is that both are illegal no matter the initial and distribution costs.

So physical or non-physical, if I made it, it belongs to me.

someone drops a twenty on the street, I see it, It ends up in my pocket. It was put out in the open, and I found it. [unless I see them drop it]

Click to expand...

So would you the same with the running car?

You can't place and move boundaries of legality by the value of the property. So you would pick up a 1$ bill but you wouldn't pick up a 10,000$ car. Why? Because you know you wouldn't go to jail for taking 1$ but you would see a judge if you took 10,000$ car. Does this make it any better?