Opinion

Web vigilantes walking a thin moral wire

by Richard Lutz

As an American male and a shameless geek, I have to admit that Batman is one of my personal heroes: he's an ordinary human who fights crime mainly by virtue of his brains and years of training. He's not afraid to do what he knows is right, even if it may get him in trouble. At times, this puts him on the wrong side of the law, but that's par for the course for a comic book superhero.

A person like that -- who advocates taking the law into one's own hands -- is a "vigilante," and although the word may bring to mind a certain wild West feel, vigilantism is alive and thriving even today. Take, for example, the recent MyDoom virus attack on the SCO Group Inc. Web site. SCO has been trying to claim copyright on parts of the code for Linux, the fabled "open child" operating system of legend, and apparently some of the initiates of the open-source community became angry. And what better way for the people to strike out against a corporate giant than through guerilla tactics? The virus strike was rapid and ferocious, and SCO soon shut down its Web sites rather than try to defend itself. It went so well that a copycat virus is already targeting Microsoft, the ultimate corporate behemoth.

The problem is that, as with most guerilla campaigns, civilians are caught in the crossfire. The strength of MyDoom comes from the fact that as a virus, it infected a million innocent computers around the world and spread by spamming itself. We might cheer when The Man takes a hit, but do we really appreciate it when our e-mail is full of spam and our computers are infected? People who want to protect Linux from corporate infringement have several options, including working against SCO's attempts to collect licensing fees or writing a whole new code and distributing it as open source software. If they choose the quick-and-lazy route, my sympathy for their cause decreases.

Well, they may say, the system is corrupt; SCO will win its copyright claim and try to bleed Linux users dry. A public relations campaign would cost money they don't have and would probably be equally ineffective. Nevertheless, this does not justify doing something wrong. And vigilante justice treads very close to wrong -- close enough to fall over it as soon as an innocent person is hurt.

Ultimately, it is nothing more than whimsy and mob rule and lynch mobs are a form of vigilante "justice." We should not honor, encourage or even tolerate this sort of thing in any form, in the physical world or the electronic one, because as soon as we do, we open the way for ourselves to be hurt. If you allow lynch mobs, you may be the next victim strung up. If you cheer for hackers when they attack corporate Web sites, don't be surprised if your computer crashes under the weight of viruses. And keep a careful eye on those who want to be Batman without taking care to protect the innocent.

Lutz, an editorial writer for The Daily Cougar,
can be reached at drahcir_j@hotmail.com.