Does Online Vigilantism Make Sense?

Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has a new piece out on cybersecurity, online vigilantism, and white hat hacking. It explores the many avenues for countering bad actors in the online environment, and draws a line between reaching out to aggress against them and using deception and guile to confound and frustrate them.


The piece is apparently motivated by the the “Peer‐​to‐​Peer Piracy Prevention Act,” introduced a couple of years ago, which would have given the music industry immunity from liability for accessing peer‐​to‐​peer networks and attempting to prevent trade in their copyrighted material. Crews says “the industry is bound to try again.” His conclusion: “Explicit liability protection for particular classes of white hat hacking is ill advised.… A green light for hacking can work against broader cybersecurity and intellectual property goals, and there are alternatives.”