http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1207707/Forthcoming-Leona-Lewis-tracks-leaked-internet-highest-profile-hacking-case.html

Basically, hackers managed to gain access to unreleased tracks from a famous singer and leak them onto the net for the general public.

I find most hackers interesting, because they behave like online vigilantes. While they could have used the tracks to blackmail the owners of the music into giving them some payoff in return for returning the songs, they choose instead to do the utilitarian thing and release it into the public sphere for everyone's enjoyment.

First of all, it's obvious that while it is unethical of the hackers to have stolen the unreleased tracks and released them onto the net, Could they hackers also be viewed as ethical from the utilitarian point of view?

I fail to see how this leak would harm the earnings of the star or the record company in any way. If anything, this 'leak' could even be an ingenious publicity stunt for the upcoming album! One could also argue that anybody who downloaded the songs illegally now was probably going to download them illegally once they're released anyway. Since only 3 out of 10+ songs from the album were leaked, if these 3 songs were really good, more people would want to buy the album once it's released.

Record companies are claiming that their stars lose millions due to piracy. One could ask: are record companies/stars ethical for earning this much (see several million and counting)? And after earning millions, is there any justification for the crackdown on piracy?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8194395.stm

To sum it up, the article is about a russian blogger who asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hold an inquiry, claiming that russian hackers have co-ordinated an attack that hit Facebook and Twitter where he holds accounts.

Georgy has posted a series of videos and blog entries criticising Russia for its conduct during the five-day conflict with Georgia a year ago over its disputed region of South Ossetia.

Those hackers were able to prevent millions of people gaining access to world famous social networking sites merely "to block one blogger" because of his "unpleasant and unacceptable" position, he suggested.

"They took internet vigilantism into their own hands to try to blast him off the web, but in the process blasted Twitter off instead."
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My question is, should any individual or any state have the right to restrict free speech or control content that goes onto the web (which is international and owned by no one)?
If so, when should individuals be empowered with this capacity to moderate and monitor online content?

The problem is that some content is genuinely objectionable, and some censorship is genuinely abhorrent, and we have no easy way to decide when somethign should be freely expressed or not.

And of course another problem is that the these hackers that have cost major networking sites hours of downtime (as well as other invisible costs), causing widespread collateral damage without any lasting or constructive objective in mind will probably get away scot free, because the law has yet to catch up fast enough to police the net and trace most hackers. Standalone cases such as these might eventually come to naught despite all the inconvenience and damage caused.