Revenge Of The Nerds
Sony has a mess on its hands as a result of the numerous hacker attacks on their services. When thinking about this situation, it bears stating that companies and governments ought to be careful messing around with the hacker culture.
As I understand it, celebrated hacker George Hotz hacked the PlayStation 3 and Sony's lawyers went after him hard. What we are seeing now is the revenge of the nerds against Sony.
I am not saying what George did was right (although I am very sympathetic to hackers opening devices like the iPhone, the Kinect, the PlayStation, etc so that developers can build on them). I am not saying that Sony's lawyers weren't in the right when they sued George. This is not a post about what is right and wrong, legally or morally.
This is a post about the realities of the world we live in. Hacker culture is strong and getting stronger. Companies and governments should not underestimate the power of hacker culture to extract revenge on institutions they feel have wronged them. Unfortunately, it looks like Sony did just that and is now dealing with the repurcussions.
