Anyone seriously interested in hacking today eventually finds their way to Gabriella Coleman. As an anthropologist, Gabriella has been researching Anonymous and Hacking culture for years now but she started out studying Free Software in the Bay Area. This work is the basis of her book Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Gabriella showed up right at the moment the Free Software movement rebranded itself as “Open Source” It turns out that there are too many meanings of the word free in the English language: free beer, free speech. But when the government started using the DMCA to crack down on coding, Hackers bonded together around a very specific definition of the word.
This episode also marks the debut of someone I have been recording for years: my friend “Chris” He is always up to something, sometimes I fear he may be pulling our collective ear-leg but his tales are always fascinating. In this installment he tells us the truth about the Chinese Hackers and the New York Times.
Also, since yours truly is sick and tired of waiting for the next installment in George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire saga (this is the basis for the Game of Thrones TV show) I ask a hacker named $poiler to see if he can hack into Martin’s server and get me the next book.