Society generally looks very unfavorably on those who kill their grannies.  The attitude to hackers is rather more ambivalent. Some see them as techno-vandals and others see them as modern Robin Hoods, fighting the strong and powerful on behalf of the weak (the Internet user).

Motive is always an important factor in the way in which we judge crime; for example, many would regard breaking the speed limit to get a sick child to hospital in a different light to snatching a handbag to buy drugs (even though the former crime is more likely to result in fatal consequences). Typical arguments in support (or mitigation) of hacking and similar activities are:

• Hacking is done for fun - it is not done out of sinister motives. hackers are not engaged in fraud, blackmail or theft
• Hacking is potential beneficial - it reveals weaknesses in the system
• As a corollary of the above - hacking punishes organizations like Microsoft who should provide more reliable software
• Hacking is a form of training for the next generation of computer security staff

On the other hand, hacking does harm people who are entirely innocent. Does a school teacher who is not an expert in programming or computer science deserve to have the work he or she spent hours preparing deleted? Why should the public suffer the effects of a virus or worm because a hacker has a grudge against Microsoft?

The argument that hacking protects people by monitoring the behavior of large corporations is intriguing. A hacker who breaks into a company's database can be compared to the investigative journalist. Equally, the argument may be little more than a self-serving excuse. If I take my neighbor's mail from his mailbox, can I later claim that I was being public spirited and looking for evidence that he is defrauding the inland revenue authorities.

Hackers might argue that circumventing safeguards to access and copy information (text, video, software) is legitimate because some companies have almost obscene levels of profit margin on certain products. It may well be true that some superstars do receive vast sums of money for relatively little work, but there are many artists and writers who make a precarious living from modest royalties. Do those who copy IP first check whether the person they are copying from can afford to do without the royalties. If these people live in North America or Europe welcome it when IT jobs go to countries with lower per-capita incomes shich as India? I rather doubt it.