🚀 go-pugleaf

> Much of the time, however, a hacker does not deprive anyone of property.
> If the hacker merely signs on and looks around, he deprives the computer 
> operators of a few dollars of computer time at worst.  If he downloads a 
> file, the owner still has access to the original file.  If the file's 
> confidentiality has value in itself -- as with a trade secret -- downloading 
> it does deprive the owner of something of value, but this is rarely the case.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the hacker has now cost the system
owners/administrators their confidence in the security of their
entire system. How much less a crime should trespass be than theft?
(Now some will object that the hacker has done the system a favor by
pointing out its security holes. Would the objectors like someone to point
out the security holes in their apartments by breaking into them?)

Would you feel secure or relieved to discover that the person/s who
broke into your house or office didn't physically take or damage anything,
but "merely" examined everything of value, presumably copying anything
they found interesting?

> [Observations about freedom of the net.]

A BBS is not strictly analogous to a publisher's press; few publishers
allow (much less encourage) anyone to come in off the street and run off a few
tens or thousands of copies of something for free, or allow them to insert
unedited copy into the next edition! Such a publisher would become very
much a part of the process of disseminating the information and therefore
liable for it. Nor is a BBS a common-carrier like the phone system: no 
knowledgable user of a BBS has any expectation of privacy in using it.

It may be unpleasant, but it seems the only way for BBS operators to
absolutely protect themselves is to moderate (that is, read and edit) all 
postings to their system, exactly as every other publisher and broadcaster
does today.

Richard Schurmacher