43 research outputs found
To Hack in Italy Ethnographic Notes on HackIt - Hack Meeting 2007
No full textThis paper examines the broader political climate surrounding some Italian
hackers communities that organize the annual hack meeting. When Italian people began to hack,
the first thing that they learned was that computing was fun. Going around inside a machine,
hacking it, sharing passion and line-code with friends was a tantalizing activity in the 80’s. But
these emerging technologies were targeted by counter-hegemonic and strongly politicized groups
as one of the tools of increasing control over society. Denouncing an overwhelming, embedded,
presence of the state in everyday tasks (such as phoning, or traveling with private or public
transportation), semi-legal, often anti-globalization, groups strongly supported hackers,
sometimes strongly inviting them to join their political view. Hacking in Italy is nowadays
perceived as subversive and resistant to mainframe activity. The concept of hacking is now in
question under discussion: you can find Italian hacking groups that propose security breaking,
anonymising, intellectual property issues, but also other issues seemingly or completely
unrelated to hacking (like how to build a cheap wi-fi antenna, or how to bake home made
bread). Enlisting ethnographic data obtained at a hacker meeting in Pisa (Italy) in September
2007, and through followup interviews with hackers in the months after the meeting, this paper
explores the terrain of hacking in Italy. The rhetoric of rehabilitation, the retrieval of the lost
skills, of the re-possession of a conversational place that was “taken” by big corporations, is
nowadays the ground of most of Italian hackers communities
Ippolita, Luci e ombre di Google : Futuro e passato dell’industria dei metadati, Feltrinelli, Milano 2007
No full textCybercrime and Society / by Majid Yar. - London : Thousand Oaks : New Delhi : Sage, 2006.
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Black Beard’s Mouse. From Pirates to Hackers
No full textThe literature about piracy flourished just at the end of the Golden Age of pirates (1650-1750). In a mixture of fear and admiration, that literature describes pirates as bloodthirsty champions of liberty, from an anarchic point of view, and of the fight against the official violence, a typical asset of kingdoms and their armies.
The hackers' contribution to the conception and birth of the Net is fundamental. But when the web started making the navigation and the electronic purchase of goods easier, the safety of the Net became a big issue, and the hackers gradually became a threat. Similarly to the Golden Century, the room for the hackers is shrinking and their work criminalized.
My paper will focus on the use of the word “pirate” and the world of “piracy” to identify who the hackers are and in what their work consists. Why have we assimilated the hackers' work (i.e. opening, looking, learning, adapting, and sharing) to pirate activities? Why in the ‘70s did the hackers themselves identify their work as pirate? What remains of the libertarian ideology? Is there any sort of hackers’ ideology nowadays? Is the battle toward a new concept of intellectual property the way to finally embody the communitarian revolution of the internet? Or is it simply a way to standardize, and so to defuse, the potential revolution of the Net
The risk of pioneers. Space, commons, and criminalization in Cyberspace
No full textThis paper intends to point out the historical parabola of hackers and their tactical resistance through the institution of commons - as open source, free software, creative commons licenses. As mainstream perspectives have shifted from an initial celebration of hacking as a good practice in programming computers to the criminalization of the copying of software and the sharing of music, hackers are nowadays reacting to the institutionalization of private property in cyberspace by creating free (virtual) spaces where the contribution of every user allows for a broad spread of notices, information, and reviews. Rather than invoking a form of indigenous property rights in their claims to the internet, they are proposing an alternative and community-based model of exchange and living. The risk of criminalization through mainstream politics and economics is attenuated not by a (legal and cultural) claim to legitimacy, but rather through the proposal of an alternative lifestyle. The paper will give account also of data collected in the most recent HackMeeting (Pisa, September 29-31, 2007
Pitasi, Andrea (ed.), Webcrimes : Normalità, devianze e reati nel cyberspace, Guerini studio, Milano 2007
No full textAs blurred as a cloud. Preliminary notes questioning some socio-legal aspects of cloud computing
No full textL’Autore affronta le problematiche tecniche, giuridiche e sociologiche connesse al cosidetto cloud computing
Tapscott, Don; Williams, Anthony D., Wikinomics : How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio, 2006; italian translation by Matteo Vegetti, Wikinomics : La collaborazione di massa che sta cambiando il mondo, Etas Libri, Milano 2007.
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