i'm sure that somebody might come with "dude, don't be so pessimistic" but sometimes you just have to be. the problem with all those laws is just the past. i mean if there wouldn't have been any "accidents" with computer security, we wouldn't have all those laws about it. and our society would certainly have another view of us and wouldn't get its picuture from movies like swordfish or all the other bullshit that's going around. i mean, we are freakin humans, and a part of that is that we are more likely to remember bad things than god things. nearly nobody around us knows, that hackers were the one who made the internet accessible to the public (which is actually not true, cuz porn did it, but hackers were the one who builded the first network, if you can call those guys hacker, cuz todays definition of a so called "hacker" has been totally changed by mass media and government), hackers still are the one who make internet safer every day by exploiting. exploiting isn't bad, it can't be, you just try to figure out the world round you and what the hack is bad in that? what made it bad is false media reports on hacker that illegally "hack" into something to steel information or enrich themselves. but there we are already at another human weakness, egoism. personal enrichment, abuse of information and so on.
but this post wasn't designed to talk bout the weaknesses of humans (although i kinda did), it was designed to talk bout some major issues. we can't change the past (not yet ), so we gotta live with the present. and if we have some stupid ass laws bout that stuff, well, then we gotta deal with it and find ways to get around it, and to say something to the person to start the thread: just try it anounymously, you might not get the credit, but you also might not get the problems. at least you get the expirience, that one is priceless and nobody can take it away from you.